Author: Jim Naughton

Playing with fire: Black freedom struggle and the Great Cloud of Witnesses

Preaching on the difficult sayings of Jesus is like playing with fire. True, fire is quite useful. It warms us, cooks our food, and, for good or ill, liberates much of the energy that powers our civilization. Fire also cleanses, purifies, and refines. But fire is incredibly dangerous and destructive. If you play with fire, so the saying goes, you’re gonna get burned.

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Practicing prayer

Never have there been such extensive and such convincing evidences of the poverty and inadequacy of human means and agencies for furthering the welfare of humanity; never has there been such a widespread sense of the need of superhuman help; never have there been such challenges to Christians to undertake deeds requiring Divine cooperation; never has there been such a manifest desire to discover the secret of the hiding and of the releasing of God’s power. Interest in prayer is world-wide.

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Eloquent bishop

Remigius came of a family distinguished for its sanctity. Not merely his mother and his brother, but his nurse and his foster-brother, are numbered among the saints. Holy influences surrounded him from his infancy, and the boy grew up grave and pure-minded and earnest. When he was but two and twenty the diocese became vacant. Remigius was amongst those who were assembled in the church at Rheims to elect a new bishop; suddenly a ray of light from an upper window fell upon the earnest face of the young layman.

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Southern African bishops conclude synod

“Pastoral Guidelines in Response to Civil Unions” was given careful consideration. It has been drafted in response to pastoral situations that are arising within parishes as a consequence of South Africa’s Civil Union legislation. An amended document has been referred back to the Diocese for comment and will be discussed by us again at the February Synod of Bishops.

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Tailgate Eucharist

Our friend the Rev. Dan Webster of the Diocese of Maryland recounts his adventures in bringing the Eucharist to Baltimore Ravens’ fans in a stadium parking lot.

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The patron saint of whistleblowers

The strong-willed MacKillop, who worked under harsh conditions in the Australian outback, was once briefly excommunicated by her bishop for reasons that have never been entirely clear. According to a new Australian television documentary set to air a week before her canonization, at least one of the reasons MacKillop was punished was for denouncing clerical child abuse.

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Stem cell breakthrough

Scientists reported Thursday they had developed a technique that can quickly create safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells, a major advance toward developing a less controversial approach for treating for a host of medical problems.

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Who is heaven’s home team?

In this autumnal season, Episcopalians, as members of the Official Denomination of Major League Baseball, concentrate the full powers of their discernment on a single urgent theological question: who does God want to win the World Series?

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The end of the world as we know it: collapsing paradigms

When we lose sight of the provisional nature of our paradigms and begin to think of them as timeless and immutable, we can become reactive when faced with new experiences that don’t fit our old way of thinking. We may be tempted to deny them. We may be suspicious of anomalous observations that threaten the old way of seeing things, or of the motives of those who bring them to our attention.

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