Centrality of Community

according to Michael Curry:

Anglican Personal Ordinariates within the Roman Catholic Church

Response from Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

Michael Curry's Sermon at our Cathedral, Part 1

Sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, bishop of North Carolina, at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Baltimore October 17, 2009. Part 1 of 2, for the institution of the new Dean



To see part 2, click here

Michael Curry's Sermon, Part 2

Sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, bishop of North Carolina, at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Baltimore October 17, 2009. Part 2 of 2

A Miscarriage Of Propriety

From the Washington Post

By Kathleen Parker   Wednesday, October 7, 2009

For those whose lives revolve primarily around real people in real time and real space, hurry, go hide.

Here's what you missed in the social networking universe the past few days: the twittered miscarriage.

The banality of twittery just out-twitted itself.

Yes, the tweet that gave even the virtual world pause came from one Penelope Trunk, 42-year-old chief executive of a blog called Brazen Careerist, where women can find advice about balancing work and family.

Trunk tweeted while in a board meeting late last month that she was having a miscarriage -- and how great is that? Beats the abortion she was planning to have, which would have meant missing two days of work since she would have had to go all the way to Chicago. Apparently, there's a waiting list in Wisconsin, where Trunk lives.

Her tweet, as tweets must be, was succinct:
"I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f----- -up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."

Where, oh, where is Flannery O'Connor when we need her? If she were still roaming around Milledgeville, we can be fairly certain she wouldn't be tweeting. But one might hope that O'Connor would put pen to paper and expose today's sideshow for what it is. Once asked why the grotesque is so alive in the South, the author said it's because Southerners can still recognize a freak.

Is there anything much more grotesque or freakish than a woman essentially celebrating her miscarriage in a public venue? Or, as another blogger phrased the question: "Tweeting Your Miscarriage or Abortion: Good for Women?"

It is somewhat reassuring that many of those responding were less than approving, if short on condemnation. There seems to be a reluctance among young social networkers to be judgmental. So parental. As in, it's not my thing, but to each her own. TMI (too much information) was a common remark. Many correctly observed that tweeting, given its 140-character limit, trivializes something as serious as miscarriage or abortion.

In an interview with CNN's Rick Sanchez, Trunk demurred. Like it or not, abortion is a right, she said, and women should feel comfortable talking about it. Her tweet, to the extent that it is now driving a conversation about how some states are trying to limit abortion, constitutes a public service announcement, she said.

Perhaps some women do need more information about miscarriage, though it seems probable that those following twitterers and blogs know how to mine the Internet for information. Or, you know, they could talk to their doctor/mother/grandmother/aunt. Pick up the phone?

In conversation with a real person, rather than speaking to oneself in the virtual mirror, one might hear about the loss and grief many women and couples experience following miscarriage. When a happily pregnant woman loses her pregnancy, she says she has lost her baby. Casting that painful episode as of no greater consequence than missing a lunch date should repel any beating heart.

One might wish that Trunk were an anomaly, but one would be disappointed. To those for whom abortion is a correction, miscarriage is just a messier month. When Sanchez asked, "Do you have no shame?" Trunk replied: "Why are you asking?"

Well, as George Will would say.

Women certainly needn't feel shame for a miscarriage. Abortion, which is in an entirely different category, deserves a different conversation. It's worth noting for the sake of irony, however, that the principal argument for the legalization of abortion was privacy.

Whither that?

Regardless of one's moral position, it can't be convincingly argued that abortion and miscarriage are mere medical conditions like any other, as Trunk asserts. They both can involve medical procedures, but there's a life force at work that no woman who aims to give birth will deny.

Grappling with that force, its absence or overbearance, has prompted men and women through soul-searching centuries to find just the right words to exalt or rue the incomprehensible. That's why tweeting a miscarriage is so offensive. It's too little for too much.

A longer, more-reflective article examining the moral and legal pitfalls of a woman navigating miscarriage while at work might have been a valuable contribution to a necessary discussion. A teachable moment, if we must.
Instead, Trunk reduced the entire argument to an ineffable instant of adolescent prurience, trivializing not only the miscarriage but what little remains of our humanity. On a higher note, as Trunk noted on her blog, she did have a good hair day on CNN.

And you say there's no God.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

Musee des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden - 1940

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Breughel c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 
Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

Toward a Better Way

An Editorial from the Living Church, October 2, 2009

During the past decade, the Episcopal Church has participated in approximately 60 court cases concerning property ownership. These cases involve, to one degree or another, the Dennis Canon, named for the late Rt. Rev. Walter Dennis, former bishop suffragan of the Diocese of New York. The Dennis Canon says this:

“All real and personal property held by or for the benefit of any parish, mission or congregation is held in trust for this church and the diocese thereof in which such parish, mission or congregation is located. The existence of this trust, however, shall in no way limit the power and authority of the parish, mission or congregation otherwise existing over such property so long as the particular parish, mission or congregation remains a part of, and subject to, this church and its Constitution and Canons.”

The Supreme Court of South Carolina ruled in September that the Dennis Canon does not apply to the formerly Episcopal parish of All Saints Church in Pawleys Island, S.C., because that parish predates the Episcopal Church. Many conservatives have greeted that ruling with joy, and they hope it sets a legal precedent across the nation.

We are not ready to join the celebration. Conservatives who expect the South Carolina ruling to establish a widespread precedent ought to ponder the legal differences between a congregation founded in the Colonial era and one founded since the establishment of the Episcopal Church.

Further, the Dennis Canon accurately describes the relationship between a congregation and a diocese, at least within a church that strives, however imperfectly, for catholic order. Conservatives cannot afford to play a semantic game that salutes catholic order as a concept (as in the Anglican Communion’s nascent covenant) but rejects it in daily practice because expensive property is at stake.

We do not believe a property lawsuit is the best response to a congregation’s departure from the Episcopal Church. The number and intensity of lawsuits involving the Episcopal Church should be a source of shame for anyone who takes seriously these words of St. Paul: “The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers” (1 Cor. 6:7-8).

In too many cases, the Episcopal Church and departing congregations have convinced themselves that crushing their opposition is a matter of Christian stewardship. Both sides depict themselves as victims who have been forced into lawsuits by malevolent forces. Both sides sink millions of dollars into legal fees, even while loudly proclaiming how much they would rather spend these funds on Christian mission.

Amid this chaos, the Dennis Canon becomes the usual standard for sorting out who has a legitimate claim to property. It is good to have a standard for resolving property disputes, but the Dennis Canon too often could be judged by what our Lord had to say about another law: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8).

The emotional and spiritual importance of a church building is undeniable. Christian faith is incarnational. When Christians worship in the same space, year after year, that space commands a powerful hold on their imaginations and their memories. When beloved family members are buried in or near that space, the emotional stakes are even higher.

That’s all the more reason for Christian plaintiffs and Christian defendants to remember that they are Christians first, and to work for solutions outside of courtrooms.

4 Untrue Myths about Tithing

Myth #1:
The most persistent myth about giving /stewardship / tithing is that it has something to do with God's needs, with funding ministry, with church budgets, or with controlling how others use our gifts. These are simply and entirely false. God has no needs. "If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it." (Ps 50.12). Stewardship is not about funding the ministry, funding the church, or funding God. It is how God transforms us into servants; it is a basic way in which God is changing us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. It's not about what God needs - but what we most desperately need in our deepest, must fundamental being.

Myth #2:
Another popular myth is that somehow giving /stewardship / tithing releases God's power, that it triggers miraculous power. One may hear that by giving sacrificially, God's power is released into the world. This is simply and entirely false. God's power is not passive, latent, or dormant. It needs no external release mechanism or trigger. On the other hand, people find themselves in bondage to fear, greed, and envy. By becoming faithful servants of God, we discover who really owns all of heaven and earth, and we become free. Giving /stewardship / tithing does not release God, but it does release us. Rather, it is an essential spiritual discipline that helps us discovering our own spiritual freedom.

Myth #3
A third popular myth is based on human greed. It views giving as a kind of investment. The more I give, the more I get. This is simply and entirely false. Although God may entrust some of God's faithful servants with great wealth, Scripture claims that many of his most faithful servants live in poverty, while many of the most evil become rich - sometimes at the expense of the faithful. On the contrary, the Scriptures consistently teach us to give ourselves, to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others, with the assumption of no reward in this life. We are to follow the example of Jesus, who "made himself poor that others might be made rich." Stewardship assumes that we God's flock, the sheep of God's pasture. What God chooses to do with us is entirely up to God. God calls us to become servants, to be faithful stewards, regardless of whether we become wealthy or poor in the process of our stewardship.

Myth #4:
It is often said that tithing was an Old Testament concept not found in the New Testament. That it was part of the Law, but not part of faith or teaching of Jesus. This has been repeated so often by so many that even people who are committed to giving, stewardship, and even tithing believe the New Testament does not speak to it.

But consider Matthew 23.23–26. Jesus said:

'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup,* so that the outside also may become clean.

While Jesus condemns them for neglecting the weightier matters of the law (justice, mercy, faith), his argument is not an either/or proposition, but a both/and. He says they should practice weightier matters of the law without neglecting the other. His actual teaching is that they must seek first justice, mercy, and faith, but also must tithe.

His sentence, "first clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean" suggests that their failure to seek justice, mercy and faith has not invalidated tithing, but has disqualified THEIR tithing. Once they have attended to justice, mercy and faith, their tithing becomes holy rather than hypocritical.

This is not unlike his teaching in Matthew 5.23-24:

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

For Jesus, relationship with others is of ultimate importance. It is of such importance that worship ("offering your gift at the altar") is disqualified until one has deal with one's relationship with others. But a broken relationship with others does not end the practice of worship. One does not put one's gift back in one's wallet. Rather,

leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

Clearly, Jesus has a "first things first" mindset. But "first things first" should not be confused with "first things only." Once one attends to first things, one then moves on to second things.

It's not that the New Testament does not speak to tithing. Rather it barely mentions it because it is simply an assumed practice of any person of faith. But it emphasizes Jesus' shocking commitment to the priority of relationship over everything: relationship takes priority to worship (which includes the actions of working, such as tithing).