An illustration of the practical problems we will face should a Measure fail to provide adequate safeguards, can be seen with future ordinands. At the moment we are encouraging young men into the ordained ministry in the knowledge that they cannot be discriminated against if they hold convictions about male headship. While this remains the case, we have encouraged them to believe that there is a worthwhile future for their ministries in the Church of England. However, we will be unable to do this if inadequately protective legislation is passed. The issue that will then arise is how to encourage these men to develop their ministries if they cannot do so within the formal structures of the Church of England. The answer must be to encourage them to undertake training for ministries outside those formal structures, although hopefully still within an Anglican tradition. We will, of course, have to help them with the financing of their training.

Our congregations will inevitably start asking questions about their own place within the Church of England if they see us encouraging people into training for alternative ministries. This will come into sharp focus when the issue of succession to an incumbency arises. Since we cannot take an oath of canonical obedience to a female bishop, we are unlikely to be appointed to future incumbencies. We see nothing but difficulty facing us. In these circumstances we will have to discuss with our congregations how to foster and protect the ministry they wish to receive. This is likely to generate a need for the creation of new independent charitable trusts whose purpose will be to finance our future ministries, when the need arises.

These twin developments will need to be financed from current congregational giving. This will inevitably put a severe strain on our ability to continue to contribute financially to Diocesan funds.
...
Finally, for those of us ordained since 1992, our understanding, in good faith, was that proper legal provision would be made for those who did not agree that women should have the overall leadership of a church (Resolution B, etc). It seems to us a matter of simple integrity that Synod should now keep its word to us in this and not force us down a road none of us wish to tread.

But I do love movies, and I’m fascinated by what they say about American life. Of course, movies don’t always reflect or articulate what moviegoers are thinking. Often they merely express what Hollywood thinks Americans are thinking or what Hollywood thinks they should believe.

For instance, over the last decade, Hollywood has unleashed a stream of high-profile films directly or indirectly about the war in Iraq. Nearly all of the polemical anti-war films bombed. Robert Redford & Co. were desperate to remake Coming Home and other anti-war films, but Americans weren’t interested. The few war movies that did well pretty much avoided the sort of preachy jeremiads you’d expect to hear at Susan Sarandon’s book club. For instance, The Hurt Locker — nominated for Best Picture — largely ignores the debate over the war and instead tells a gripping story about our troops’ heroism. The Kingdom, another War on Terror movie, was a hit despite the best intentions of director Peter Berg, who wanted it to be a parable about the cycle of violence. It succeeded because it was a good action movie that depicted Americans as heroes.

It’s a bit funny, then, to hear some people claim that Avatar, with its cartoonish environmentalism and hackneyed attacks on the military and those evil corporations, is proof that Americans love serious left-wing preaching with their popcorn. “For years,” writes Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times, “pundits and bloggers on the right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance with Middle America.” The last laugh is on them, cackles Goldstein, because Avatar “totally turns this theory on its head.”

I’m sure Goldstein’s right. No doubt James Cameron could have made Avatar for $300 million less and still made a fortune. After all, audiences didn’t need the 3-D digital magic, explosions, giant aliens, or spectacular backdrops. All they wanted was an extended lecture about the evils of corporate America and the cruelty of the military, and some gassy pantheistic blather about the need to get back to nature.

According to this column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, “The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.”

In terms of his judicial performance in the anti-Proposition 8 case, the bottom-line question that matters isn’t whether Walker is straight or gay. It’s whether he is capable of ruling impartially. I have no reason to doubt that there are homosexuals who could preside impartially over this case, just as I have no reason to doubt that there are heterosexuals whose bias in favor of, or against, same-sex marriage would unduly skew their handling of the case.

From the outset, Walker’s entire course of conduct in the anti-Prop 8 case has reflected a manifest design to turn the lawsuit into a high-profile, culture-transforming, history-making, Scopes-style show trial of Prop 8’s sponsors. Consider his series of controversial — and, in many instances, unprecedented — decisions:

In this case, the action taken by the committee was apparently in response to two resolutions received from a group of five individuals, including the Very Rev. Joe Reynolds, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral and the Rev. David Boyd, Rector of St. David’s, Austin. One of the resolutions put forward by this group upholds same-gender couples living in committed relationships, saying the relationships are characterized by “the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God.” The commentary accompanying the resolution affirms the integrity of such relationships and that some persons in these relationships are “in all ways faithfully participating in Diocesan life.” In putting forth its own resolution, the resolutions committee stated (as published in Volume I of the Journal) that it intended to preserve the spirit of the two resolutions that had been submitted by the group, while doing so in “a true and complete statement of unity and inclusion.” According to material on the Diocese’s website, in response to the committee’s resolution, Dean Reynolds, Fr. Boyd and the other proposers have withdrawn their original resolutions.

Apparently the committee’s objective of putting forward a resolution that is a true and complete statement of inclusion is thought to be achieved by making the resolution applicable not only to same gender couples but also to relationships involving heterosexuals, Anglos, persons of color or diverse languages, rich and poor, young and old, healthy and infirmed, etc. Not to be outdone in inclusiveness when it comes to sexual identity categories, the resolutions committee adds “transgendered,” which was not included in the two submitted resolutions. The various additions, however, don’t keep the Committee’s resolution from according honor to gay and lesbian relationships and saying that these relationships are means of making God known. One wonders if the Committee’s thinking is that by adding in all the other identity groupings, this will no longer be noticed?

It is true that the Committee’s resolution correctly states that persons who identify as gay or lesbian are loved by God. But if this were the only point it would have been sufficient to use the language to that effect in Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (1998). The point of the Committee’s resolution is not to support Lambeth 1.10, which according to the Archbishop of Canterbury still reflects Communion teaching. Its effect is instead to place the Diocese in opposition to Lambeth 1.10 by upholding a category of relationship that Communion teaching considers inappropriate.

The Diocesan committee’s resolution calls for pastoral care to be extended to these relationships. While the Anglican Primates have called for a “breadth of private response to situations of individual pastoral care,” (Pastoral Letter of May 2003) the source they cite for this is the paper True Union in the Body, which states:

“Pastoral care that is shaped by this costly grace will resist actions to legitimate same-sex unions and seek to show that, because they are in theological error, such actions by the Church do not contain within them the promised seed of freedom.”

(True Union in the Body, paragraph 5.15) It is hard to argue that the committee’s resolution does not seek to legitimate same-sex unions. The text itself does so, as does the Committee’s own acknowledgement that its resolution encompasses the spirit of the resolutions submitted by Dean Reynolds and Fr. Boyd. In a way the committee’s resolution goes further, by placing homosexual relationships on a par with marriage between a man and a woman, drawing no distinction between the treatment to be accorded one versus the other.

Is what the resolutions committee has produced a statement of unity? Obviously it is not if words are to be given their ordinary meanings. And here again the provenance of the resolution is instructive. Dean Reynolds, a deputy to the 2009 General Convention, wrote during it, “if the cost of unity and the absence of conflict is the denial of people and relationships that I have come to believe are holy and life-giving, then the cost is just too high.” In the original resolutions submitted by his group, disagreement on the subject matter was even acknowledged. Dean Reynolds seems to know, if the majority of the resolutions committee do not, that what is being put forward is not a proposal for unity.

It might be argued that the resolution is relatively innocuous because it doesn’t really have any operative effect. History shows, however, that resolutions such as this, once passed, are deployed as arguments in favor of more substantive measures. For example, the first paragraph of one of the resolutions proposed by the Reynolds, et al., group contains language taken verbatim from Resolution D039 of the 2000 ECUSA General Convention, recognizing committed relationships “characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God." This language has been used in support of subsequent action by General Convention, most recently by incorporation into Resolution D025 (2009) supporting persons in same-sex relationships being called to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. The approval of Resolution D025 laid groundwork for the subsequent election and likely consent to the consecration to the episcopate of the Rev. Mary Glasspool. Dean Reynolds, as a deputy to the 2009 General Convention who voted in favor of D025, would have been aware of the potential future uses of language such as that included in the resolution he proposed (the spirit of which, please recall, the resolution committee intends to preserve).

Ecstatic fans poured into the streets of the French Quarter late Sunday as storm-scarred New Orleans celebrated its first-ever Super Bowl win by their beloved Saints.

A city famous for diversions - Mardi Gras, music and colorful politics, to name a few - set aside distractions to focus on the big game.

Even the strippers on bawdy Bourbon Street stopped dancing. Instead, they joined thousands of revelers cheering the Saints on live television sets at nearby bars.

"We have no music, no stages. It's the first time I've seen a club shut down and I've been doing this for five years," said Sam Stonebraker, 34, a host at Rick's Cabaret.

"The game is pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime event in this city."

White fireworks burst in the distance. Strangers hugged, whooped and hollered in the streets, waving flags, shaking cowbells and dancing to spontaneous brass bands.

College students embraced restaurant waiters. A homeless man toasted beers with well-dressed tourists. Camera flashbulbs popped. Motorists honked horns with a cheerful cadence usually heard only at Carnival.

Stunned by the team's fourth-quarter thrashing of the Colts, Saints fans in the French Quarter seemed speechless, but happily so.

The only intelligible sound from the celebratory crowds was repeated choruses of the cajun chant "Who Dat!"

The Saints' surprisingly successful season after 43 years of dismal performances has been a powerful tonic for residents still recovering from the killer August 26, 2005 storm that flooded nearly 80 percent of the low-lying coastal city.

So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy – and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:

AT THE COURT HOUSE!
FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The World-Renowned Tragedians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
AND
EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
THE KING’S CAMELEOPARD,
OR
THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! !
Admission 50 cents.
Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said:

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.
“There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!”

Well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn’t hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he’d got everybody’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And – but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.

Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it.

Twenty people sings out:

“What, is it over? Is that all?”

The duke says yes. Then there was a fine time. Everybody sings out, “Sold!” and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them tragedians. But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts:

“Hold on! Just a word, gentlemen.” They stopped to listen. “We are sold – mighty badly sold. But we don’t want to be the laughing stock of this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live. No. What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! Then we’ll all be in the same boat. Ain’t that sensible?” (“You bet it is! – the jedge is right!” everybody sings out.) “All right, then – not a word about any sell. Go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy.”

"Finally - my response to the General Convention's decision to confirm Gene Robinson, and my thoughts on our faithful response to those who have a different understanding. Obviously, I applaud the decision. I applaud it not because the diocese of New Hampshire and the General Convention succeeded in making a political statement. I applaud it because it is clear that the New Hampshire diocese worked very hard to create a transparent election process that was open for the entire world to see. I applaud it because Gene Robinson was known and trusted among the people of the diocese, as he had served there for many years as Canon to the Ordinary. I applaud it because they elected him for all the reasons we would hope anyone would be elected: they trusted him to be an excellent pastor, skilled leader and a person of integrity. They tested his call well. It would have been extraordinarily odd for the General Convention to have denied such an election."

"According to Pastor Nieman, "[At] St. Andrews...we have done, and have done for many years, since before my time (10 years), have carefully conducted same-sex blessings with the informed consent of the vestry (the lay governing body of the church)." The Pastor has not, however, performed the blessings since last year's General Convention of the national Episcopal Church."

Readers need to know that Canon Harmon was a voting member of his diocese's deputation to the 2003 General Convention at which he, his bishop and the deputation of which he was a part led the charge opposing consent to the election by the people of New Hampshire of the Rev. Gene Robinson as their bishop.

The space Canon Harmon says we need must be extended to all, including those with whom he disagrees. Is he now prepared to offer the generosity, grace and openness that he expects?

The question of whether a Super Bowl could actually be won took root in the popular consciousness when ESPN analyst Chris Berman posited the idea while reviewing 2009 highlights during a regular-season broadcast of Sunday NFL Countdown. Berman, dictionary in hand, said that winning was defined not only as finishing first, as in a race, but as succeeding by striving or effort, or by overcoming an adversary.

Berman further theorized that these conflicting definitions muddy the idea that there can be a clear-cut Super Bowl winner, stating, "After much thought, I am left with the question: What if both teams are succeeding by striving? And what if both teams actually have conflicting concepts of what constitutes their opposition—not a mere football team, but an adversary physical, metaphysical, or perhaps even emotional? If we agree that this is the case, then each team may have its own unique definition of success independent of the other, a definition rendering any so-called 'final' score moot."

Berman's ideas grew in popularity as the segment spread through YouTube, gained momentum on various football message boards, and inspired long late-night conversations among millions of ardent football fans. Soon the nation began to consider the idea that the Super Bowl may not be the final, ultimate expression of football.

"All our lives, or at least from the time it was first played in 1967, we believed the Super Bowl was something to be won, but we never bothered to question, What if that's all wrong? What if that's all just hubristic bullshit?" said Robert Holcomb, owner and head bartender of Rob's Sports Dugout in Wantagh, NY. "So yeah, I'll open my bar and watch these people cheer for their team, but maybe for the first time, I won't know what they're really cheering for. In the end, aren't we all just a barely self-aware collection of atoms? Couldn't we all return to dust at any moment?"

They worked for years cleaning and maintaining the Episcopal Church Center in midtown Manhattan. But after they were fired on Dec. 30, nine hard-working people are in desperate need of divine intervention.

"We came to work on Dec. 30 as every day, hoping to leave a little earlier to celebrate the new year," said Bronx native Héctor Miranda, a father of three. "But when we got to the building we were told that we no longer worked there. Just like that. They picked the date well to fire us."

Now, without the means to support his family, Miranda has no idea how he will pay the rent.

"Even worse," he said, "without health coverage I don't know how I am going to pay for my wife's treatment. She is a diabetic, you know."

The workers lost their jobs - which paid standard wages and benefits - when the church canceled the contract with Paris Maintenance, a union cleaning contractor, and replaced it with the nonunion Benjamin Enterprises.

The workers belong to SEIU Local 32BJ, which is helping them organize demonstrations outside the church to protest what the union calls "the unlawful termination" of the porters - and to demand that they be offered jobs by the new contractor.

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention strongly urge the Church Center staff and especially the General Convention Planning Office to assure that dioceses that host events of The Episcopal Church comply with GC2003-A130 and provide a living wage for their employees

After an 18 month saga of temporary inhibitions and presentment by the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York and Bishop Gladstone "Skip" Adams, III of Syracuse charging a parish priest with financial misconduct at his former parish, the priest was exonerated today when the Episcopal Church ecclesiastical court dismissed all of the charges. That priest now has restored to him by canon law the right to celebrate the Eucharist and perform the other functions of a clergyman which were taken away from him by the bishop a year and a half ago.

Fr. David Bollinger defended the proceeding which resulted in the church court refusing to allow any evidence to be introduced against the priest or any witnesses to testify against him. The judge cited numerous procedural problems with the case brought by the bishop and the diocese against Fr. Bollinger. Carter Strickland, the judge in the ecclesiastical court, had previously directed the prosecutor, church attorney James Sparks, to give Fr. Bollinger copies of the evidence against him, but the diocese refused to release it to the priest. One of the pieces of evidence was the so-called Schafer Report. That was a report commissioned by the diocese and prepared by a previous judge of the ecclesiastical court. That report was believed to have contained evidence to the effect that Fr.Bollinger was not guilty of misconduct

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...In an interview with The Living Church, Canon Lewis described the case as complex with numerous rulings and motions prior to the start. She said it was regrettable that during the trial the court refused to consider any of the more than 1,000 pages of documentary evidence against Fr. Bollinger that the church attorney had prepared. She defended the diocese’s decision to withhold what became known as the Shafer Report from the court, describing it as a “privileged piece of attorney-client work product.”

The Shafer Report is identified with the last name of a previous church attorney retained by the diocese after Fr. Bollinger accused the former financial controller for the diocese of improperly gaining access to his personal financial records. In a letter to clergy after completion of the investigation, the diocese quoted a paragraph from the report, but the report itself has not been made public and there are no plans to do so, Canon Lewis said.

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A former rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Owego has been arrested by Pennsylvania State Police after he was accused of having oral sex with a boy.

Ralph E. Johnson, 82, was arraigned in Clifford, Pa., on 15 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, a felony; 15 counts of indecent assault, a misdemeanor; and 15 counts of corruption of minors, a misdemeanor, according to a police report.

Diocesan officials in Syracuse could not be reached Friday night.

The Rev. David G. Bollinger, rector of the church from 1985 to 2005, said he alerted diocesan officials in Syracuse after receiving complaints of Johnson's alleged misconduct, but Bishop Gladstone B. Adams rebuffed him.

"He basically told me this would no longer be discussed," Bollinger said Friday.

Bollinger, who retired in 2006 after a year-long sabbatical, said he was punished by the church for being a whistleblower.

The fortunes of small businesses — perhaps more than any other commercial sector — are tied to rates of taxation on the individual. And individual income-tax rates are set to jump sharply at year-end when the Bush tax cuts of 2003 expire. Put another way, on January 1, 2011, the world’s biggest tax increase ever will arrive on the doorsteps of U.S. small businesses (and a great many others). Higher tax rates on incomes — along with capital gains and dividends — will reduce the incentive, on the margin, for entrepreneurs to engage in the kind of risks that lead to business formation, economic growth, and job creation.

There’s a monetary component to the small-business nightmare, as well — namely, the Fed’s ongoing near-zero-interest-rate policy.

Interest rates normally balance savers and borrowers. But when rates are held near zero, the environment becomes one of rationing a scarce resource — credit. It’s the same thing that happens when price controls are placed on a commodity, such as gasoline. A shortage is guaranteed since purchasers (or borrowers) are incentivized to buy more gasoline while producers (or savers), faced with lower returns, opt to under-supply the commodity. The Fed’s artificially low interest rate has a similar impact on the supply of credit available for small businesses.