On Saturday, after dusting off the same white stole he wore when he knelt before Miami’s Roman Catholic Archbishop 15 years ago to be ordained, he put it back over his shoulders. Padre Alberto is a priest again, this time in the Episcopal church.
The issues at stake have become so trivial—We are not debating right and wrong, we are debating whether there should be trifling penalties for giving offense to other members of the Communion.—that to engage them at all compromises our moral standing and diminishes our ability to speak credibly on issues of real importance.
Two highlights from the Cafe on Facebook this week, including the fast action on this morning’s news from Nigeria and a young person answering the question of how to get young people in the church.
Saddleback Church’s pastor is apparently chummy with Santa – they’re both keeping naughty-and-nice lists.
Perhaps it’s no mere coincidence that on a week in which preachers were sweating over how to make sense of the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity out of their pulpits – a task that seems to turn theology into an unhappy sausage-making exercise – The Guardian asked a few theologians how to define the substance of their work.
Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, the Primate of the Church of Nigeria, has called for his country to pull out of the United Nations because the organization opposes bias against gays and lesbians. Can we expect Rowan Williams to express displeasure as quickly as he condemned the election of a lesbian bishop in the Episcopal Church? No, because that deadline has already passed.
“Let us give thanks for this joyful saint of God,” Olympia’s Bishop Rickel said of Knirk, “who brightened our lives and led us in new and faithful ways in this church.”
Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund has tested that belief by surveying more than 1700 leading scientists about their personal faith. She finds that many, nearly half of the responding scientists, describe themselves as being religious. But because of perceived pressures, they keep their faith beliefs to themselves, living what Ecklund describes as a “closeted faith”.
It’s been a relatively slow week in the news, at least in terms of reporting of the day-to-day ministry of Episcopal congregations. Most of the attention has focused on the Pentecost letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury and his proposals to various group in the Anglican Communion. But reports of the everyday ministry of the Episcopal Church continue in spite of the primary attention being elsewhere, whether in the religious or the secular media.
The President of Malawi has intervened, pardoned and ordered the immediate release of the gay couple that were recently sentenced to 14 years of hard labor for holding a marriage commitment service in December.