The Agonist - Faith and Spirituality

UK universal childrens day sees Atheist campaign on billboards

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:51:22 -0800

- Hey Preacher, Leave those kids alone.
This week, the final phase of the atheist bus campaign will appear in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – not on buses, but on billboards.

"Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a 'Marxist child' or an 'Anarchist child' or a 'Post-modernist child'. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. Guardian

Catholic Bishops' leader defends role in health debate, (& swipes at New York Times)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:35:03 -0800

Julia Duin | Baltimore | Nov 16

Washington Times - Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, defended the bishops' involvement in national health care legislation Monday, saying the church must be "leaven" in the debate.

Speaking at the opening of the bishops' annual business meeting, "to limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," he said.

Not only did USCCB staff and individual bishops play a vital role in getting abortion restrictions into the recently passed House version of the health care overhaul bill, they served notice Monday they will influence the bill's future.

"We will work to persuade the Senate to follow the example of the House and include these critical safeguards in their version of health care reform legislation," Cardinal George said.

Other prelates expressed jubilation at how the USCCB's lobbying proved crucial to the House bill's passage earlier this month as well as anger at some of their critics.

"This is a principled position, not a political position," Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre said.

In a reference to the New York Times, "The grey lady of New York has continued to misrepresent this as a fundamental change to the availability of abortion in this country being curtailed because of the nefarious bishops," he added. "That is not the case."

The Disunification Church

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:27:26 -0800

Everything in Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s sprawling religious enterprise is about family.

His Divine Principle, the core of his religious teachings, posits that Rev. Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han Moon are humanity’s True Parents. They were placed on earth by God to rescue humanity from war and want by creating exemplary families that will through behavior and example show the way to world peace and unification. Rev. Moon claims that Jesus did not succeed in his mission to save humanity, because he did not marry. Jesus has therefore anointed Rev. Sun Myung Moon as the true Messiah. In the heavenly realm, Rev. Moon asserts that evil men like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin have repented and have now declared Rev. Moon as the true Messiah. Rev. Moon’s Unification Church’s proper name is the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Mr. Moon and his wife have 14 children. As you may expect, they are described on the Unification Church website as having raised exemplary families. They are accomplished religious leaders (many of them are referred to as “reverend”), business executives, community organizers, artists, and of course, peace advocates – though no mention is made of Moon Young-jin, who died of suicide in 1999.

Naturally, with so many talented children, many of them have found their way into employment in the family business. In fact, all the critical management positions in the Moon conglomerate are held by his children – an arrangement as nepotistic as it could possibly be, though conceivably justifiable since the companies are privately owned by Moon.

More after the jump.

Rev. Moon is turning 90 this year and has decided to retire to the Garden of Eden, as he refers to a private resort he is building in Hawaii. He therefore announced his successor to be Moon Hyung-jin, age 30, known as Sean. Technically, Sean Moon has been named head of religious missions, but that is the “whole enchilada” when it comes to ultimate authority and power in a church whose founder is the Messiah, sent to deliver salvation for you and me.

This appointment has not set well with Preston Moon (Moon Hyun-jin), who is head of International Operations, which includes primarily management of The Washington Times, Rev. Moon’s conservative mouthpiece founded in 1984. Preston Moon has expressed his unhappiness by going rogue – two weeks ago he fired the top management of The Washington Times, had them escorted out of the building by security guards, and confiscated their laptops and cell phones. This has left the newspaper in turmoil, with a lot of speculation as to whether it can survive this upheaval. The newspaper has run deficits from the beginning, and is supposedly suffering dearly in this recession.

What Preston Moon expects to achieve from this coup is unclear. His newspaper has survived only on the subsidies from profitable Moon businesses, especially True World Foods, which provides over 75% of all sushi to US restaurants, and counts 9,000 customers currently. Preston Moon’s recent title as head of International Operations may give him control over the fisheries business, though that is unclear because in the past Rev. Moon himself has kept his hand firmly on this, his biggest money earner.

Another possibility is that Preston Moon has an ally in his brother, Justin Moon (Moon Kook-jin), age 39, responsible for what are described as Korean Business Ventures. This includes a variety of activities in South Korea, as well as the largest commercial hotel in North Korea (Rev. Moon is as close to Kim Jung-il as he is to George H.W. Bush, on whom he has lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees). Justin Moon also manages another lucrative franchise, Kahr Arms, located in Blauvelt, NY. This company manufacturers handguns and automatic weapons, and business has been booming since the election of Barack Obama. The church explains this investment in armaments as necessary to effect world unification, though the truth is probably to be found in Justin Moon’s biography. He founded Kahr Arms with money from his father, and he has had a love affair with handguns since age 14.

If Justin Moon is helping his brother, it is being done quietly. For the moment, the official line from the church this week is that Preston Moon operated in an “unprecedented” manner. This was the description provided in a press release issued by Rev. Moon In-jin, Tatiana Moon, who is head of the Unification Church in the US. She said that press reports claiming there was a feud underway between Preston Moon and Sean Moon were completely untrue. Instead, what had happened is that Preston Moon had acted unilaterally and without authority from True Parents.

True Parents are heartbroken and dismayed over what has happened, especially in light of the fact that they have been guiding our movement worldwide, over the last several months, specifically to remain united with their spiritual leadership.

In other words, according to the church, it is time for Preston Moon to come back into the fold, in obedience to his parents. It is easy to imagine Rev. Moon as “heartbroken”. Obedience to one’s parents is the prime virtue in Korean culture, and Rev. Moon is suffering considerable shame from this disrespect. The losses he has piled into The Washington Times have been a small price to pay for the influence he achieves from this newspaper. It is all part of a pattern of subsidies to conservative causes, like his investment in Timothy LeHaye’s Left Behind series, or the millions spent in keeping Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University afloat. Preston Moon’s action may have damaged the paper irrevocably, and Rev. Moon may be forced to fire him for insubordination.

But if it comes to that, what sort of Messiah is Rev. Moon if he cannot control his own “exemplary” family? All of these children mentioned have been born and raised in America. They all attended Harvard or Columbia (Harvard has profited nicely from the Moon family), and they may be more American than Korean. Someone has to run the business empire when Rev. Moon dies, and Preston Moon may feel his business experience trumps the religious credentials of his much younger brother, Sean Moon. In fact, Sean’s credentials aren’t all that sterling – he left the church for a while after his brother killed himself, and Sean became a Buddhist before returning to his True Parents.

Perhaps the crux of the problem is that it is not clear what Rev. Moon is leaving behind. Is it a religion, or a multi-billion dollar business? These two things are not necessarily incompatible – look at any televangelist today (especially the exceptionally wealthy Pat Robertson). But for the two to work together, you need one person projecting an image of religious sanctity and evangelism, while running a corporate empire in the background. By splitting up his empire, giving each child a business to run, and leaving the least-business like child to carry on the religious mission, Rev. Moon has failed to create a structure that blends business and religion. And if you can’t do that, what’s the purpose of having a religious cult in the first place?

Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:35:36 -0800

Johann Hari writes:

Independent.co.uk - Ever since I started meeting jihadis, I have been struck by one thing – their Britishness. I am from the East End of London, and at some point in the past decade I became used to hearing a hoarse and angry whisper of jihadism on the streets where I live. Bearded young men stand outside the library calling for "The Rule of God" and "Death to Democracy".

In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.

{snip}

The Muslims who arrive here every day from Bangladesh, or India, or Somalia say they find the presence of British Islamists bizarre. They have come here to work and raise their children in stability and escape people like them. No: these Islamists are British-born. They make up 7 per cent of the British Muslim population, according to a Populous poll (with the other 93 percent of Muslims disagreeing). Ever since the 7/7 suicide bombings, carried out by young Englishmen against London, the British have been squinting at this minority of the minority and trying to figure out how we incubated a very English jihadism. continues @ link.

Preachers of Truth Meet Sellers of "My Own Truth"

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:57:09 -0800

Zenit - FACEBOOK, WIKIPEDIA AND YOUTUBE IN THE VATICAN

Nov 13 | Rome | Jesús Colina
There are not a few voices in the Church calling for the message of the Gospel to make better use of the Internet -- Benedict XVI's is among them.

And yet, when representatives of some of the most successful Internet initiatives met in Rome today with the European bishops' Commission for the Media, a great difference in mentality became obvious, even if there was also evidence of a genuine desire for mutual understanding.

The chamber of the former hall of the synod of bishops -- which the producers of "Angels and Demons" rented for millions of euros -- witnessed two views of reality: On one hand, an institution, the Church, founded for 2,000 years on the proclamation of Truth; and on the other, exponents of successful business initiatives, which arose a few years ago, based on giving everyone the chance to express "his own truth."

The meeting occurred in the context of a four-day conference that began Thursday in the Vatican, promoted by the Commission for the Media of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences (CCEE).

Networking prelates
The meeting began with a survey among the bishops and representatives of the episcopal commission.
Moderator Jim McDonnell of the Signis World Catholic Association of Communication asked the bishops, priests and some lay experts in communication -- just under 100 in total -- how many had a profile on Facebook. More than one fourth raised their hand.

Nearly everyone in the group was familiar with Wikipedia and about 10% had collaborated in editing one of its entries.

Almost everyone had also viewed videos on YouTube and about 15% had used the site to post one of their own.
Approximately 10% had used or followed Twitter.

The networkers
Then came the presentations from the Internet representatives. Christophe Muller, director of YouTube alliances in Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, illustrated the philosophy that gave origin and life to Google.

In particular, he praised the Holy See's decision to make a place for itself on YouTube. And he presented a promotional video showing how the great of the world -- from Barack Obama to the Queen of England -- use this platform. Among them is Benedict XVI.

Delphine Ménard, treasurer of Wikipedia, France, explained how the collaborative encyclopedia does not seek to give a view of truth, but rather aims for all points of view to be represented.

For his part, Christian Hernandez, in charge of the commercial development of Facebook, showed how Christian initiatives have arisen in the Facebook world that range from a Shrine of Lourdes profile, to "Jesus Daily," a profile that offers phrases from the Gospel, and has more than one million followers.

Among these initiatives, he also presented Benedict XVI's profile. What he did not say is that this profile was created by an unknown individual who has fraudulently taken the Pope's identity. In a subsequent conversation with ZENIT, Hernandez said that today, this issue was brought to his attention at the Vatican. He said that Facebook has blocked a Vatican profile page, but for the fraudulent Benedict XVI profile, he was unable to offer a solution.

Apples and oranges
As the meeting moved to the questions-and-answers stage, it was evident that there was clear difficulty in understanding.

On one hand, the prelates acknowledged the limits of the Catholic Church, which seeks to dialogue on the Internet, but by and large uses basic pages: About 70% of Catholic institutional sites have not introduced interactive elements of Web 2.0.

Then as well -- contrary to what they expected -- the bishops did not find themselves in a meeting with communication experts, but rather with representatives of enterprises with a very specific business model. This model is their primary interest and leaves aside humanistic considerations.

"Can one still speak of truth on social networks based on the idea that each user has his truth?" one of the prelates' working groups asked the Internet representatives.

The representatives of the three enterprises agreed that "power" has now gone to the users; users "control" the media -- but they will be able to seek truth more effectively knowing how to use the media.

Mannion Writes And We Read

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:55:54 -0800

Lance Mannion writes and I suggest we all read it. Damn fine post.

US judge bans Christian car plate

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:31:27 -0800

Columbia, SC | November 11

BBC - A US judge has ordered South Carolina not to issue a vehicle number plate with a Christian image and slogan.

The state legislature had approved a licence plate with a cross in front of a stained glass window and the words "I Believe" written along the top.

District Judge Cameron Currie said that the plate violated the First Amendment, which enshrines the separation of church and state.

A similar bid by a group in Florida last year did not pass state lawmakers.

[...]

And she hit out at Mr Bauer, saying: "Whether motivated by sincerely-held Christian beliefs or an effort to purchase political capital with religious coin, the result is the same.

"The statute is clearly unconstitutional and defence of its implementation has embroiled the state in unnecessary (and expensive) litigation."

Italians outraged as European court rules against crucifixes

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:27:47 -0800

After a European court rules against crucifixes in Italian schoolrooms, Italians from across the political spectrum decry an assault on the country's Roman Catholic identity.

Christian Science Monitor, By Nick Squires, November 3

Rome - Italians reacted with outrage on Tuesday after a European court ruled that displaying crucifixes in the country's schools violated the principle of secular education.

Italy's education minister condemned the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the Christian cross was a symbol of the country's Roman Catholic religion and cultural identity.

Mariastella Gelmini, a member of the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, argued that "no one, and certainly not an ideological European court, will succeed in erasing our identity," said

Other ministers said they were appalled by the ruling, calling it "absurd," "shameful" and "offensive."

Vatican summit to discuss Church's fears that politics is losing its religion

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:44:32 -0800

Nick Pisa | Nov 4

DailyMail UK - Catholic convert Tony Blair is among several world leaders being invited to attend a top level summit with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the role of the Church in politics.

The two-day summit will be held at the Vatican and will include other Catholic politicians from all over the world, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. vice president Joe Biden, former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Church officials have been quietly working on the conference, which will be called 'Witnesses of Christ in the Political Community', for several months.

Items to be discussed include the family, right to life, Christian roots, education and bio-ethics.
Vatican sources said that Pope Benedict XVI was becoming 'increasingly concerned' at how Christian values were being eroded because of various world governments introducing legislation against Catholic teaching.

The internet has done for Scientology. Could it rumble the Christians, too?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:30:17 -0800

Marina Hyde | The Guardian

While Hubbard's cult gets ever more exposed, it's a shame other religions are not forced to justify their own doctrinal lunacies

Draw near, infidels, for these are dark days for the Knights of Hubbard. Do not despair entirely – the Church of Scientology remains insanely rich, has excellent and rapacious lawyers, and according to the International Scientology News, "every minute of every hour, someone reaches for L Ron Hubbard technology … simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist". So unless the world's supply of troubled fools is melting away quicker than the Arctic ice cap, they can probably hold off trying to lure disaffected Kabbalists into their cultish communion, after the fashion of Pope Benedict and the Anglicans. And yet, all things considered, it has not been the best of weeks for our operating thetans.

In France, Scientology was found guilty of defrauding its followers after a judge effectively debunked the idea of the church's trusty e-meter, a crude polygraph whose readings are used to encourage Scientologists to purchase everything from books to extreme sauna courses. In Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning (even if it was only for the abysmal Crash) director Paul Haggis cut his ties with Scientology in protest at what he branded their tolerance of homophobia, adding for good measure that the church's claim that they do not tell people to "disconnect" from unsupportive family members was untrue – his own wife had been ordered to do so. Meanwhile, Scientology's chief spokesman Tommy Davis stormed out of a television interview with Martin Bashir, after the latter pressed him on what we might delicately term "certain articles of faith". The alien stuff, basically.

What has caused these synchronous events? Naturally, one's initial assumption is that the everlasting battery which provides the force field which holds the intergalactic tyrant Xenu captive in an unspecified mountain here on Earth is not as everlasting as billed, or was perhaps commandeered when the battery went in some vast cosmic remote control. In humanoid households, of course, a TV remote is the appliance for which all other batteries must be yielded up – including those in the smoke alarm – and the same hierarchy holds true on a galactic scale.

Hallowe’en is the devil’s work, Catholic church warns parents

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:10:11 -0700

Graham Keeley & Richard Owen | Madrid / Rome | October 31

The Times - When Victoria Romero, 6, dressed up as a witch for a Hallowe’en party this week she could hardly have imagined that she was provoking the wrath of God by attending a celebration akin to a Black Mass — at least in the eyes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain.

Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops.

However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival.

Father Joan María Canals, the director of the Spanish Bishops Conference Committee on Liturgy, condemned parents for permitting their children to go to “un-Christian” parties when they should be focusing on All Saints Day today and All Souls Day on Monday.

His views were endorsed yesterday by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, which reported his views under the headline “Hallowe’en’s dangerous messages”.

It quoted him as saying: “Hallowe’en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.” Parents should “be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death”, he said.

[...]

José Sánchez González, the Bishop of Sigüenza-Guadalajara, in central Spain, went further, suggesting that Hallowe’en parties had a “background of the occult and anti-Christianity”. He said that he saw the dark influence of Hollywood playing with the young minds of Spanish children as they danced innocently around pumpkins, little realising that they were attending a pagan festival.

On the subject of personal obligation for ever higher common purposes

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:18:58 -0700

Whatever else you might say about Yale Political Philosophy lecturer Jim Sleeper, you have to admit he makes you think. I have yet to read an article, jeremiad, or opinion piece penned by Sleeper that did not contain some shimmering jewel of erudition that made me desire, deeply, that I could spend the rest of my mortal days perusing volumes of Thomas Aquinas, Cotton Mather, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Why dawdle, a liberal reader might wonder, with religious traditions that weren’t friendly to republicanism even when they were gestating it and that are now completely alien to the republican tradition?

One answer is that the republic is in trouble for reasons Puritans could have parsed with sophistication even though they bear some responsibility for its travails. They’d have understood that liberalism depends on virtues and beliefs which the liberal state and “free” markets themselves cannot nourish or defend. They’d have understood that, somehow, good liberal leaders have to be nourished and trained all the more intensively, in ways that harness collective responsibility and personal obligation for ever higher common purposes.

What Jim Sleeper gives us is a fast and convenient way in this wretchedly hectic world to refresh ourselves at that well-spring of timeless truths and hard-won wisdom that informed, and inspired, so many of the countless noblest and bravest acts, collective and individual, that have led us, however shaky and uncertain the steps sometimes appear to have been, to the political pinnacle of The Great Enlightenment. We can continue to progress as a nation, and as a community, and as individuals even if we are as not as intimately familiar with these great thoughts as Sleeper is. But we place ourselves in grave peril if we completely ignore or deny the importance of the philosophical foundations of our civil republic Sleeper has labored to bring to, and illuminate for, us.

If you don’t have time to read it in its entirety, here are a few of the gems in Sleeper’s latest.

American Brethren: Hebrews and Puritans

For most of us, the Old Testament names given to scores of American towns (Canaan, Bethlehem, Sharon, Lebanon, even Jerusalem) and the Hebrew phrases on the seals of Yale, Dartmouth, and Columbia are the only visible remnants of the Puritans’ all but forgotten attempt to Hebraize their Calvinist Christianity in the seventeenth century. The Puritans lost their juridical and ecclesiastical grip on the country centuries ago; and most American Jews, legatees though they are of the Hebrew covenant, arrived here too late (and often too lapsed) to seed in any notably religious way the republican society they have otherwise so vigorously engaged.

Yet now is surely a moment to take a closer look at the American republic’s Hebrew and Christian origins, and not only because eruptions in the third Abrahamic religion, Islam, have given us a new reason to revisit our own. The political idioms of George W. Bush and his neoconservative allies, on the one hand, and Barack Obama and custodians of the civil rights movement, on the other, are both staked in Hebraic and Puritan sub-soils that have nourished distinctively American dimensions in civic-republican life: think of early-nineteenth-century Whig and Methodist linkages of public works to civil society’s “internal,” spiritual, and moral improvements. Recall Abraham Lincoln’s prosecution of the Civil War in what he came to see as Calvinist terms. Then there are the social gospel crusaders for economic justice later in that century and, in the twentieth, the latter-day puritan Woodrow Wilson’s “War to End All Wars.” And there are also, on the one hand, the McCarthyite witch hunts of “un-American” activists and, on the other hand, the almost religious enthusiasm in many liberals’ (and many others’) responses to Barack Obama’s biblically resonant speeches during the 2008 campaign.

SNIP

Where Hellenism unites love and nature in timeless cycles and embraces the world as it is, Judaism forces the imagination away from graven images and toward action for ends that haven’t been attained yet on earth. It finds beauty in the arc of the deed that pursues justice across time.

SNIP

Think, too, of the early abolitionists, many of them Puritan to the core. As a girl growing up early in the nineteenth century in Litchfield, Connecticut, Harriet Beecher Stowe read her father Lyman Beecher’s copy of Magnalia Christi Americana, Cotton Mather’s magnum opus on New England Puritanism. That deepened her sense of duty and destiny and later animated her as she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Lincoln, who told Stowe that her book had started the Civil War, rediscovered Calvinism—or felt that Calvinism had discovered and was directing him. Almost a century later, Martin Luther King Jr., a divinity student in Boston, absorbed elements of a conservative, Calvinist theology that sustained him and many other civil society rebels against police dogs and even death.

SNIP

I encountered that balance among some of its “original” American bearers one wintry morning in 1968, my junior year at Yale, when I stopped on my way to class to watch a small, quiet demonstration at which Yale’s theologically Calvinist but politically radical chaplain, William Sloane Coffin Jr., accepted the draft cards of three students who were refusing conscription into the Vietnam War. “The government says we are criminals,” said one of them, a fine-featured scion of the old republic, his voice shaking a little over his fear, “but we say it is the government that is criminal for waging this war.”

“Believe me,” Coffin responded, “I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning feeling like a sensitive grain of wheat, looking at a millstone.” It was a ray of Calvinist humor, a jaunty defiance of established power in the name of a higher power, and we grasped at it because we were scared. For all we knew, these guys were about to be arrested on the spot, and we were awed by their example, carrying our own draft cards in our own wallets.

SNIP

“The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right,” Martin Luther King Jr. had said. The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, too, would marvel at what he called the “constitutional patriotism” of Americans who confronted the state not in the name of fantasies of national honor or racial destiny but on behalf of an experiment that would test, as Lincoln put it, whether republics relying on a higher faith and virtue can long endure. I don’t see how “constitutional patriotism” like this can be understood without reference to the Puritan and Hebraic wellsprings from which Coffin, King, and others drew the strength to face dogs, fire hoses, and even murder.

Christopher Hitchens

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:17:09 -0700

@ Hitchens recently down under

Hitchens What I've learned from debating religious people around the world.:

many of those who put their faith in revelation and prophecy and prayer are feeling the need to give an account of themselves. This is a wholly good development, and it is part of the pluralism and polycentrism that distinguish the sort of society that we have to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

srsly!

A church that pays you to attend on Sunday

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:18:26 -0700

Guy Tridgell | Alsip, IL | Oct 25

southtownstar.com -
The Rev. Dan Willis is passing the collection plate in reverse. He will give you money to go to church.

For the last three weeks, his Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip has raffled a combined $1,000 to attendees at the three Sunday services.

Big surprise, but attendance has shot through the chapel roof.

"It is gimmicky. It is totally gimmicky. I make no bones about that," Willis said. "But if I could get someone who would not normally come to church, why not?"

If the lure of free money has you breaking out the Sunday best, be prepared for some testimony from the preacher on how to spend that money.

You will hear of the glory of paying down debt, the revelation that comes with living on a budget and the miracle of compound interest.

For Willis, the cash is a mere carrot to get you through the doors. By sowing the seeds of the responsible personal finance, he hopes to create a few converts.

"I was worried how people were going to respond," Willis said. "I thought they might be, 'Oh, yeah, a classic preacher.'

"We've been blown away by the response. (read the rest)

Pope Sets Plan for Disaffected Anglicans to Join Catholics

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:26:00 -0700

Rachel Donadio & Laurie Goodstein | Vatican City | OCtober 20

NYT - In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican on Tuesday announced that it would make it easier for Anglicans who are uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church.

A new canonical entity will allow groups of Anglicans “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

Though both Catholic and Anglican leaders sought on Tuesday to present the move as a more coherent, unified response to those seeking conversion, the Vatican appeared to have announced the move to the Anglican Communion only in recent weeks and as a fait accompli. And many Anglican and Catholic leaders expressed surprise, even shock, at something they said would undermine efforts at ecumenical dialogue and capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church over issues likethe ordination of gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions.

The move could have wide impact in England, where large numbers of traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England’s embrace in recent years of liberal theological reforms like ordaining women bishops. These Anglicans, and others in places like Australia, might be attracted to the Roman Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go. If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the Catholic church, it will probably set off battles over ownership of church buildings and land.

[...]

In recent decades, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have sought to heal those centuries of division, and some feared that the Vatican’s move might jeopardize decades of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans seeking common ground by implying that the ultimate aim of that dialogue is conversion.

Officials of both the Vatican and the Anglican Communion made clear on Tuesday that the move was intended to address the doctrinal issues surrounding conversion, not the diplomatic issues of interfaith dialogue.

The move creates a formal structure to oversee conversions that had previously been evaluated case by case, including those of married Anglican priests, who are permitted to remain married after they convert to Catholicism. Called Personal Ordinariates, the structure will consist of local Catholic faithful overseen by Anglican prelates who will provide guidance to Anglicans — including entire parishes or even dioceses — seeking to convert.

[...]

As such, the structure could conceivably create a new, separate and hybrid Catholic Church in a place like Britain, where Anglicans now vastly outnumber Catholics.

Cardinal Levada, who flew back to Rome from London Monday evening, acknowledged that the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and leading cleric of the Anglican Church, had only been informed about the Vatican’s decision within the past month.