Solid pro-life ticket contrasts with pro-abortion ticket
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today the National Right to Life Committee praised John McCain's pick of pro-life Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.
"We're thrilled," said Karen Cross, National Right to Life Political Director. "Senator McCain has demonstrated his dedication to life in his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate."
National Right to Life President Wanda Franz, Ph.D added, "Governor Palin brings another strong pro-life voice to the Republican ticket, in sharp contrast to the pro-abortion ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden."
"We've both been very vocal about being pro-life," Palin, a mother of five, said in an interview shortly after the birth of her youngest son Trig, who has Down Syndrome. "We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential."
The differences between the McCain/Palin ticket and the Obama/Biden ticket are clear. While Senator McCain has a very strong record on the life issues, Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate ever nominated by a major political party.
Senator Obama voted multiple times to deny care and protection to children born alive after abortion attempts. He is also co-sponsor of an extreme bill, the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act," that would make partial-birth abortion legal again and require taxpayer funding of abortions. For further information, go to www.nrlc.org.
"The country now has a clear choice," added Darla St. Martin, Co-Executive Director of the National Right to Life Committee, "between an avowed pro-abortion ticket that would continue to push for unrestricted abortion on demand, and a strongly pro-life ticket that will bring us closer to a society that embraces the value and dignity of human life."
The National Right to Life Committee is the nation's largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide. National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Christian Newswire
Friday, August 29, 2008
Christian Coalition of America Applauds John McCain's Choice of Pro-life Conservative Governor Sarah Palin
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- Christian Coalition of America commends Senator John McCain for his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a pro-life conservative mother of 5 children including a Downs Syndrome baby born during April. Liberal and pro-life columnist Nat Hentoff said about Governor Palin in his column on May 26th: "I offer my unsolicited suggestion for (McCain's) vice president: the first woman -- and youngest -- governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who is an unstereotypical and effective Republican."
Governor Palin said about her husband's and her feelings about their newest child: "We've both been very vocal about being pro-life. We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential."
She served notice to her Alaskan constituents after the birth of Trig Paxson Van Palin that being the mother of a child of special needs would not hinder her professional commitments: "It's a sign of the times to be able to do this. There is no reason to believe a woman can't do it with a growing family. My baby will not be at all or in any sense neglected." And she added, "I will not shirk my duties."
Roberta Combs, President of the Christian Coalition of America said: "Governor Sarah Palin is a bold choice for Vice President who is a courageous advocate for unborn children. In addition, she is a conservative who is a reformer not afraid to shake up the establishment. I congratulate Senator McCain for his outstanding selection for his vice presidential running mate."
Christian Newswire
Governor Palin said about her husband's and her feelings about their newest child: "We've both been very vocal about being pro-life. We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential."
She served notice to her Alaskan constituents after the birth of Trig Paxson Van Palin that being the mother of a child of special needs would not hinder her professional commitments: "It's a sign of the times to be able to do this. There is no reason to believe a woman can't do it with a growing family. My baby will not be at all or in any sense neglected." And she added, "I will not shirk my duties."
Roberta Combs, President of the Christian Coalition of America said: "Governor Sarah Palin is a bold choice for Vice President who is a courageous advocate for unborn children. In addition, she is a conservative who is a reformer not afraid to shake up the establishment. I congratulate Senator McCain for his outstanding selection for his vice presidential running mate."
Christian Newswire
Pro-Life Champion Solidifies GOP Ticket
SBA List President Statement on Sen. John McCain's Vice Presidential Selection
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, in response to the announcement that Sen. John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, the President of the Susan B. Anthony List offered the following statement:
"Sarah Palin is the whole package. There couldn't be a better vice presidential pick," said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. "Women voters are electrified, and Sarah is someone who is truly in sync with the way real American women think. She is a reform-minded woman who will give all Americans, born and unborn, the authentic leadership they deserve."
"The majority of American women support commonsense restrictions on abortion. Adding Palin to the GOP ticket will resonate with independent women voters nationwide. By choosing the boldly pro- life Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has taken his stand as the one true, authentic pro-life ticket."
Palin's Personal Pro-Life Story:
In April of this year, Sarah Palin gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, who was born premature with Down Syndrome. Recent statistics show that in the U.S., approximately 90% of Down Syndrome diagnoses end with the mother choosing abortion. Palin on her family's reaction to the diagnosis, in her own words:
"We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed." (April 18, 2008, Anchorage Daily News)
"We've both [Palin and husband Todd] been very vocal about being pro-life. We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential." (May 3, 2008, Associated Press)
"I'm looking at him [Trig] right now, and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?" (May 3, 2008, Associated Press)
In 2006, Sarah Palin was endorsed by the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund in her race for Alaska governor. In addition to extensive fundraising for pro- life candidates, the Susan B. Anthony List will implement "When Women Vote, Pro-Life Candidates Win!" -- a sophisticated voter mobilization program that will target over one million pro-life women voters across seven battleground states. The Susan B. Anthony List plans to invest over $6 million in its 2008 election efforts.
Since its founding, the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund has helped elect 75 pro-life candidates to the House, seven to the Senate, and seven to other statewide offices across the country.
The Susan B. Anthony List is a nationwide network of Americans, over 147,000 residing in all 50 states, dedicated to mobilizing, advancing, and representing pro-life women in politics. Its connected Candidate Fund increases the percentage of pro-life women in the political process.
www.sba-list.org
Christian Newswire
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, in response to the announcement that Sen. John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, the President of the Susan B. Anthony List offered the following statement:
"Sarah Palin is the whole package. There couldn't be a better vice presidential pick," said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. "Women voters are electrified, and Sarah is someone who is truly in sync with the way real American women think. She is a reform-minded woman who will give all Americans, born and unborn, the authentic leadership they deserve."
"The majority of American women support commonsense restrictions on abortion. Adding Palin to the GOP ticket will resonate with independent women voters nationwide. By choosing the boldly pro- life Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has taken his stand as the one true, authentic pro-life ticket."
Palin's Personal Pro-Life Story:
In April of this year, Sarah Palin gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, who was born premature with Down Syndrome. Recent statistics show that in the U.S., approximately 90% of Down Syndrome diagnoses end with the mother choosing abortion. Palin on her family's reaction to the diagnosis, in her own words:
"We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed." (April 18, 2008, Anchorage Daily News)
"We've both [Palin and husband Todd] been very vocal about being pro-life. We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential." (May 3, 2008, Associated Press)
"I'm looking at him [Trig] right now, and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?" (May 3, 2008, Associated Press)
In 2006, Sarah Palin was endorsed by the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund in her race for Alaska governor. In addition to extensive fundraising for pro- life candidates, the Susan B. Anthony List will implement "When Women Vote, Pro-Life Candidates Win!" -- a sophisticated voter mobilization program that will target over one million pro-life women voters across seven battleground states. The Susan B. Anthony List plans to invest over $6 million in its 2008 election efforts.
Since its founding, the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund has helped elect 75 pro-life candidates to the House, seven to the Senate, and seven to other statewide offices across the country.
The Susan B. Anthony List is a nationwide network of Americans, over 147,000 residing in all 50 states, dedicated to mobilizing, advancing, and representing pro-life women in politics. Its connected Candidate Fund increases the percentage of pro-life women in the political process.
www.sba-list.org
Christian Newswire
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Pope Considers Mission as Peter's Successor
Zenit News Agency
"The mission of Peter, and of his successors, is precisely to serve this unity of the one Church of God"
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (Zenit) - Benedict XVI says that his mission as the successor of St. Peter is ensuring that the Church never identifies itself with just one nation or culture.
The Pope affirmed this today after he prayed the midday Angelus with crowds gathered at the summer papal residence at Castel Gandolfo.
Referring to the Gospel reading for today's Mass, the Holy Father reflected on the mission of Peter, who received from Christ "the keys of the kingdom of heaven."
Like Peter, he said, "we too today desire to proclaim with deep conviction: Yes, Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God! We do this knowing that Christ is the true 'treasure' for which it is worth sacrificing everything; he is the friend who never abandons us, because he knows the most intimate longings of our heart."
"Jesus is the 'Son of the living God,' the promised Messiah, who has come to earth to offer salvation and to satisfy the thirst for life and love that inhabits every human being," the Pontiff added. "How much humanity would gain by welcoming this proclamation that brings joy and peace with it."
Benedict XVI noted that in this dialogue with Peter, Christ mentions the Church for the first time," whose mission is the actuation of the great design of God to gather the whole of humanity into one family in Christ."
He added: "The mission of Peter, and of his successors, is precisely to serve this unity of the one Church of God made up of pagans and Jews; his indispensable ministry is to make sure that the Church never identifies herself with any particular nation or culture, but that she be the Church of all peoples, to make present among men -- who are marked by countless divisions and contrasts -- the peace of God, the unity of those who have become brothers and sisters in Christ: This is the unique mission of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter."
The Holy Father concluded by asking the faithful to pray for him as he shoulders such an "enormous responsibility," so that, "faithful to Christ, together we can announce and bear witness to his presence in our time."
"The mission of Peter, and of his successors, is precisely to serve this unity of the one Church of God"
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (Zenit) - Benedict XVI says that his mission as the successor of St. Peter is ensuring that the Church never identifies itself with just one nation or culture.
The Pope affirmed this today after he prayed the midday Angelus with crowds gathered at the summer papal residence at Castel Gandolfo.
Referring to the Gospel reading for today's Mass, the Holy Father reflected on the mission of Peter, who received from Christ "the keys of the kingdom of heaven."
Like Peter, he said, "we too today desire to proclaim with deep conviction: Yes, Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God! We do this knowing that Christ is the true 'treasure' for which it is worth sacrificing everything; he is the friend who never abandons us, because he knows the most intimate longings of our heart."
"Jesus is the 'Son of the living God,' the promised Messiah, who has come to earth to offer salvation and to satisfy the thirst for life and love that inhabits every human being," the Pontiff added. "How much humanity would gain by welcoming this proclamation that brings joy and peace with it."
Benedict XVI noted that in this dialogue with Peter, Christ mentions the Church for the first time," whose mission is the actuation of the great design of God to gather the whole of humanity into one family in Christ."
He added: "The mission of Peter, and of his successors, is precisely to serve this unity of the one Church of God made up of pagans and Jews; his indispensable ministry is to make sure that the Church never identifies herself with any particular nation or culture, but that she be the Church of all peoples, to make present among men -- who are marked by countless divisions and contrasts -- the peace of God, the unity of those who have become brothers and sisters in Christ: This is the unique mission of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter."
The Holy Father concluded by asking the faithful to pray for him as he shoulders such an "enormous responsibility," so that, "faithful to Christ, together we can announce and bear witness to his presence in our time."
Monday, August 25, 2008
Prayers for life
Please help...
At http://www.prayercampaign.org/, you’ll be able to click on the link that will bring you to a prayer, in English and Spanish, that we invite you, your family, and your parish to pray daily for nine weeks, from September 1 to November 3 (the day before Election Day).
At http://www.prayercampaign.org/, you’ll be able to click on the link that will bring you to a prayer, in English and Spanish, that we invite you, your family, and your parish to pray daily for nine weeks, from September 1 to November 3 (the day before Election Day).
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Obama, Biden, Abortion, and the Catholic Church: Protests, Vigils, Banners, and Lit Drops Begin at Catholic Churches
Denver Schedule Below for Catholic Churches and Protests from Sat 8/23 to Mon 8/25
DENVER, August 23 /Christian Newswire/ -- Randall Terry states: "Obama jumped into political and religious quicksand by picking Biden; Catholic Bishops and voters will determine whether the Obama/Biden ticket sinks into political oblivion on November 4."
"The question is: Will Catholic bishops be courageous and clear, or will they equivocate or remain aloof? If Catholic Bishops, Priests, and laity put Catholic teaching on human life the ahead of the Democrat Party, Obama is doomed.
"The words of John Paul II are clear; the issue is our courage and obedience. It is our job to make Holy Noise at every level; at our Cathedrals, our parishes, in print, on the web - boldly declaring: 'No Catholic may in good conscience vote for Obama, because of his support of child-killing.'" -- Randall Terry, Founder, Operation Rescue
(We have created the following banner, newspaper ads for diocesan newspapers, and brochures for Catholics to use nationwide at no charge.)
3' x 5' Color Banner: "A Vote for Obama is a Vote for Dead Children" (Warning: graphic image) www.ahumbleplea.com/Docs/ObamaBanner.pdf
Newspaper Ad: "Wanted: Catholics to Rescue the Innocent" (Currently running in Denver Catholic Register) www.ahumbleplea.com/RebukeObama.htm
Brochure: "Is it Immoral to vote for Obama for President?" (Quotes John Paul II on Catholic teaching.) www.ahumbleplea.com/Docs/StopObama.pdf
What follows is Catholic Dogma; any Catholic who contradicts this is betraying Church Teaching:
"When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that It is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a 'tyrannical' decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings?...In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it....The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize we are dealing with murder." John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae
Saturday 8/23 Schedule:
5:00 P.M: Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate; Lit Drop, and Large Graphic Banners, "A Vote for Obama is a Vote for Dead Children" (showing a dead child) at 1530 Logan St, Denver, 80203. Banners will be used after Mass.
6:30 P.M: Heritage Christian Center (African American Church) Lit Drop, Graphic Banners. 9495 East Florida Ave, Denver, 80247
8- 10 P.M. Graphic Banners at Elitch Gardens: 2000 Elitch Circle, Denver, 80204, at closed event for media.
Sunday 8/24 Schedule:
10:30 A.M: Catholic Cathedral Lit drop and Banners (details above)
1:30 - 4:00: P.M. Interfaith Gathering; denouncing treachery against innocent life. Wells Fargo Theatre, Colorado Convention Center; 700 14th St.
6:30 P.M: Catholic Cathedral Lit drop and Banners (details above)
Monday 8/25:
10:00 AM African American Caucus
12 Noon: Hispanic Caucus
2 PM Opening of DNC, Pepsi Center
Note: For any media who would like to travel with our team for a short while, we have several other planned events not listed above.
Contact: Joe Landry 406-860-9738; 904-687-9804
Christian Newswire
DENVER, August 23 /Christian Newswire/ -- Randall Terry states: "Obama jumped into political and religious quicksand by picking Biden; Catholic Bishops and voters will determine whether the Obama/Biden ticket sinks into political oblivion on November 4."
"The question is: Will Catholic bishops be courageous and clear, or will they equivocate or remain aloof? If Catholic Bishops, Priests, and laity put Catholic teaching on human life the ahead of the Democrat Party, Obama is doomed.
"The words of John Paul II are clear; the issue is our courage and obedience. It is our job to make Holy Noise at every level; at our Cathedrals, our parishes, in print, on the web - boldly declaring: 'No Catholic may in good conscience vote for Obama, because of his support of child-killing.'" -- Randall Terry, Founder, Operation Rescue
(We have created the following banner, newspaper ads for diocesan newspapers, and brochures for Catholics to use nationwide at no charge.)
3' x 5' Color Banner: "A Vote for Obama is a Vote for Dead Children" (Warning: graphic image) www.ahumbleplea.com/Docs/ObamaBanner.pdf
Newspaper Ad: "Wanted: Catholics to Rescue the Innocent" (Currently running in Denver Catholic Register) www.ahumbleplea.com/RebukeObama.htm
Brochure: "Is it Immoral to vote for Obama for President?" (Quotes John Paul II on Catholic teaching.) www.ahumbleplea.com/Docs/StopObama.pdf
What follows is Catholic Dogma; any Catholic who contradicts this is betraying Church Teaching:
"When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that It is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a 'tyrannical' decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings?...In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it....The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize we are dealing with murder." John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae
Saturday 8/23 Schedule:
5:00 P.M: Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate; Lit Drop, and Large Graphic Banners, "A Vote for Obama is a Vote for Dead Children" (showing a dead child) at 1530 Logan St, Denver, 80203. Banners will be used after Mass.
6:30 P.M: Heritage Christian Center (African American Church) Lit Drop, Graphic Banners. 9495 East Florida Ave, Denver, 80247
8- 10 P.M. Graphic Banners at Elitch Gardens: 2000 Elitch Circle, Denver, 80204, at closed event for media.
Sunday 8/24 Schedule:
10:30 A.M: Catholic Cathedral Lit drop and Banners (details above)
1:30 - 4:00: P.M. Interfaith Gathering; denouncing treachery against innocent life. Wells Fargo Theatre, Colorado Convention Center; 700 14th St.
6:30 P.M: Catholic Cathedral Lit drop and Banners (details above)
Monday 8/25:
10:00 AM African American Caucus
12 Noon: Hispanic Caucus
2 PM Opening of DNC, Pepsi Center
Note: For any media who would like to travel with our team for a short while, we have several other planned events not listed above.
Contact: Joe Landry 406-860-9738; 904-687-9804
Christian Newswire
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Presidential Report Card Shows Big Difference Between McCain and Obama on Moral and Family Issues
Campaign for Children and Families does not support or oppose candidates for public office, and provides the following information solely for educational purposes
SACRAMENTO, Aug. 21 /Christian Newswire/ -- With the Democratic and Republican party conventions right around the corner, it's time for voters to get the facts on where Barack Obama and John McCain stand on significant moral, family, and fiscal issues facing America.
Campaign for Children and Families, a leading West Coast family issues leadership organization, is pleased to announce the Presidential Report Card to inform voters of the positions of McCain and Obama on eight significant state and national issues.
"Let the record show that John McCain and Barack Obama are polar opposites on partial-birth abortion, parental notification of abortion, marriage protection on the ballot, homosexual indoctrination of schoolchildren, gay adoptions, gun-owner rights, activist judges, and raising taxes," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families. "No one should base their vote on personality or mere feelings. Our carefully-researched report card shows you exactly where Obama and McCain stand on issues of importance to voters, their families, and our nation's future."
Click here to view the Presidential Report Card
CAMPAIGN FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (CCF) is a leading California-based nonprofit, nonpartisan organization representing children and families in California and America. CCF stands for marriage and family, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, religious freedom, and back-to-basics education. The organization, which does not support or oppose candidates for public office, provides non-partisan information on candidates' positions that matter to families.
Christian Newswire
SACRAMENTO, Aug. 21 /Christian Newswire/ -- With the Democratic and Republican party conventions right around the corner, it's time for voters to get the facts on where Barack Obama and John McCain stand on significant moral, family, and fiscal issues facing America.
Campaign for Children and Families, a leading West Coast family issues leadership organization, is pleased to announce the Presidential Report Card to inform voters of the positions of McCain and Obama on eight significant state and national issues.
"Let the record show that John McCain and Barack Obama are polar opposites on partial-birth abortion, parental notification of abortion, marriage protection on the ballot, homosexual indoctrination of schoolchildren, gay adoptions, gun-owner rights, activist judges, and raising taxes," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families. "No one should base their vote on personality or mere feelings. Our carefully-researched report card shows you exactly where Obama and McCain stand on issues of importance to voters, their families, and our nation's future."
Click here to view the Presidential Report Card
CAMPAIGN FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (CCF) is a leading California-based nonprofit, nonpartisan organization representing children and families in California and America. CCF stands for marriage and family, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, religious freedom, and back-to-basics education. The organization, which does not support or oppose candidates for public office, provides non-partisan information on candidates' positions that matter to families.
Christian Newswire
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Virginia Anglican Churches Praise Fairfax Judge Ruling on Contracts Clause
FAIRFAX, Va. (August 19, 2008) – The 11 Virginia Anglican congregations sued by The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Diocese of Virginia responded to the Fairfax County Circuit Court ruling issued today concerning the Contracts Clause and the assertion by TEC and the Diocese that the 11 Anglican congregations waived their right to invoke the Virginia Division Statute.
Judge Randy Bellows ruled that TEC and the Diocese failed to timely assert their claim that the 11 Anglican congregations contracted around or waived their right to invoke the Division Statute. In addition, the judged ruled that the Division Statute does not violate the contracts clause provisions of the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions as applied to these properties. The rulings can be found at www.anglicandistrictofvirginia.org. Today’s rulings mean that there are only a small number of issues remaining to be decided at the October trial, and the 11 Anglican congregations are hopeful that they can be resolved quickly.
“We are pleased that Judge Bellows ruled in our favor on these questions. He ruled very clearly that our congregations are able to rely on the Virginia Division Statute in order to keep our church property. We have maintained all along that our churches’ own trustees hold title for the benefit of their congregations. TEC and the Diocese have never owned any of the properties and their names do not appear on deeds to the property. The Virginia Supreme Court has consistently stated that Virginia does not recognize denominational trusts of the sort asserted by TEC and the Diocese,” said Jim Oakes, vice-chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia. All 11 churches are members of ADV.
“Given today’s ruling, we hope and pray that TEC and the Diocese would put away this needless litigation. We have consistently remained open to exploring avenues for amicable discussions, and have been grieved that TEC has chosen to continue to pursue a path of confrontation rather than civil dialogue. This litigation has done nothing to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ,” Oakes continued.
To comply with the requirements of the Virginia Division Statute, Virginia Code § 57-9, which recognizes the right of a congregation to keep its property when a majority votes to separate from a divided denomination, the voting churches reported to their local circuit courts their votes to disaffiliate from The Episcopal Church and the Diocese and to affiliate with CANA through membership in ADV. In most of these churches, 90% or more of the members voted to leave the denomination due to the clear division within The Episcopal Church, which the Fairfax County Circuit Court confirmed.
The Episcopal Church and the Diocese abruptly broke off settlement negotiations in January 2007 and filed lawsuits against the Virginia churches, their ministers and their vestries. The decision of The Episcopal Church and the Diocese to redefine and reinterpret Scripture caused the 11 Anglican churches to sever their ties.
The Anglican District of Virginia is an association of Anglican congregations in Virginia. Its members are in full communion with constituent members of the Anglican Communion through its affiliation with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary branch of the Church of Nigeria and other Anglican Archbishops. ADV members are a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, a community of 77 million people. ADV is dedicated to fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples while actively serving in three main capacities: International Ministries, Evangelism, and Strengthening Families and Community. ADV is currently comprised of 21 member congregation.
http://www.anglicandistrictofvirginia.org/
Judge Randy Bellows ruled that TEC and the Diocese failed to timely assert their claim that the 11 Anglican congregations contracted around or waived their right to invoke the Division Statute. In addition, the judged ruled that the Division Statute does not violate the contracts clause provisions of the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions as applied to these properties. The rulings can be found at www.anglicandistrictofvirginia.org. Today’s rulings mean that there are only a small number of issues remaining to be decided at the October trial, and the 11 Anglican congregations are hopeful that they can be resolved quickly.
“We are pleased that Judge Bellows ruled in our favor on these questions. He ruled very clearly that our congregations are able to rely on the Virginia Division Statute in order to keep our church property. We have maintained all along that our churches’ own trustees hold title for the benefit of their congregations. TEC and the Diocese have never owned any of the properties and their names do not appear on deeds to the property. The Virginia Supreme Court has consistently stated that Virginia does not recognize denominational trusts of the sort asserted by TEC and the Diocese,” said Jim Oakes, vice-chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia. All 11 churches are members of ADV.
“Given today’s ruling, we hope and pray that TEC and the Diocese would put away this needless litigation. We have consistently remained open to exploring avenues for amicable discussions, and have been grieved that TEC has chosen to continue to pursue a path of confrontation rather than civil dialogue. This litigation has done nothing to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ,” Oakes continued.
To comply with the requirements of the Virginia Division Statute, Virginia Code § 57-9, which recognizes the right of a congregation to keep its property when a majority votes to separate from a divided denomination, the voting churches reported to their local circuit courts their votes to disaffiliate from The Episcopal Church and the Diocese and to affiliate with CANA through membership in ADV. In most of these churches, 90% or more of the members voted to leave the denomination due to the clear division within The Episcopal Church, which the Fairfax County Circuit Court confirmed.
The Episcopal Church and the Diocese abruptly broke off settlement negotiations in January 2007 and filed lawsuits against the Virginia churches, their ministers and their vestries. The decision of The Episcopal Church and the Diocese to redefine and reinterpret Scripture caused the 11 Anglican churches to sever their ties.
The Anglican District of Virginia is an association of Anglican congregations in Virginia. Its members are in full communion with constituent members of the Anglican Communion through its affiliation with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary branch of the Church of Nigeria and other Anglican Archbishops. ADV members are a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, a community of 77 million people. ADV is dedicated to fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples while actively serving in three main capacities: International Ministries, Evangelism, and Strengthening Families and Community. ADV is currently comprised of 21 member congregation.
http://www.anglicandistrictofvirginia.org/
Anglican-Roman dialogue ‘not at an end’
By: George Conger.
Dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church has not necessarily come to an end, a Vatican official has stated. But the form future talks take will depend on how the communion implements the suggestions offered by the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
In an Aug 7 interview with the Catholic News Service, the head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity’s Anglican desk, Mgr Donald Bolen said the “dialogue will continue” between Rome and the Anglican Communion.
In three progressively harsher speeches to the bishops at Lambeth, Cardinal Ivan Dias, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Cardinal Walter Kasper chastised the Anglican Communion for its disorder and lack of theological seriousness. Cardinal Dias, prefect for the Congregation of the Evangelisation of Peoples, warned that the Anglican Communion was suffering from “spiritual Alzheimer’s”, and was in danger of forgetting its apostolic roots as it followed the spirit of the age in determining doctrine and discipline.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, urged Anglicans to put their house in order, saying there was little point in pursuing theological dialogue when Anglicans failed to live up to their side of the agreements.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, urged Anglicans to embark on a new “Oxford Movement” to revitalize the church, but also warned that moves by the Church of England to introduce women bishops and the apparent laxity over gay clergy had effectively ended the quest for Roman recognition of the validity of Anglican orders. Msgr. Bolen told CNS that Lambeth “in many respects was positive” as he witnessed “strong support” for a moratorium on same-sex blessings, the consecration of gay bishops, and respect for diocesan structures from the bishops at Lambeth.
“A sense of direction emerged which was largely, but not universally agreed, and which should translate into greater cohesion within the Anglican Communion, giving it stronger boundaries and a stronger sense of identity,” he said. An ecumenical participant in the conference, Mgr Bolen said “we went into the Lambeth Conference in a wait-and-see mode and we came out of it with some encouragement, but still waiting.”
He backed Cardinal Kasper’s call for a new Oxford movement within Anglicanism, saying it could lead to a greater recognition of "the importance of the role of the episcopacy, the need for authority in the church and a concern for fidelity with the church's tradition throughout the ages."
However, Cardinal Kasper was not “subtly suggesting that we bring individuals into the Catholic Church -- some may come -- but what he was asking was that Anglicans be attentive to the treasures that lie within their tradition as well as ours,” he said.
Moves to welcome Anglican ecclesial bodies---dioceses, parishes, religious orders---into the Roman orbit appear to be on hold. On July 5 Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote to the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), Archbishop William Hepworth, stating the Vatican was giving “serious attention” to the “prospects of corporate unity” with TAC and other traditionalist Anglicans.
However, the Vatican would wait and see what happened after Lambeth before it acted. “The situation within the Anglican Communion in general has become markedly more complex” in recent months, Cardinal Levada noted, and the Vatican would respond once it knew which way the Anglican Communion would turn.
Dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church has not necessarily come to an end, a Vatican official has stated. But the form future talks take will depend on how the communion implements the suggestions offered by the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
In an Aug 7 interview with the Catholic News Service, the head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity’s Anglican desk, Mgr Donald Bolen said the “dialogue will continue” between Rome and the Anglican Communion.
In three progressively harsher speeches to the bishops at Lambeth, Cardinal Ivan Dias, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Cardinal Walter Kasper chastised the Anglican Communion for its disorder and lack of theological seriousness. Cardinal Dias, prefect for the Congregation of the Evangelisation of Peoples, warned that the Anglican Communion was suffering from “spiritual Alzheimer’s”, and was in danger of forgetting its apostolic roots as it followed the spirit of the age in determining doctrine and discipline.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, urged Anglicans to put their house in order, saying there was little point in pursuing theological dialogue when Anglicans failed to live up to their side of the agreements.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, urged Anglicans to embark on a new “Oxford Movement” to revitalize the church, but also warned that moves by the Church of England to introduce women bishops and the apparent laxity over gay clergy had effectively ended the quest for Roman recognition of the validity of Anglican orders. Msgr. Bolen told CNS that Lambeth “in many respects was positive” as he witnessed “strong support” for a moratorium on same-sex blessings, the consecration of gay bishops, and respect for diocesan structures from the bishops at Lambeth.
“A sense of direction emerged which was largely, but not universally agreed, and which should translate into greater cohesion within the Anglican Communion, giving it stronger boundaries and a stronger sense of identity,” he said. An ecumenical participant in the conference, Mgr Bolen said “we went into the Lambeth Conference in a wait-and-see mode and we came out of it with some encouragement, but still waiting.”
He backed Cardinal Kasper’s call for a new Oxford movement within Anglicanism, saying it could lead to a greater recognition of "the importance of the role of the episcopacy, the need for authority in the church and a concern for fidelity with the church's tradition throughout the ages."
However, Cardinal Kasper was not “subtly suggesting that we bring individuals into the Catholic Church -- some may come -- but what he was asking was that Anglicans be attentive to the treasures that lie within their tradition as well as ours,” he said.
Moves to welcome Anglican ecclesial bodies---dioceses, parishes, religious orders---into the Roman orbit appear to be on hold. On July 5 Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote to the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), Archbishop William Hepworth, stating the Vatican was giving “serious attention” to the “prospects of corporate unity” with TAC and other traditionalist Anglicans.
However, the Vatican would wait and see what happened after Lambeth before it acted. “The situation within the Anglican Communion in general has become markedly more complex” in recent months, Cardinal Levada noted, and the Vatican would respond once it knew which way the Anglican Communion would turn.
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Obama Cover-up Unravels: Obama Tells CBN-CNN That NRLC is 'Lying,' but His Campaign Confirms the NRLC Charge the Next Day
WASHINGTON, August 18 /Christian Newswire/ -- Senator Barack Obama's four- year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions continues to unravel.
In the most recent developments, Senator Obama himself, in a videorecorded interview Saturday night with David Brody of CBN News (subsequently broadcast on both CBN and CNN), said three times that National Right to Life was "lying" in asserting that he had voted against a state bill virtually identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. He did not directly address newly uncovered documents that had been released by NRLC on August 11 -- documents that proved that he had done exactly that, contradicting four years of the Obama cover story.
In response, on Sunday, August 17th, we issued a challenge to Obama to either declare the newly discovered documents to be forgeries and call for an investigation of the forgery, or admit that he had misrepresented his record on the live-born infants legislation (not just once, but for four years), and apologize to those he's called liars.
We don't have an apology yet. But now there is this, in a news story posted on the New York Sun website on the evening of August 17th: "Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday . . . [Obama's] campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate . . ."
http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-facing-attacks- from-all-sides-over-abortion/84059/
Here is a summary of what came before:
In Congress, from 2000-2002, while Barack Obama was still a state senator in Illinois, we here in Washington, D.C., were dealing with the federal Born- Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), a project in which I was deeply involved. The original bill was a simple two-paragraph proposal -- it established in black-letter law that for all federal law purposes, any baby who was entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who showed any of the specified signs of life, was to be regarded as a legal person for however long he or she lived, and that this applied whether or not the birth was the result of an abortion or of spontaneous premature labor. NARAL immediately attacked the bill as an assault on Roe v. Wade: "The Act would effectively grant legal personhood to a pre-viable fetus -- in direct conflict with Roe. . . . In proposing this bill, anti-choice lawmakers are seeking to ascribe rights to fetuses 'at any stage of development,' thereby directly contradicting one of Roe's basic tenets."
See http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/Born_Alive_Infants/NARALo nlive-born.pdf
Nevertheless, the vast majority of "pro-choice" House members -- including hard-core pro-abortion leaders such as Jerrold Nadler -- were unwilling to extend the principles of Roe to living babies entirely separate from their mothers. They rejected the NARAL claim and voted for the bill; it passed the House 380-15. (Nothing like that had ever happened to NARAL before.) But the bill was killed in the Senate by an objection to unanimous consent.
In 2001, in Illinois, a bill was introduced in the state Senate that was closely patterned on the federal BAIPA, to govern constructions of state law. It contained an additional sentence, which read, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." (We'll call this the "immediate protection clause." It really just repeated the substantive effect of the other paragraphs.)
Obama voted against this bill in committee. On the floor he gave a speech attacking it and a couple of other related bills (the only such speech by any senator). Although the speech was technically made during consideration of another bill, SB 1093, Obama said that his reasons applied to SB 1095 (the BAIPA) as well. He then voted "present." Voting "present" was a tactic recommended by the local Planned Parenthood lobbyist; under an Illinois constitutional provision a bill is deemed passed only if it receives an absolute majority of the sworn members of the House or Senate, so the operative effect of a "present" vote is the same as a "no" vote.
The core of Obama's speech was the same as the 2000 NARAL attack at the federal level -- the bill violated Roe v. Wade because it applied to "a pre- viable fetus." Here is what he said:
"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a nine-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."
It did not seem to matter to Obama in 2001 (or to NARAL, in 2000) that the "fetuses" (sic) in question were entirely born and alive. Because, you see, they were "pre-viable," and these were abortions.
The 2001 bill passed the Illinois Senate despite Obama's objections, but died in a House committee.
In Illinois, pretty much the same events repeated in 2002, although this time Obama voted "no" on the floor. Meanwhile, in Washington, an additional clause was added to the federal bill, which we call "the neutrality clause." (The "neutrality" clause read, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section.") We saw this clause as no substantive change -- it merely made explicit the original scope of the bill. Nevertheless, with the change, the bill passed without a dissenting vote in either house of Congress, and was signed into law in 2002. (To view the final federal BAIPA as enacted, click here. To view a chronology of events pertaining to the federal BAIPA, click here.)
But in Illinois, Obama kept fighting, now from a chairman's chair. In 2003, the state bill was reintroduced in its original form, but the chief sponsor also introduced "Senate Amendment No. 1," an amendment to remove the "immediate protection clause" and insert the exact language of the new "neutrality clause" from the federal bill. Adoption of "Senate Amendment No. 1" would transform the state bill into a virtual clone of the now-enacted final federal bill/law. Both the bill and the amendment were referred to a committee of which Obama had just become chairman (the Democrats had taken majority control of the Illinois Senate in January, 2003).
On March 12-13, 2003, Obama chaired a meeting of the committee at which Senate Amendment No. 1 was adopted (with his support, 10- 0). This transformed the state bill into a virtual clone of the federal bill; see them side-by-side here. Obama then led all of the committee's Democrats in voting to kill the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4. (We didn't know about this meeting until about two weeks ago.)
The very next year, the cover up began.
When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent criticized him for supporting "infanticide." Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state BAIPA because it lacked the pre-birth neutrality clause that had been added to the federal bill. As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, "Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. . . . The difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion."
Obama's explanation was false, but the local newspapers did not uncover the March 13, 2003 records, and they accepted the explanation uncritically. The Obama campaign has been quoting the resulting stories ever since.
During Obama's 2008 run for President, his campaign and his defenders have asserted repeatedly and forcefully that it is a distortion, or even a smear and a lie, to suggest that Obama opposed a state born-alive bill that was the same as the federal bill. See, for example, this June 30, 2008 "factcheck" issued by the Obama campaign, in the form that it still appeared on the Obama website on August 7, 2008. The Obama "cover story" has often been repeated as fact, or at least without challenge, in major organs of the news media. (Two recent examples: CNN reported on June 30, 2008, "Senator Obama says if he had been in the U.S. Senate in 2002, he, too, would have voted in favor of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act because unlike the Illinois bill, it included language protecting Roe v. Wade." The New York Times reported in a story on August 7, 2008 that Obama "said he had opposed the bill because it was poorly drafted and would have threatened the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established abortion as a constitutional right. He said he would have voted for a similar bill that passed the United States Senate because it did not have the same constitutional flaw as the Illinois bill.")
On August 11, 2008, we (the National Right to Life Committee) released recently uncovered legislative documents demonstrating that Obama had, in fact, presided over the meeting at which the bill was transformed into a clone of the federal bill, and then voted down. Although these documents contradicted numerous emphatic statements by Obama and his campaign, only some of which are referenced above, so far they have been virtually ignored by mainstream news media.
On or about August 14, the Obama campaign submitted to Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune a "defense," which on August 14 was posted on Zorn's blog, which mostly repeated the old Obama line and which did not specifically reference the documents released by NRLC, but which did contain a new element: a purported side-by-side comparison of the state and federal BAIPAs. The comparison asserted that the "immediate protection clause" was still part of the bill that Obama voted against (it was not -- but why would that clause bother him?), and asserted that the "neutrality clause" was merely a "failed amendment, not included in final legislation" (false - it was adopted 10-0). The posting also contained many diversionary provisions -- references to an entirely different bill, misleading characterizations of an old, loophole-ridden Illinois law, etc...
On August 16, in a short interview with CBN News's David Brody, Obama was asked about the growing controversy surrounding the National Right to Life release. In his response, Obama asserted three times that we were "lying." See it here: http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/429328.aspx
Late on August 17, the New York Sun posted a story by staff political reporter Russell Berman, which said in part: "Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported 'was not the bill that was presented at the state level.' His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate . . ."
The campaign then tried to shift to a new objection to the "identical bill" -- that it "could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law." Given the language of the final state bill, this claim is absurd, unless Obama believed that "existing Illinois abortion law" allowed for "abortions" to be carried to a lethal conclusion even after a live birth. The newest line is also not consistent with Obama's oft-stated excuse for opposing the state legislation, and fails to explain his four years of misrepresentation.
Nor does the Sun story indicate that the Obama campaign has issued any apology to NRLC, Bill Bennett, or the others who Senator Obama and his campaign have been calling liars for saying what they now admit was the truth.
How to make sense of all this? All of Obama's misrepresentations and contradictions on this issue have one common goal: to obscure the position he actually articulated and acted on in 2001 through 2003. Obama explained in 2001 that he opposed the state bill to protect born-alive infants because it would apply before the point of long-term survivability -- so-called 'viability.' This is the same objection that NARAL originally voiced to the federal bill, in 2000. But that was exactly the point of the bill -- to make it clear that a live-born baby was a legally protected person for as long as he or she lived, whether for a day, an hour, or a minute.
Neither the original version of the legislation, nor the final state version that Obama killed in 2003, contained any language to protect babies before the point of live birth. On the 2001 and 2002 state bills, Obama took to a position that already had been rejected by the U.S. House 380-15 (in 2000). In 2003, Obama took a position on the abortion-survivor legislation that was more extreme than any member of Congress of either party.
The Obama campaign and its apologists are now asserting that the state Born-Alive Infants Protection bill was part of a "package" of bills. This is an obvious attempt to change the subject and avoid prolonged scrutiny of Obama's record on the sole bill that has been the focus of the national debate, that being the bill that was copied from the federal bill. In 2001-2003, there were various bills in the Illinois Senate that dealt with the procedures to be followed during very late abortions, but those bills each had separate numbers, were each subject to separate amending processes, and were (of course) each voted on separately. The 2003 Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill (SB 1082) could have been passed regardless of what happened to the various abortion bills -- and SB 1082 would have passed the Illinois Senate in 2003, if Chairman Obama had not killed it in his committee.
The Obama of 2001-2003 really did object to a bill merely because it defended the proposition, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." And it is that reality that he now desperately wants to conceal from the eyes of the public.
Additional Resources:
Index of Documents Regarding Obama Cover-up on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill (will be updated as new items come in)
" Obama Cover-up Revealed On Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill" (August 11, 2008 NRLC release of newly discovered legislative documents)
Timeline of important events in the history of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
NRLC archive on the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
NARAL press release, July 20, 2000, expressing strong opposition to the original federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 4292).
The official report of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, explaining the intent of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 2175), and explaining why such legislation was necessary (August 2, 2001)
Christian Newswire
In the most recent developments, Senator Obama himself, in a videorecorded interview Saturday night with David Brody of CBN News (subsequently broadcast on both CBN and CNN), said three times that National Right to Life was "lying" in asserting that he had voted against a state bill virtually identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. He did not directly address newly uncovered documents that had been released by NRLC on August 11 -- documents that proved that he had done exactly that, contradicting four years of the Obama cover story.
In response, on Sunday, August 17th, we issued a challenge to Obama to either declare the newly discovered documents to be forgeries and call for an investigation of the forgery, or admit that he had misrepresented his record on the live-born infants legislation (not just once, but for four years), and apologize to those he's called liars.
We don't have an apology yet. But now there is this, in a news story posted on the New York Sun website on the evening of August 17th: "Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday . . . [Obama's] campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate . . ."
http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-facing-attacks- from-all-sides-over-abortion/84059/
Here is a summary of what came before:
In Congress, from 2000-2002, while Barack Obama was still a state senator in Illinois, we here in Washington, D.C., were dealing with the federal Born- Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), a project in which I was deeply involved. The original bill was a simple two-paragraph proposal -- it established in black-letter law that for all federal law purposes, any baby who was entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who showed any of the specified signs of life, was to be regarded as a legal person for however long he or she lived, and that this applied whether or not the birth was the result of an abortion or of spontaneous premature labor. NARAL immediately attacked the bill as an assault on Roe v. Wade: "The Act would effectively grant legal personhood to a pre-viable fetus -- in direct conflict with Roe. . . . In proposing this bill, anti-choice lawmakers are seeking to ascribe rights to fetuses 'at any stage of development,' thereby directly contradicting one of Roe's basic tenets."
See http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/Born_Alive_Infants/NARALo nlive-born.pdf
Nevertheless, the vast majority of "pro-choice" House members -- including hard-core pro-abortion leaders such as Jerrold Nadler -- were unwilling to extend the principles of Roe to living babies entirely separate from their mothers. They rejected the NARAL claim and voted for the bill; it passed the House 380-15. (Nothing like that had ever happened to NARAL before.) But the bill was killed in the Senate by an objection to unanimous consent.
In 2001, in Illinois, a bill was introduced in the state Senate that was closely patterned on the federal BAIPA, to govern constructions of state law. It contained an additional sentence, which read, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." (We'll call this the "immediate protection clause." It really just repeated the substantive effect of the other paragraphs.)
Obama voted against this bill in committee. On the floor he gave a speech attacking it and a couple of other related bills (the only such speech by any senator). Although the speech was technically made during consideration of another bill, SB 1093, Obama said that his reasons applied to SB 1095 (the BAIPA) as well. He then voted "present." Voting "present" was a tactic recommended by the local Planned Parenthood lobbyist; under an Illinois constitutional provision a bill is deemed passed only if it receives an absolute majority of the sworn members of the House or Senate, so the operative effect of a "present" vote is the same as a "no" vote.
The core of Obama's speech was the same as the 2000 NARAL attack at the federal level -- the bill violated Roe v. Wade because it applied to "a pre- viable fetus." Here is what he said:
"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a nine-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."
It did not seem to matter to Obama in 2001 (or to NARAL, in 2000) that the "fetuses" (sic) in question were entirely born and alive. Because, you see, they were "pre-viable," and these were abortions.
The 2001 bill passed the Illinois Senate despite Obama's objections, but died in a House committee.
In Illinois, pretty much the same events repeated in 2002, although this time Obama voted "no" on the floor. Meanwhile, in Washington, an additional clause was added to the federal bill, which we call "the neutrality clause." (The "neutrality" clause read, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section.") We saw this clause as no substantive change -- it merely made explicit the original scope of the bill. Nevertheless, with the change, the bill passed without a dissenting vote in either house of Congress, and was signed into law in 2002. (To view the final federal BAIPA as enacted, click here. To view a chronology of events pertaining to the federal BAIPA, click here.)
But in Illinois, Obama kept fighting, now from a chairman's chair. In 2003, the state bill was reintroduced in its original form, but the chief sponsor also introduced "Senate Amendment No. 1," an amendment to remove the "immediate protection clause" and insert the exact language of the new "neutrality clause" from the federal bill. Adoption of "Senate Amendment No. 1" would transform the state bill into a virtual clone of the now-enacted final federal bill/law. Both the bill and the amendment were referred to a committee of which Obama had just become chairman (the Democrats had taken majority control of the Illinois Senate in January, 2003).
On March 12-13, 2003, Obama chaired a meeting of the committee at which Senate Amendment No. 1 was adopted (with his support, 10- 0). This transformed the state bill into a virtual clone of the federal bill; see them side-by-side here. Obama then led all of the committee's Democrats in voting to kill the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4. (We didn't know about this meeting until about two weeks ago.)
The very next year, the cover up began.
When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent criticized him for supporting "infanticide." Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state BAIPA because it lacked the pre-birth neutrality clause that had been added to the federal bill. As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, "Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. . . . The difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion."
Obama's explanation was false, but the local newspapers did not uncover the March 13, 2003 records, and they accepted the explanation uncritically. The Obama campaign has been quoting the resulting stories ever since.
During Obama's 2008 run for President, his campaign and his defenders have asserted repeatedly and forcefully that it is a distortion, or even a smear and a lie, to suggest that Obama opposed a state born-alive bill that was the same as the federal bill. See, for example, this June 30, 2008 "factcheck" issued by the Obama campaign, in the form that it still appeared on the Obama website on August 7, 2008. The Obama "cover story" has often been repeated as fact, or at least without challenge, in major organs of the news media. (Two recent examples: CNN reported on June 30, 2008, "Senator Obama says if he had been in the U.S. Senate in 2002, he, too, would have voted in favor of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act because unlike the Illinois bill, it included language protecting Roe v. Wade." The New York Times reported in a story on August 7, 2008 that Obama "said he had opposed the bill because it was poorly drafted and would have threatened the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established abortion as a constitutional right. He said he would have voted for a similar bill that passed the United States Senate because it did not have the same constitutional flaw as the Illinois bill.")
On August 11, 2008, we (the National Right to Life Committee) released recently uncovered legislative documents demonstrating that Obama had, in fact, presided over the meeting at which the bill was transformed into a clone of the federal bill, and then voted down. Although these documents contradicted numerous emphatic statements by Obama and his campaign, only some of which are referenced above, so far they have been virtually ignored by mainstream news media.
On or about August 14, the Obama campaign submitted to Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune a "defense," which on August 14 was posted on Zorn's blog, which mostly repeated the old Obama line and which did not specifically reference the documents released by NRLC, but which did contain a new element: a purported side-by-side comparison of the state and federal BAIPAs. The comparison asserted that the "immediate protection clause" was still part of the bill that Obama voted against (it was not -- but why would that clause bother him?), and asserted that the "neutrality clause" was merely a "failed amendment, not included in final legislation" (false - it was adopted 10-0). The posting also contained many diversionary provisions -- references to an entirely different bill, misleading characterizations of an old, loophole-ridden Illinois law, etc...
On August 16, in a short interview with CBN News's David Brody, Obama was asked about the growing controversy surrounding the National Right to Life release. In his response, Obama asserted three times that we were "lying." See it here: http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/429328.aspx
Late on August 17, the New York Sun posted a story by staff political reporter Russell Berman, which said in part: "Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported 'was not the bill that was presented at the state level.' His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate . . ."
The campaign then tried to shift to a new objection to the "identical bill" -- that it "could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law." Given the language of the final state bill, this claim is absurd, unless Obama believed that "existing Illinois abortion law" allowed for "abortions" to be carried to a lethal conclusion even after a live birth. The newest line is also not consistent with Obama's oft-stated excuse for opposing the state legislation, and fails to explain his four years of misrepresentation.
Nor does the Sun story indicate that the Obama campaign has issued any apology to NRLC, Bill Bennett, or the others who Senator Obama and his campaign have been calling liars for saying what they now admit was the truth.
How to make sense of all this? All of Obama's misrepresentations and contradictions on this issue have one common goal: to obscure the position he actually articulated and acted on in 2001 through 2003. Obama explained in 2001 that he opposed the state bill to protect born-alive infants because it would apply before the point of long-term survivability -- so-called 'viability.' This is the same objection that NARAL originally voiced to the federal bill, in 2000. But that was exactly the point of the bill -- to make it clear that a live-born baby was a legally protected person for as long as he or she lived, whether for a day, an hour, or a minute.
Neither the original version of the legislation, nor the final state version that Obama killed in 2003, contained any language to protect babies before the point of live birth. On the 2001 and 2002 state bills, Obama took to a position that already had been rejected by the U.S. House 380-15 (in 2000). In 2003, Obama took a position on the abortion-survivor legislation that was more extreme than any member of Congress of either party.
The Obama campaign and its apologists are now asserting that the state Born-Alive Infants Protection bill was part of a "package" of bills. This is an obvious attempt to change the subject and avoid prolonged scrutiny of Obama's record on the sole bill that has been the focus of the national debate, that being the bill that was copied from the federal bill. In 2001-2003, there were various bills in the Illinois Senate that dealt with the procedures to be followed during very late abortions, but those bills each had separate numbers, were each subject to separate amending processes, and were (of course) each voted on separately. The 2003 Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill (SB 1082) could have been passed regardless of what happened to the various abortion bills -- and SB 1082 would have passed the Illinois Senate in 2003, if Chairman Obama had not killed it in his committee.
The Obama of 2001-2003 really did object to a bill merely because it defended the proposition, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." And it is that reality that he now desperately wants to conceal from the eyes of the public.
Additional Resources:
Index of Documents Regarding Obama Cover-up on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill (will be updated as new items come in)
" Obama Cover-up Revealed On Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill" (August 11, 2008 NRLC release of newly discovered legislative documents)
Timeline of important events in the history of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
NRLC archive on the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
NARAL press release, July 20, 2000, expressing strong opposition to the original federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 4292).
The official report of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, explaining the intent of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 2175), and explaining why such legislation was necessary (August 2, 2001)
Christian Newswire
Obama Lied
New Book, The Case Against Barack Obama, Sets the Record Straight
MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 18 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Obama camp is now acknowledging that Barack Obama lied about his abortion voting record on the born-alive bill, as reported weeks ago in New York Times Bestseller The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso.
The NY Sun reported today that Obama's campaign has admitted that the senator voted against giving medical care to babies born alive after an abortion attempt - a fact that the campaign originally dismissed as a "smear." The reality behind the Obama rhetoric is that he worked against efforts to ban the gruesome practice of leaving babies who survived failed abortions to die. When confronted with the facts, Freddoso says he did what is typical among politicians--he lied.
In fact, Freddoso points out in The Case Against Barack Obama, that Obama has made several untrue statements of the course of this debate:
Obama said that he would have supported the federal version of the Born-Alive Bill if it had come up in Illinois-it did. He didn't support it.
Obama falsely called the National Right to Life Committee, and those who have been pointing out his extreme and cruel position on this issue, liars.
Even in his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama smears all pro-lifers saying they have discouraged compromise that would reduce the number of partial- birth abortions simply because the image of a partial birth abortion helps win converts to pro-life groups.
The Case Against Barack Obama is currently #5 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It's been received with much acclaim as the first book to truly prove that Obama has earned his liberal label and his claim to be a reformer is a lie.
To schedule an interview with David Freddoso, author of The Case Against Barack Obama, contact Mary Beth Hutchins at 703.683.5004 x 105 or by e-mail at mhutchins@crcpublicrelations.com.
Christian Newswire
MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 18 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Obama camp is now acknowledging that Barack Obama lied about his abortion voting record on the born-alive bill, as reported weeks ago in New York Times Bestseller The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso.
The NY Sun reported today that Obama's campaign has admitted that the senator voted against giving medical care to babies born alive after an abortion attempt - a fact that the campaign originally dismissed as a "smear." The reality behind the Obama rhetoric is that he worked against efforts to ban the gruesome practice of leaving babies who survived failed abortions to die. When confronted with the facts, Freddoso says he did what is typical among politicians--he lied.
In fact, Freddoso points out in The Case Against Barack Obama, that Obama has made several untrue statements of the course of this debate:
The Case Against Barack Obama is currently #5 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It's been received with much acclaim as the first book to truly prove that Obama has earned his liberal label and his claim to be a reformer is a lie.
To schedule an interview with David Freddoso, author of The Case Against Barack Obama, contact Mary Beth Hutchins at 703.683.5004 x 105 or by e-mail at mhutchins@crcpublicrelations.com.
Christian Newswire
Friday, August 15, 2008
McDonald's Enters the Catering Business ... to the LGBT Community
MAITLAND, Fl., Aug. 14 /Christian Newswire/ -- Recent decisions by the burger-and- fries behemoth, McDonald's has caused quite a commotion in a couple of communities. However, each is experiencing a distinctly opposite reaction.
On one hand, McDonald's foray into corporate support of the Lesbian, Gay, Homosexual and Transgendered (LGBT) community is getting rave reviews from the folks at The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). The McDonald's Corporation paid $20,000 to become a member of NGLCC and have a seat on the board of directors. Richard Ellis, McDonald's USA vice president of communications was "thrilled" to join the chamber and stated that he "shares the NGLCC's passion" for business growth and development in the LGBT community.
On the other hand, this foray has sparked the ire of groups such as the American Family Association (AFA) who is currently calling for a boycott of McDonald's - until they remain neutral in the culture war. Another company, the Timothy Plan Family of mutual funds handles McDonald's pro-homosexual activism in a uniquely different fashion. This fund family refuses to invest in McDonald's because of the fact that they are promoting, what the fund calls, Non- Traditional Married Lifestyles.
Arthur Ally, President of the Timothy Plan says, "It continues to amaze me that corporations, like McDonald's, continue to publically and financially support things that alienate their consumer base. Shareholders as wells as customers should be outraged at the blatant position this company has taken on this issue." He continues, "McDonald's corporation has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to continue to earn profits and expand their company. By alienating such a large consumer base, the Christian community, they are undoubtedly neglecting this responsibility."
The Timothy Plan is classified as a socially responsible (SRI) investment fund family, but Mr. Ally says that his funds are "morally responsible". He contends, "We are a Pro-Life/Pro Family mutual fund group. We are uniquely different from your typical SRI fund in that we will not invest in companies that are involved in the areas of Pornography, Abortion, Anti- Family Entertainment and the promotion of Non- Married Lifestyles".
McDonald's support of and involvement in the NGLCC is not the only reason the Timothy Plan and AFA avoid the company. "McDonald's has gone so far as to accuse those who oppose the gay agenda, including same sex marriage, of being motivated by hate. I wonder if McDonald's officially recognizes, or even has, a Christian employee group, because they certainly recognize McDonald's Gay, Lesbian and Network" he concludes.
So it appears, according to Mr. Ally, McDonald's now does cater - to the Lesbian, Gay, Homosexual and Transgender community.
If you would like to interview Art on this, or any other, subject of how your audience can incorporate an entirely new element into their investment decisions and discover how to discern between companies that make business decisions rooted in a value system that aligns with theirs and those that don't call the number above.
Christian Newswire
On one hand, McDonald's foray into corporate support of the Lesbian, Gay, Homosexual and Transgendered (LGBT) community is getting rave reviews from the folks at The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). The McDonald's Corporation paid $20,000 to become a member of NGLCC and have a seat on the board of directors. Richard Ellis, McDonald's USA vice president of communications was "thrilled" to join the chamber and stated that he "shares the NGLCC's passion" for business growth and development in the LGBT community.
On the other hand, this foray has sparked the ire of groups such as the American Family Association (AFA) who is currently calling for a boycott of McDonald's - until they remain neutral in the culture war. Another company, the Timothy Plan Family of mutual funds handles McDonald's pro-homosexual activism in a uniquely different fashion. This fund family refuses to invest in McDonald's because of the fact that they are promoting, what the fund calls, Non- Traditional Married Lifestyles.
Arthur Ally, President of the Timothy Plan says, "It continues to amaze me that corporations, like McDonald's, continue to publically and financially support things that alienate their consumer base. Shareholders as wells as customers should be outraged at the blatant position this company has taken on this issue." He continues, "McDonald's corporation has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to continue to earn profits and expand their company. By alienating such a large consumer base, the Christian community, they are undoubtedly neglecting this responsibility."
The Timothy Plan is classified as a socially responsible (SRI) investment fund family, but Mr. Ally says that his funds are "morally responsible". He contends, "We are a Pro-Life/Pro Family mutual fund group. We are uniquely different from your typical SRI fund in that we will not invest in companies that are involved in the areas of Pornography, Abortion, Anti- Family Entertainment and the promotion of Non- Married Lifestyles".
McDonald's support of and involvement in the NGLCC is not the only reason the Timothy Plan and AFA avoid the company. "McDonald's has gone so far as to accuse those who oppose the gay agenda, including same sex marriage, of being motivated by hate. I wonder if McDonald's officially recognizes, or even has, a Christian employee group, because they certainly recognize McDonald's Gay, Lesbian and Network" he concludes.
So it appears, according to Mr. Ally, McDonald's now does cater - to the Lesbian, Gay, Homosexual and Transgender community.
If you would like to interview Art on this, or any other, subject of how your audience can incorporate an entirely new element into their investment decisions and discover how to discern between companies that make business decisions rooted in a value system that aligns with theirs and those that don't call the number above.
Christian Newswire
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Presentation to The Most Reverend Kevin W. Vann
8/13/2008
Catholic Online
"We request that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth provide guidance and assistance as we look for a new way that would lead our Diocese into full communion with the Holy See."
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - Several Web Logs distributed the proposal which was allegedly made to the Catholic Bishop of Fort Worth by the Episcopal Priests, with the knowledge of their Bishop. We set the presentation forth below in its entirety as it has been widely reported on throughout the day:
EIGHT CRUCIAL FINDINGS
1. We believe the See of Peter is essential not optional
2. We believe a magisterium is needed desperately
3. We believe the Catholic Faith is true
4. We believe the Anglican Communion shares the fatal flaws of TEC
5. We believe our polity is in error
6. We believe we are not the only ones in our diocese
7. We believe Pope Benedict XVI understands our plight
8. We believe there is a charism which Anglican ethos has to offer to the Universal Church
———————–
PREAMBLE
A. We appreciate your taking this time to meet with us.
B. Introduction of group by Fr. Crary. Fr. Crary introduces himself and then the group.
C. History: Our group met several times (with our Bishop’s knowledge) for the past year and a half. Our meetings arose because of the on going crisis in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
D. We shared our conclusions with Bishop Iker on April 10th of this year. He gave us his “unequivocally support” to proceed further by having this conversation with you.
E. We would like to share briefly with you our journey and our conclusions which we shared with Bishop Iker.
F. However, before we share our thoughts we would like to present you with this icon which was commissioned expressly for you and for our meeting today.
————————
PROPOSAL
We request that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth provide the guidance necessary so that we might “make a proposal” that would lead our Diocese into full communion with the See of Peter.
We believe this guidance is necessary for the following reasons:
1. We cannot adequately prepare such a proposal without input from those to whom the proposal is to be made.
2. Such guidance would help us through the complicated aspects of this proposal.
3. With this guidance, the Holy Spirit could affect more quickly the healing of this portion of the broken Body of Christ.
Should you consent, we gladly offer ourselves for this important work and stand ready to work with those you might designate.
A Presentation to The Most Reverend Kevin W. Vann, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth,Given by Members of the Clergy of The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
"That they all may be one; even as thou, Father, are in me and I in thee" John 17:21
———————–
PREAMBLE
At 3:00 p.m. on Monday, June 16, 2008 in the Catholic Center of the Diocese of Fort Worth, four priests of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth made the following presentation to the Most Reverend Kevin Vann. We are grateful for the hospitality and charity which we received from the Bishop and his Chancellor, the Very Reverend James E. Hart.
The presentation was the result of two years of prayer and discernment regarding the future of our Diocese. At the conclusion of our discernment period, we shared our Findings with our Bishop, the Right Reverend Jack Leo Iker. Bishop Iker endorsed our report and gave us his “unequivocal support” to proceed with a presentation to Bishop Vann.
The clergy making this presentation are:
The Very Reverend William A. Crary, Jr., SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 32 years of experience in the Diocese, a member of the SSC (Society of the Holy Cross), Dean of the Eastern Deanery, and is the senior rector in the Diocese, serving St. Laurence for 22 years.
The Reverend Canon Charles A. Hough, III, SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 30 years experience in the Diocese, Canon to Bishop Iker for 15 years, a member of the SSC, Chair of our Diocesan Deputation to the General Convention of The Episcopal Church for 23 years, has served parishes in Granbury and Grand Prairie.
The Reverend Louis L. Tobola, Jr., SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 31 years experience in the Diocese, a member of the SSC, a founding priest for a new congregation in the Diocese, St. Barnabas the Apostle, has served as Dean of the Cathedral and Dean of the Eastern Deanery.
The Very Reverend Christopher C. Stainbrook, SSC, came to Fort Worth from New York in 1990 by invitation of Bp. Pope, has been Vicar of St. Timothy’s since 1994, is Finance Committee Chair, Diocesan Historiographer, Dean of the Fort Worth East Deanery, and Special Liaison to the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.
Before their presentation, a hand-written icon of Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine, commissioned expressly for Bishop Vann and this meeting, was given to him.
————————-
EIGHT CRUCIAL FINDINGS
I. We believe the See of Peter is essential not optional
Unity with the Holy See is esse that is, essential for Catholic Christians (not bene esse, merely beneficial.) This is a concept which the Catholic Clergy in the Anglican Tradition have always believed (indeed it is one of the stated purposes of the SSC) but the rapid deterioration of the Anglican Communion makes it even more apparent now. The Prayer for Unity (John 17, that they all may be one) also compels us to pursue the possibility of reunion with Rome.
The very name of the first Pope, Peter, Petrus is the “rock” - and we have seen that it is the Petrine office which is important not the personality of an individual pontiff.
In April 2006 our Diocesan Bishop and several of the clergy made a pilgrimage to Rome. At that time we were blessed to have an informal visit with his Eminence, Bernard Cardinal Law. At that meeting, Cardinal Law indicated that the Catholic Church was aware of the current difficulties faced by Anglo Catholics (and particularly the Anglo Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth) at this time and said, in essence, for us to “make an offer” that is, make a Proposal on how we might respond to the crisis in our branch of Christendom. After this pilgrimage, we began meeting with the full knowledge and support of our Bishop. We came to realize that, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, it is up to us to make the initiative to return to the rock from whence we were hewn. In essence, that trip crystallized for us the need for perusing unity with the See of Peter now. Since that time we have studied, we have met, we have prayed, and now we come to the Church with our conclusions.
As Anglicans we realize that Henry VIII, the monarch who wrote “Defense of Seven Sacraments” and who was granted the title “Defender of the Faith”, never intended to make any substantive or permanent changes in the Catholic faith. Indeed, the Reformation itself was intended to be for a limited time only, “a season”, as the book of Ecclesiastes would say.
We believe that it is now time for a new Season. It is perhaps, time for a church of Reformation to die and a new unification among Christ’s people be born: Unification possible only under the Holy Father.
II. We believe a magisterium is needed desperately
“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) This describes the day to day ’on the ground” reality in the Anglican Communion. Anglican “comprehensiveness” has no boundaries and no real center. For example, during the Reformation period under Elizabeth I, 1533-1603, there was an attempt to synthesize the Catholic and Protestant factions in the Church of England, resulting in the so-called “Elizabethan Settlement”. Concerning the Eucharist, it was held that belief in the Real Presence of Christ was acceptable as well as the belief that the Eucharist was only a memorial or “remembrance” of something long ago. In essence the Anglican faith is what the parish priest says it is, and this varies widely with many contradictions. The Pentecostal/Evangelical/Charismatic expressions are just as valid as the Anglo-Catholic teaching. In most parts of the country, the parish priest is completely on his own.
Formerly, a single prayer book (the 1662 Church of England Prayer Book was the pattern for all national prayer books) provided some glue, but with the proliferation of endless trial liturgies even that has disappeared.
The lack of a teaching office has resulted in communicating un-baptized persons, same-sex unions and liturgical chaos everywhere. There are no boundaries and it is all uncontrollable. This is not theory but day to day reality. Anglican “comprehensiveness” has no boundaries. Previously this absence of a center seemed to work when the various ecclesiastical parties (Low Church/Broad Church/High Church) largely worked within their own circles. Low Church people did not attend High Church parishes and vice versa.
In looking at the disarray in the larger communion it is apparent that the Archbishop of Canterbury is incapable of providing decisive leadership. If there is a future, particularly for Catholic minded Anglicans, it is clear that a magisterium is absolutely essential.
III. We believe the Catholic Faith is True
The Catholic Faith is given - it is true.
The Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that as Christians we believe in “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism”. At the celebration of every Mass and in the recitation of any Daily Office we profess in the Creed “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”. We have come to realize, to an extent even more fully than we had as Catholics in the Anglican Tradition, that our Blessed Lord has indeed founded only one true church: the Catholic Church.
Unlike so many forms of Protestantism, Catholic teaching does not change on a whim to suit the transient issues of the day. In addition, the Catholic Faith is not just one option among many. Anglican comprehensiveness with Catholics, Evangelicals and Liberals, all following their own paths, leads to the disintegration and disunion which we in the Diocese of Fort Worth find ourselves. The Protestant/Low Church teachings, the Liberals experiential teachings are just not true. The Catholic faith, the Catholic practice, the Catholic teaching - is true.
We know, and are living examples of the fact, that Catholic Witness has been present throughout the history of the Anglican Tradition. But it is now becoming weaker because of this idea, Catholic as one option among several. . . except here in Fort Worth, which is in so many ways unique (explored further in section VI).
IV. We believe the Anglican Communion shares the fatal flaws of The Episcopal Church
In our time of discernment, we have concluded that the difficulties we have faced in The Episcopal Church for the past thirty years will not be remedied by the Anglican Communion.
Those making this presentation have been members of The Episcopal Church since childhood. In this church we have been nourished by Catholic faith and practice. However, through the years we have witnessed the deterioration and marginalization of that Catholic faith. We believed that our call was to remain within our church as a remnant which could preserve the faith. Our expectation was that the Anglican Communion, in response to The Episcopal Church’s continuing “innovations”, would provide the stability and witness necessary for us to continue. However, it is apparent that the Communion is incapable of providing this stability.
It is our conclusion that the Anglican Communion has the same fatal flaws as The Episcopal Church. Without a magisterium the latest “religion” will continue to replace the historic teachings of our Communion. This erosion of Catholic faith and practice is heightened by the governing polity of the Anglican Communion. Bishops are elected by priests and laity of a Diocese. As the liberalizing culture enters another portion of the world, the Diocese there is deeply affected by it. Those who can be elected are only those who reflect the cultural shift that has occurred in that Diocese. We have seen this in The Episcopal Church and we see it now in the Anglican Communion.
We know what happens in a church which lacks a magisterium and whose polity makes the continuing of a Catholic witness impossible. We have concluded the Anglican Communion provides not safe future for us. Our witness, rather than being honored, has been persecuted.
V. We believe our polity is in error
In the New Testament no congregation votes on its pastor! St. Paul would have been unelectable in all, except maybe Philippi! Without exception pastors are sent by higher authority.
It was not a convention of delegates, but only the remaining apostles that established the criteria for Judas’ replacement. St. John Chrysostom said that Peter had the authority to make the appointment but did not. Drawing lots put the choice in God’s hands.
In the United States, the democratic style of polity in The Episcopal Church, strongly resembling the legislative branch of the U.S. government (House of Bishops and House of Deputies, lay and ordained) has created doctrinal chaos. Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) the first American Episcopal bishop was fearful of having clergy and lay people voting on doctrinal matters. His fears were realized when an early General Convention put the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds up for grabs. The Nicene Creed was voted out, then back in; and then the Athanasian Creed lost the vote.
In regard to the ordination of women, the 1976 General Convention changed the matter of a sacrament, established by Christ himself, simply by voting. Bishop Robert Terwilliger, formerly Suffragan of the Diocese of Dallas called it “voting our collective ignorance”!
Candidates for bishop in the American Episcopal Church shamelessly campaign like the politicians they are. When elected they are indebted to the electors.
We are in desperate need of a polity modeled on the New Testament and the early church.
VI. We believe we are not the only ones
The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth came into existence in 1983 when it was decided that the Diocese of Dallas, of which it represents the western 1/3 of that diocese, would divide. We believe the hand of God was present in this decision and that it was the work of the Holy Spirit to bring into existence a diocese where the overwhelming majority of clergy living and working in that part of the old Diocese of Dallas were Catholic minded clergy. We now see as truly profound this action of creating the Diocese of Fort Worth. It set up what has now culminated in a Diocese of the Episcopal Church where its clergy are overwhelmingly Catholic minded.
The Diocese of Fort Worth has been a leader in standing against the apostasy that has been taking place in the Episcopal Church over the last three decades. We have witnessed Episcopal diocese after diocese fall away from a traditional Biblical and Catholic practice of the faith. It has now become impossible for the Catholic minded people to exist and survive in the Episcopal Church. As a result of this, the Diocese of Fort Worth is working toward a realignment of itself into another Province of the Anglican Communion. We have chosen to join the Province of the Southern Cone in South America. We believe this arrangement is temporary. As the Anglican Communion attempts to reform itself, it is becoming more and more evident that this problematic at best.
The overwhelming majority of clergy currently active in the Diocese of Fort Worth are willing to work earnestly for what we consider to be the only solution, and that is full communion with the Holy See. The breakdown of numbers is as follows:
There are currently 60 active clergy. We believe 9 will opt to stay in The Episcopal Church 51 will remain in a temporarily realigned diocese with the Southern Cone
5 are not interested at this time in working for full communion, 46 are truly interested. If we add our seminarians currently on the priesthood track and our retired clergy the number becomes 59.
Our best guess is that approximately 59 clergy are willing to pursue an active plan to bring the Diocese of Fort Worth or a significant portion of it into full communion with the Holy See, if this be God’s will.
We believe these numbers are the result of the Holy Spirit actively working among us since the formation of this diocese. We also recognize that it will take time to bring the laity on board with this proposal. While the clergy have come to recognize the truth which it held by the Holy See, we have much work to do with the laity.
This fact needs to be noted and is to be understood as a recognized part of our proposal.
We would also like to point out that of the 59 clergy, 20 are under the age of 40. These young clergy are committed to seeking the truth that the Holy See possesses. They have come to this realization independent of the four clergy who are represented in this presentation. We have noted over the last few years that God has been raising up phenomenal young men in our diocese for priesthood. We now realize and believe the purpose of this explosion of priestly vocations at this time is to further help us understand the direction we must take. They are committed to teaching the truth of the Catholic faith and they have many years of ministry to give to accomplish what God began with us in 1983. We have seen many pieces of a puzzle come together over the years. We believe all of this is truly the work of the Holy Spirit and we continue to pray for guidance, courage and faith.
Finally, the Diocese of Fort Worth is the only diocese in the Episcopal Church that is strong enough to pursue the Proposal outlined below. We have a critical mass of clergy who are willing to bring the laity to support this proposal. There are many Catholics in the Anglican Tradition outside of our Diocese that look to the Diocese of Fort Worth for leadership. We believe the time is ripe for significant history making action on the part of the Holy Spirit. We believe the time is right and this is why we have come forward with this presentation.
VII. We believe Pope Benedict XVI understands our plight
Through his writings and his actions we believe that Pope Benedict XVI is sympathetic to our plight.
It is our belief that Pope Benedict XVI desires to uphold the Catholic faith whenever and wherever he finds it; especially in a world dominated by the super-dogma of relativism. It is this new dogma, this new denomination which motivates those who seek to remove the Catholic witness from The Episcopal Church.
In October, 2003, members of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and other Episcopalians throughout the United States met in Plano, Texas for a conference titled, “A Place to Stand: A Call to Mission”. That conference was called to unite further those who opposed the ordination of a partnered homosexual as a Bishop in The Episcopal Church.
The highpoint of that conference was a letter from then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It reads as follows:
From Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
The Vatican, on behalf of Pope John Paul II
I hasten to assure you of my heartfelt prayers for all those taking part in this convocation. The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond Plano, and even in this City from which Saint Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ’s Gospel in England. Nor can I fail to recall that barely 120 years later, Saint Boniface brought that same Christian faith to my own forebears in Germany.
The lives of these saints show us how in the Church of Christ there is an unity in truth and a communion of grace which transcends the borders of any nation. With this is mind, I pray in particular that God’s will may be done by all those who seek that unity in the truth, the gift of Christ himself.
With fraternal regards, I remain
Sincerely yours in Christ
+Joseph Cardinal Ratszinger
Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter was greeted with thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
Furthermore, in April, 2006 the four priests making this presentation, with our Bishop and two other priests of our Diocese, met with Bernard Cardinal Law at his residence in Rome. At that meeting we discussed our plight with him. Cardinal Law told us two important things. With regard to union with Rome he said, “What was not possible twenty years ago may be possible today.” And, with regard to our moving forward he said, “Make us an offer”. He told us that it was inappropriate for the Catholic Church to make an offer to another Christian body, such as ours, in distress. Rather, such an offer needed to come from us.
Pondering the words of then Cardinal Ratzinger and those of Cardinal Law, we entered our period of prayer and discernment.
Those making this presentation believe the Holy Spirit has brought us to this moment. It is a time when we who have believed ourselves to be priests of the Catholic faith, seek to become more clearly what we have always been.
VIII. We believe there is a charism which the Anglican ethos has to offer to the Universal Church
The Catholic Faith, as it has been lived in the Anglican Tradition, is a thing of great beauty. Why are we making a plea for it to continue? It is because the Catholic faith and practice, as lived out in the Anglican Tradition, is a unique charism well worth preserving.
Twentieth century Anglo Catholic authors like C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot and earlier Anglican theologians such as William Law (”Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”) and George Herbert (”The Country Parson”) have enriched and enlightened countless souls. The religious life, the devotional societies, the guilds, the priestly fraternities (like the Catholic Clerical Union and the SSC) all speak to an expression of Catholic piety which continues to be attractive to people in the twenty-first century and are worthy of preserving for future generations. To take but one (local) example: the large number of young men offering themselves for ordination in this Diocese speaks to this expression’s ability to nurture vocations. Also the Catholic Liturgy in the Anglican Tradition is a thing of great elegance, holiness, of long antiquity and solemn reverence.
The icon presented to his Excellency Bishop Vann, an icon of both St. Gregory and St. Augustine, represents our desire to return hom to Rome our first and true spiritual home.
What is it that we can offer to the greater Church? We believe we can offer a Catholic expression which for too long has been separated from the Universal Church. This is a tradition of inspiring liturgy, devout spirituality, loving pastoral care and a living spirituality. We believe it has a special and unique witness to the Faith, which we humbly offer as a beautiful jewel in the Catholic crown.
—————————–
At the conclusion of our presentation, the following proposal was submitted to Bishop Vann.
PROPOSAL
We request that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth provide guidance and assistance as we look for a new way that would lead our Diocese into full communion with the Holy See.
We believe this guidance is necessary for the following reasons:
1. We cannot adequately prepare such a proposal without input from those to whom the proposal is to be made.
2. Such guidance would help us work through the complicated aspects of this proposal.
3. With this guidance, the Holy Spirit could affect more quickly the healing of this portion of the broken Body of Christ.
Should you consent, we gladly offer ourselves for this important work and stand ready to work with those you might designate.
Catholic Online
"We request that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth provide guidance and assistance as we look for a new way that would lead our Diocese into full communion with the Holy See."
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - Several Web Logs distributed the proposal which was allegedly made to the Catholic Bishop of Fort Worth by the Episcopal Priests, with the knowledge of their Bishop. We set the presentation forth below in its entirety as it has been widely reported on throughout the day:
EIGHT CRUCIAL FINDINGS
1. We believe the See of Peter is essential not optional
2. We believe a magisterium is needed desperately
3. We believe the Catholic Faith is true
4. We believe the Anglican Communion shares the fatal flaws of TEC
5. We believe our polity is in error
6. We believe we are not the only ones in our diocese
7. We believe Pope Benedict XVI understands our plight
8. We believe there is a charism which Anglican ethos has to offer to the Universal Church
———————–
PREAMBLE
A. We appreciate your taking this time to meet with us.
B. Introduction of group by Fr. Crary. Fr. Crary introduces himself and then the group.
C. History: Our group met several times (with our Bishop’s knowledge) for the past year and a half. Our meetings arose because of the on going crisis in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
D. We shared our conclusions with Bishop Iker on April 10th of this year. He gave us his “unequivocally support” to proceed further by having this conversation with you.
E. We would like to share briefly with you our journey and our conclusions which we shared with Bishop Iker.
F. However, before we share our thoughts we would like to present you with this icon which was commissioned expressly for you and for our meeting today.
————————
PROPOSAL
We request that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth provide the guidance necessary so that we might “make a proposal” that would lead our Diocese into full communion with the See of Peter.
We believe this guidance is necessary for the following reasons:
1. We cannot adequately prepare such a proposal without input from those to whom the proposal is to be made.
2. Such guidance would help us through the complicated aspects of this proposal.
3. With this guidance, the Holy Spirit could affect more quickly the healing of this portion of the broken Body of Christ.
Should you consent, we gladly offer ourselves for this important work and stand ready to work with those you might designate.
A Presentation to The Most Reverend Kevin W. Vann, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth,Given by Members of the Clergy of The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
"That they all may be one; even as thou, Father, are in me and I in thee" John 17:21
———————–
PREAMBLE
At 3:00 p.m. on Monday, June 16, 2008 in the Catholic Center of the Diocese of Fort Worth, four priests of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth made the following presentation to the Most Reverend Kevin Vann. We are grateful for the hospitality and charity which we received from the Bishop and his Chancellor, the Very Reverend James E. Hart.
The presentation was the result of two years of prayer and discernment regarding the future of our Diocese. At the conclusion of our discernment period, we shared our Findings with our Bishop, the Right Reverend Jack Leo Iker. Bishop Iker endorsed our report and gave us his “unequivocal support” to proceed with a presentation to Bishop Vann.
The clergy making this presentation are:
The Very Reverend William A. Crary, Jr., SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 32 years of experience in the Diocese, a member of the SSC (Society of the Holy Cross), Dean of the Eastern Deanery, and is the senior rector in the Diocese, serving St. Laurence for 22 years.
The Reverend Canon Charles A. Hough, III, SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 30 years experience in the Diocese, Canon to Bishop Iker for 15 years, a member of the SSC, Chair of our Diocesan Deputation to the General Convention of The Episcopal Church for 23 years, has served parishes in Granbury and Grand Prairie.
The Reverend Louis L. Tobola, Jr., SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 31 years experience in the Diocese, a member of the SSC, a founding priest for a new congregation in the Diocese, St. Barnabas the Apostle, has served as Dean of the Cathedral and Dean of the Eastern Deanery.
The Very Reverend Christopher C. Stainbrook, SSC, came to Fort Worth from New York in 1990 by invitation of Bp. Pope, has been Vicar of St. Timothy’s since 1994, is Finance Committee Chair, Diocesan Historiographer, Dean of the Fort Worth East Deanery, and Special Liaison to the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.
Before their presentation, a hand-written icon of Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine, commissioned expressly for Bishop Vann and this meeting, was given to him.
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EIGHT CRUCIAL FINDINGS
I. We believe the See of Peter is essential not optional
Unity with the Holy See is esse that is, essential for Catholic Christians (not bene esse, merely beneficial.) This is a concept which the Catholic Clergy in the Anglican Tradition have always believed (indeed it is one of the stated purposes of the SSC) but the rapid deterioration of the Anglican Communion makes it even more apparent now. The Prayer for Unity (John 17, that they all may be one) also compels us to pursue the possibility of reunion with Rome.
The very name of the first Pope, Peter, Petrus is the “rock” - and we have seen that it is the Petrine office which is important not the personality of an individual pontiff.
In April 2006 our Diocesan Bishop and several of the clergy made a pilgrimage to Rome. At that time we were blessed to have an informal visit with his Eminence, Bernard Cardinal Law. At that meeting, Cardinal Law indicated that the Catholic Church was aware of the current difficulties faced by Anglo Catholics (and particularly the Anglo Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth) at this time and said, in essence, for us to “make an offer” that is, make a Proposal on how we might respond to the crisis in our branch of Christendom. After this pilgrimage, we began meeting with the full knowledge and support of our Bishop. We came to realize that, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, it is up to us to make the initiative to return to the rock from whence we were hewn. In essence, that trip crystallized for us the need for perusing unity with the See of Peter now. Since that time we have studied, we have met, we have prayed, and now we come to the Church with our conclusions.
As Anglicans we realize that Henry VIII, the monarch who wrote “Defense of Seven Sacraments” and who was granted the title “Defender of the Faith”, never intended to make any substantive or permanent changes in the Catholic faith. Indeed, the Reformation itself was intended to be for a limited time only, “a season”, as the book of Ecclesiastes would say.
We believe that it is now time for a new Season. It is perhaps, time for a church of Reformation to die and a new unification among Christ’s people be born: Unification possible only under the Holy Father.
II. We believe a magisterium is needed desperately
“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) This describes the day to day ’on the ground” reality in the Anglican Communion. Anglican “comprehensiveness” has no boundaries and no real center. For example, during the Reformation period under Elizabeth I, 1533-1603, there was an attempt to synthesize the Catholic and Protestant factions in the Church of England, resulting in the so-called “Elizabethan Settlement”. Concerning the Eucharist, it was held that belief in the Real Presence of Christ was acceptable as well as the belief that the Eucharist was only a memorial or “remembrance” of something long ago. In essence the Anglican faith is what the parish priest says it is, and this varies widely with many contradictions. The Pentecostal/Evangelical/Charismatic expressions are just as valid as the Anglo-Catholic teaching. In most parts of the country, the parish priest is completely on his own.
Formerly, a single prayer book (the 1662 Church of England Prayer Book was the pattern for all national prayer books) provided some glue, but with the proliferation of endless trial liturgies even that has disappeared.
The lack of a teaching office has resulted in communicating un-baptized persons, same-sex unions and liturgical chaos everywhere. There are no boundaries and it is all uncontrollable. This is not theory but day to day reality. Anglican “comprehensiveness” has no boundaries. Previously this absence of a center seemed to work when the various ecclesiastical parties (Low Church/Broad Church/High Church) largely worked within their own circles. Low Church people did not attend High Church parishes and vice versa.
In looking at the disarray in the larger communion it is apparent that the Archbishop of Canterbury is incapable of providing decisive leadership. If there is a future, particularly for Catholic minded Anglicans, it is clear that a magisterium is absolutely essential.
III. We believe the Catholic Faith is True
The Catholic Faith is given - it is true.
The Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that as Christians we believe in “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism”. At the celebration of every Mass and in the recitation of any Daily Office we profess in the Creed “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”. We have come to realize, to an extent even more fully than we had as Catholics in the Anglican Tradition, that our Blessed Lord has indeed founded only one true church: the Catholic Church.
Unlike so many forms of Protestantism, Catholic teaching does not change on a whim to suit the transient issues of the day. In addition, the Catholic Faith is not just one option among many. Anglican comprehensiveness with Catholics, Evangelicals and Liberals, all following their own paths, leads to the disintegration and disunion which we in the Diocese of Fort Worth find ourselves. The Protestant/Low Church teachings, the Liberals experiential teachings are just not true. The Catholic faith, the Catholic practice, the Catholic teaching - is true.
We know, and are living examples of the fact, that Catholic Witness has been present throughout the history of the Anglican Tradition. But it is now becoming weaker because of this idea, Catholic as one option among several. . . except here in Fort Worth, which is in so many ways unique (explored further in section VI).
IV. We believe the Anglican Communion shares the fatal flaws of The Episcopal Church
In our time of discernment, we have concluded that the difficulties we have faced in The Episcopal Church for the past thirty years will not be remedied by the Anglican Communion.
Those making this presentation have been members of The Episcopal Church since childhood. In this church we have been nourished by Catholic faith and practice. However, through the years we have witnessed the deterioration and marginalization of that Catholic faith. We believed that our call was to remain within our church as a remnant which could preserve the faith. Our expectation was that the Anglican Communion, in response to The Episcopal Church’s continuing “innovations”, would provide the stability and witness necessary for us to continue. However, it is apparent that the Communion is incapable of providing this stability.
It is our conclusion that the Anglican Communion has the same fatal flaws as The Episcopal Church. Without a magisterium the latest “religion” will continue to replace the historic teachings of our Communion. This erosion of Catholic faith and practice is heightened by the governing polity of the Anglican Communion. Bishops are elected by priests and laity of a Diocese. As the liberalizing culture enters another portion of the world, the Diocese there is deeply affected by it. Those who can be elected are only those who reflect the cultural shift that has occurred in that Diocese. We have seen this in The Episcopal Church and we see it now in the Anglican Communion.
We know what happens in a church which lacks a magisterium and whose polity makes the continuing of a Catholic witness impossible. We have concluded the Anglican Communion provides not safe future for us. Our witness, rather than being honored, has been persecuted.
V. We believe our polity is in error
In the New Testament no congregation votes on its pastor! St. Paul would have been unelectable in all, except maybe Philippi! Without exception pastors are sent by higher authority.
It was not a convention of delegates, but only the remaining apostles that established the criteria for Judas’ replacement. St. John Chrysostom said that Peter had the authority to make the appointment but did not. Drawing lots put the choice in God’s hands.
In the United States, the democratic style of polity in The Episcopal Church, strongly resembling the legislative branch of the U.S. government (House of Bishops and House of Deputies, lay and ordained) has created doctrinal chaos. Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) the first American Episcopal bishop was fearful of having clergy and lay people voting on doctrinal matters. His fears were realized when an early General Convention put the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds up for grabs. The Nicene Creed was voted out, then back in; and then the Athanasian Creed lost the vote.
In regard to the ordination of women, the 1976 General Convention changed the matter of a sacrament, established by Christ himself, simply by voting. Bishop Robert Terwilliger, formerly Suffragan of the Diocese of Dallas called it “voting our collective ignorance”!
Candidates for bishop in the American Episcopal Church shamelessly campaign like the politicians they are. When elected they are indebted to the electors.
We are in desperate need of a polity modeled on the New Testament and the early church.
VI. We believe we are not the only ones
The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth came into existence in 1983 when it was decided that the Diocese of Dallas, of which it represents the western 1/3 of that diocese, would divide. We believe the hand of God was present in this decision and that it was the work of the Holy Spirit to bring into existence a diocese where the overwhelming majority of clergy living and working in that part of the old Diocese of Dallas were Catholic minded clergy. We now see as truly profound this action of creating the Diocese of Fort Worth. It set up what has now culminated in a Diocese of the Episcopal Church where its clergy are overwhelmingly Catholic minded.
The Diocese of Fort Worth has been a leader in standing against the apostasy that has been taking place in the Episcopal Church over the last three decades. We have witnessed Episcopal diocese after diocese fall away from a traditional Biblical and Catholic practice of the faith. It has now become impossible for the Catholic minded people to exist and survive in the Episcopal Church. As a result of this, the Diocese of Fort Worth is working toward a realignment of itself into another Province of the Anglican Communion. We have chosen to join the Province of the Southern Cone in South America. We believe this arrangement is temporary. As the Anglican Communion attempts to reform itself, it is becoming more and more evident that this problematic at best.
The overwhelming majority of clergy currently active in the Diocese of Fort Worth are willing to work earnestly for what we consider to be the only solution, and that is full communion with the Holy See. The breakdown of numbers is as follows:
There are currently 60 active clergy. We believe 9 will opt to stay in The Episcopal Church 51 will remain in a temporarily realigned diocese with the Southern Cone
5 are not interested at this time in working for full communion, 46 are truly interested. If we add our seminarians currently on the priesthood track and our retired clergy the number becomes 59.
Our best guess is that approximately 59 clergy are willing to pursue an active plan to bring the Diocese of Fort Worth or a significant portion of it into full communion with the Holy See, if this be God’s will.
We believe these numbers are the result of the Holy Spirit actively working among us since the formation of this diocese. We also recognize that it will take time to bring the laity on board with this proposal. While the clergy have come to recognize the truth which it held by the Holy See, we have much work to do with the laity.
This fact needs to be noted and is to be understood as a recognized part of our proposal.
We would also like to point out that of the 59 clergy, 20 are under the age of 40. These young clergy are committed to seeking the truth that the Holy See possesses. They have come to this realization independent of the four clergy who are represented in this presentation. We have noted over the last few years that God has been raising up phenomenal young men in our diocese for priesthood. We now realize and believe the purpose of this explosion of priestly vocations at this time is to further help us understand the direction we must take. They are committed to teaching the truth of the Catholic faith and they have many years of ministry to give to accomplish what God began with us in 1983. We have seen many pieces of a puzzle come together over the years. We believe all of this is truly the work of the Holy Spirit and we continue to pray for guidance, courage and faith.
Finally, the Diocese of Fort Worth is the only diocese in the Episcopal Church that is strong enough to pursue the Proposal outlined below. We have a critical mass of clergy who are willing to bring the laity to support this proposal. There are many Catholics in the Anglican Tradition outside of our Diocese that look to the Diocese of Fort Worth for leadership. We believe the time is ripe for significant history making action on the part of the Holy Spirit. We believe the time is right and this is why we have come forward with this presentation.
VII. We believe Pope Benedict XVI understands our plight
Through his writings and his actions we believe that Pope Benedict XVI is sympathetic to our plight.
It is our belief that Pope Benedict XVI desires to uphold the Catholic faith whenever and wherever he finds it; especially in a world dominated by the super-dogma of relativism. It is this new dogma, this new denomination which motivates those who seek to remove the Catholic witness from The Episcopal Church.
In October, 2003, members of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and other Episcopalians throughout the United States met in Plano, Texas for a conference titled, “A Place to Stand: A Call to Mission”. That conference was called to unite further those who opposed the ordination of a partnered homosexual as a Bishop in The Episcopal Church.
The highpoint of that conference was a letter from then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It reads as follows:
From Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
The Vatican, on behalf of Pope John Paul II
I hasten to assure you of my heartfelt prayers for all those taking part in this convocation. The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond Plano, and even in this City from which Saint Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ’s Gospel in England. Nor can I fail to recall that barely 120 years later, Saint Boniface brought that same Christian faith to my own forebears in Germany.
The lives of these saints show us how in the Church of Christ there is an unity in truth and a communion of grace which transcends the borders of any nation. With this is mind, I pray in particular that God’s will may be done by all those who seek that unity in the truth, the gift of Christ himself.
With fraternal regards, I remain
Sincerely yours in Christ
+Joseph Cardinal Ratszinger
Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter was greeted with thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
Furthermore, in April, 2006 the four priests making this presentation, with our Bishop and two other priests of our Diocese, met with Bernard Cardinal Law at his residence in Rome. At that meeting we discussed our plight with him. Cardinal Law told us two important things. With regard to union with Rome he said, “What was not possible twenty years ago may be possible today.” And, with regard to our moving forward he said, “Make us an offer”. He told us that it was inappropriate for the Catholic Church to make an offer to another Christian body, such as ours, in distress. Rather, such an offer needed to come from us.
Pondering the words of then Cardinal Ratzinger and those of Cardinal Law, we entered our period of prayer and discernment.
Those making this presentation believe the Holy Spirit has brought us to this moment. It is a time when we who have believed ourselves to be priests of the Catholic faith, seek to become more clearly what we have always been.
VIII. We believe there is a charism which the Anglican ethos has to offer to the Universal Church
The Catholic Faith, as it has been lived in the Anglican Tradition, is a thing of great beauty. Why are we making a plea for it to continue? It is because the Catholic faith and practice, as lived out in the Anglican Tradition, is a unique charism well worth preserving.
Twentieth century Anglo Catholic authors like C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot and earlier Anglican theologians such as William Law (”Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”) and George Herbert (”The Country Parson”) have enriched and enlightened countless souls. The religious life, the devotional societies, the guilds, the priestly fraternities (like the Catholic Clerical Union and the SSC) all speak to an expression of Catholic piety which continues to be attractive to people in the twenty-first century and are worthy of preserving for future generations. To take but one (local) example: the large number of young men offering themselves for ordination in this Diocese speaks to this expression’s ability to nurture vocations. Also the Catholic Liturgy in the Anglican Tradition is a thing of great elegance, holiness, of long antiquity and solemn reverence.
The icon presented to his Excellency Bishop Vann, an icon of both St. Gregory and St. Augustine, represents our desire to return hom to Rome our first and true spiritual home.
What is it that we can offer to the greater Church? We believe we can offer a Catholic expression which for too long has been separated from the Universal Church. This is a tradition of inspiring liturgy, devout spirituality, loving pastoral care and a living spirituality. We believe it has a special and unique witness to the Faith, which we humbly offer as a beautiful jewel in the Catholic crown.
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At the conclusion of our presentation, the following proposal was submitted to Bishop Vann.
PROPOSAL
We request that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth provide guidance and assistance as we look for a new way that would lead our Diocese into full communion with the Holy See.
We believe this guidance is necessary for the following reasons:
1. We cannot adequately prepare such a proposal without input from those to whom the proposal is to be made.
2. Such guidance would help us work through the complicated aspects of this proposal.
3. With this guidance, the Holy Spirit could affect more quickly the healing of this portion of the broken Body of Christ.
Should you consent, we gladly offer ourselves for this important work and stand ready to work with those you might designate.
Friday, August 08, 2008
U.S. Court of Appeals Upholds First-Amendment Right to Distribute Religious Materials
Granite City, Ill. Ordinance Restricting Distribution of Pro-Life Handbills Found Unconstitutional
CHICAGO, Ill., Aug. 8 /Christian Newswire/ -- On Thursday, August 7, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago handed down a decision upholding a federal trial court ruling that an ordinance in Granite City, Ill., regulating the manner in which individuals could distribute religious and other types of handbills was unconstitutional.
By 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel upheld an earlier decision by Federal District Judge Michael Reagan, sitting in East St. Louis. Reagan had ruled that the city violated the First Amendment when it prosecuted Donald Horina, a retired teacher and "born-again" Christian from St. Charles, Mo., for distributing pro-life literature and Gospel tracts near the Hope Clinic for Women, an outpatient surgical treatment center that provides abortions, and in other locations in Granite City.
In July 2003, Horina had placed his literature on windshields of cars parked near Hope Clinic, and was cited for violating the city ordinance prohibiting the "indiscriminate" distribution of "cards, circulars, handbills, samples of merchandise or any advertising matter whatsoever on any public street or sidewalk."
Jason Craddock, a Sauk Village, Ill. lawyer who has worked on many pro-life cases with Thomas More Society and as an affiliated lawyer with Alliance Defense Fund, filed a civil rights suit in response, and won an injunction against the city. The city then adopted a new ordinance with more specific restrictions, which also was found to be an unreasonable restriction on First-Amendment rights.
The city appealed, and the Thomas More Society, based in Chicago, joined with Alliance Defense Fund to help Craddock defend the appeal, lending him aid in briefing as well as financial support.
"This is a great victory for free speech and we are proud to be a part of it," said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at Thomas More Society. "We congratulate Jason Craddock on his hard work to protect our fundamental rights."
Christian Newswire
CHICAGO, Ill., Aug. 8 /Christian Newswire/ -- On Thursday, August 7, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago handed down a decision upholding a federal trial court ruling that an ordinance in Granite City, Ill., regulating the manner in which individuals could distribute religious and other types of handbills was unconstitutional.
By 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel upheld an earlier decision by Federal District Judge Michael Reagan, sitting in East St. Louis. Reagan had ruled that the city violated the First Amendment when it prosecuted Donald Horina, a retired teacher and "born-again" Christian from St. Charles, Mo., for distributing pro-life literature and Gospel tracts near the Hope Clinic for Women, an outpatient surgical treatment center that provides abortions, and in other locations in Granite City.
In July 2003, Horina had placed his literature on windshields of cars parked near Hope Clinic, and was cited for violating the city ordinance prohibiting the "indiscriminate" distribution of "cards, circulars, handbills, samples of merchandise or any advertising matter whatsoever on any public street or sidewalk."
Jason Craddock, a Sauk Village, Ill. lawyer who has worked on many pro-life cases with Thomas More Society and as an affiliated lawyer with Alliance Defense Fund, filed a civil rights suit in response, and won an injunction against the city. The city then adopted a new ordinance with more specific restrictions, which also was found to be an unreasonable restriction on First-Amendment rights.
The city appealed, and the Thomas More Society, based in Chicago, joined with Alliance Defense Fund to help Craddock defend the appeal, lending him aid in briefing as well as financial support.
"This is a great victory for free speech and we are proud to be a part of it," said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at Thomas More Society. "We congratulate Jason Craddock on his hard work to protect our fundamental rights."
Christian Newswire
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Lambeth Report Canterbury: Sunday, August 3rd
From www.forwardinfaith.com
FiF International News
Lambeth Conference - 16
Aug 5, 2008
"United and Independent Throughout the World"
The Archbishop of Canterbury's third plenary address
"Today there is no avoiding the question of the central message", the Archbishop of Canterbury said in his third plenary address at the end of the Lambeth Conference, 1998, "and I have the rather dangerous task of trying to discern some of what the message might be...".
What did he discern? "Our Communion longs to stay together", the Archbishop asserted "- but not only as an association of polite friends. It is seeking a deeper entry into the place where Christ stands, to find its unity there. To that end, it is struggling with the question of what mutual commitments will preserve faithful, grateful relationship and common witness. But it must remember too that the place where Christ stands is also every place where God's image is disfigured by the rebelliousness and injustice of our world - just as he once stood in the place of every rejected and lost human being in his suffering on the cross. To be with him in unity, in prayer and love, in intimacy with the Father, is at the same time to be with him among the rejected and the disfigured".
Pastoral Forum
What does this mean in practical terms? Archbp. Williams discerned "quite a strong degree of support for a Pastoral Forum to support minorities", and is asking for "a clear and detailed specification" for its task and composition "within the next two months". He discerned "a strong consensus on the need to examine how the Instruments of Communion will best work. He discerned "a recognition - though still with many questions - that a Covenant is needed". And he discerned "a strongly expressed intention to place our international development work on a firmer and more co-ordinated footing".
To deal with these matters, he said, he is asking the Windsor and Covenant groups to feed their work, and the Design Group for this Conference to feed "the agenda outlined in the Reflections document" (which he later explained was a reference to the five points on which he had identified consensus in the Conference), to the special meeting of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council in November. And he intends to convene the Primates' Meeting "as early as possible in 2009".
"In the months ahead", Archbp. Williams stated, "it will be important to invite those absent from Lambeth to be involved in these next stages". "Much in the GAFCON documents is consonant with much of what we have sought to say and do", he added, "and we need to look for the best way of building bridges here".
Theology of Unity
Much of the Archbishop's address was devoted to an exposition of the theology of unity. Unity is more than "peaceful diversity" and "mutual forbearance" based on loyalty or warmth or tolerance, he said: it is "being summoned and drawn into the same place before the Father's throne". Christian unity is "first and above all...union with Jesus Christ; accepting his gift of grace and forgiveness, learning from him how to speak to his Father, standing where he stands by the power of the Spirit". "We are one with one another", he continued, "because we are called into union with the one Christ and stand in his unique place - stand in the Way, the Truth, and the Life".
This unity "is inseparable from truth", the Archbishop asserted. Christians had separated in the 16th century, in 1930s Germany, and in 1980s South Africa "because the concluded, painfully as well as (often) angrily, that something had been substituted for the grace of Christ - moral and ritual achievement, or racial or social pride, as if there were...a way of securing our place before God by something other than Jesus Christ".
How does this affect the present situation in the Communion? "A fellow-Christian may believe they [sic] have a profound fresh insight", the Archbishop observed, and "seek to persuade others about it". "A healthy church", he asserted, "gives space for such exchanges". But "confusion arises when what is claimed as a new discernment presents itself as carrying the Church's authority.
That is why pleas for moratoria on same-sex blessings, the consecration of homosexuals as bishops, and cross-border interventions have "found wide support across the range of views represented in the indaba groups", Archbp. Williams asserted. "The Church in its wider life can't be committed definitively by the judgment of some; but when a new thing is enshrined, in whatever way, in public order and ministry, it will look like a definitive commitment".
What is needed is what the text of Lambeth 1998's resolution I.10 actually called for, the Archbishop said: "space for study and free discussion without pressure, pastoral patience and respect, unwillingness to change what has been received in faith from Scripture and tradition". Nor can a traditional understanding and a new one be considered "two equal options", he said: "the practice and public language of the Church act always as a reminder that the onus of proof is on those who seek a new understanding".
"To say that the would-be innovator must be heard gratefully and respectfully", Archbp. Williams said, "is simply to acknowledge the debt we always owe to those who ask unfamiliar questions, because they prompt us to explore our tradition more deeply". That is why its seems "widely agreed" in this Conference "that internal pastoral and liturgical care, strengthened by arrangements like the suggested Communion Partners in the USA and the proposed Pastoral Forum", he said, "are the way we should go" with regard to interventions across provinces "if we want to avoid further ecclesial confusion". For interventions, the Archbishop said, suggest "that nothing in a province, no provision made or pastoral care offered, can be recognizably and adequately Christian" - and that seems a "grave breach of charity".
"So I hope that, if part of the message of Lambeth '08 is that we need to develop covenantal commitments, and that one aspect of this may be what you could call covenanted restraint", the Archbishop summarized, "this will be seen in the context of a unity not enforced but given in Christ".
Covenant of Faith
A covenanted future, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested, "has the potential to make us more of a church; more of a `catholic' church in the proper sense, a church, that is, which understands its ministry and service and sacraments as united and interdependent throughout the world". To move in that direction would be both "weighty" and "prophetic": "the vision of a global Church of interdependent communities is not the vision of an ecclesiastical world empire - or even a colonial relic...", he said. This "global horizon" matters "because churches without this are always in danger of slowly surrendering to the culture around them and losing sight of their calling to challenge that culture.
In this regard, the Archbishop drew attention to "the massive courage and integrity" of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe in the face of "an oppressive regime and a culture of violence".
But that is "a powerful reminder", Archbp. Williams said, that "our global, Catholic faith affirms that the image of God is the same everywhere. "This is the Catholic faith", the Archbishop asserted, citing the examples of "the Zimbabwean woman beaten by police in her own church", "the woman raising her family in a squatter's settlement in Lima or Buenos Aires, and others: "that what is owed to them is no different from, no less than what is owed to any of the rest of us".
And thus it is "our calling", Archbp. Williams said, "to make that further step of a `covenant of faith' that will promise to our fellow human beings the generosity God has shown us; that will honour the absolute and non-negotiable dignities of all and strengthen us to resist any policy or strategy that implies that what is good and just for me is not good and just for all my human neighbors".
No 'Quick Fix'
Asked at the press conference following his address how he felt the Conference had come out, Archbp. Williams said it had "worked out very much as I'd hoped and prayed". It did not evade the questions; neither did it try to achieve a "quick fix".
The Conference was designed, the Archbishop noted, on three assumptions: that the bishops needed to speak to one another in a safe place, that the Communion needed to know the depth of their commitment to it, and that the Communion needed to know what course of action they might deem acceptable.
Moratorium
"Sacrifice has to be accepted voluntarily", the Archbishop responded to a question about whether it was right for the lives and vocations of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Anglicans to be sacrificed for the unity of the Communion. The question is what people are willing to give for the sake of the global fellowship.
Asked to clarify whether a moratorium on same-sex blessings or on authorizing public rites for such blessings was being called for, Archbp. Williams reiterated his observation that a liturgical formulary suggests that this is where the Communion stands, but said that this would not preclude a "variety of pastoral response".
The proposal gives no time certain or set of conditions for lifting the moratoriums, the Archbishop acknowledged. It is "very difficult to come to a common mind", he observed: it is likely they would be in place "unless and until a wider consensus emerges".
Responding to a concern that The Episcopal Church was the object of two of the three proposed moratoria, Archbp. Williams stated that the "current practice" of certain US dioceses "puts our relations under strain", and stands in the way of resolution.
The Archbishop added that, while some say the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of those sexually active with persons of the same sex is "simply" a matter of human rights, that is "an assumption I can't accept".
If the North American churches do not accept the need for the moratoria, the Archbishop stated, "we are no further forward...".
The Covenant Process
How long will it take to carry out the Covenant process? The text should be finalized in the next twelve months, the Archbishop responded. The decision by the Provinces whether or not to buy in on it depends on the "rhythms" of their synods, some of which meet several times a year, and others only every three years. But he would expect a "round up", he said, in 2012 or 2013.
GAFCON
Responding to a question about how he might seek to bring in the GAFCON bishops, the Archbishop said that he will begin by writing a pastoral letter. He spoke of ongoing exchanges with many who had attended GAFCON, including many who were present at Lambeth, and specifically acknowleged that he had held conversations with Archbp. Greg Venables.
The Primates
Paragraph 151 of the Reflections document, a reporter noted, seems to suggest some desire among the bishops to limit the authority of the Primates' Meeting. Archbp. Williams said that the Primates have met regularly over the years: there's nothing special about his convening it. He noted that the last Lambeth Conference had asked the Primates "to do a bit more", but it is the way of such things that when they did "it's not always well received". The real issue, he opined, is balancing the roles of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council.
Asked if he were calling the meeting in order to see if the Primates of Nigeria and Uganda would show up, the Archbishop said he had "no agenda" in calling the meeting.
With respect to finances, Archbp. Williams noted that Primates' Meetings are covered in the Communion's budget. While he did not have details on Lambeth's costs, he said he knows there is a "shortfall", and is looking into meeting it.
Dialogue with Rome
With regard to Rome's recent assertion that "full visible unity" with the Communion was no longer a realistic goal for ecumenical dialogue with the Communion, Archbp. Williams said that Rome had not suspended it or given up on it. The (Roman) Catholic Church is looking to see the results of Lambeth, and he had spoken with Pope Benedict XVI about a possible ARCIC III. The Archbishop affirmed his conviction that a covenanted future would make the Communion "more like a Church", "in the sense that...it represents a challenge to the tendency of local churches to get trapped in the local context".
The Archbishop of Canterbury
In reply to the reporter who asked if he would still be in office when the next Lambeth Conference convenes in 2018, the Archbishop explained that could not really be expected to answer that question. Archbp. Williams said that his ministry as Archbishop of Canterbury "is a task that was set me", and he would continue in it until he is set a different course.
FiF International News
Lambeth Conference - 16
Aug 5, 2008
"United and Independent Throughout the World"
The Archbishop of Canterbury's third plenary address
"Today there is no avoiding the question of the central message", the Archbishop of Canterbury said in his third plenary address at the end of the Lambeth Conference, 1998, "and I have the rather dangerous task of trying to discern some of what the message might be...".
What did he discern? "Our Communion longs to stay together", the Archbishop asserted "- but not only as an association of polite friends. It is seeking a deeper entry into the place where Christ stands, to find its unity there. To that end, it is struggling with the question of what mutual commitments will preserve faithful, grateful relationship and common witness. But it must remember too that the place where Christ stands is also every place where God's image is disfigured by the rebelliousness and injustice of our world - just as he once stood in the place of every rejected and lost human being in his suffering on the cross. To be with him in unity, in prayer and love, in intimacy with the Father, is at the same time to be with him among the rejected and the disfigured".
Pastoral Forum
What does this mean in practical terms? Archbp. Williams discerned "quite a strong degree of support for a Pastoral Forum to support minorities", and is asking for "a clear and detailed specification" for its task and composition "within the next two months". He discerned "a strong consensus on the need to examine how the Instruments of Communion will best work. He discerned "a recognition - though still with many questions - that a Covenant is needed". And he discerned "a strongly expressed intention to place our international development work on a firmer and more co-ordinated footing".
To deal with these matters, he said, he is asking the Windsor and Covenant groups to feed their work, and the Design Group for this Conference to feed "the agenda outlined in the Reflections document" (which he later explained was a reference to the five points on which he had identified consensus in the Conference), to the special meeting of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council in November. And he intends to convene the Primates' Meeting "as early as possible in 2009".
"In the months ahead", Archbp. Williams stated, "it will be important to invite those absent from Lambeth to be involved in these next stages". "Much in the GAFCON documents is consonant with much of what we have sought to say and do", he added, "and we need to look for the best way of building bridges here".
Theology of Unity
Much of the Archbishop's address was devoted to an exposition of the theology of unity. Unity is more than "peaceful diversity" and "mutual forbearance" based on loyalty or warmth or tolerance, he said: it is "being summoned and drawn into the same place before the Father's throne". Christian unity is "first and above all...union with Jesus Christ; accepting his gift of grace and forgiveness, learning from him how to speak to his Father, standing where he stands by the power of the Spirit". "We are one with one another", he continued, "because we are called into union with the one Christ and stand in his unique place - stand in the Way, the Truth, and the Life".
This unity "is inseparable from truth", the Archbishop asserted. Christians had separated in the 16th century, in 1930s Germany, and in 1980s South Africa "because the concluded, painfully as well as (often) angrily, that something had been substituted for the grace of Christ - moral and ritual achievement, or racial or social pride, as if there were...a way of securing our place before God by something other than Jesus Christ".
How does this affect the present situation in the Communion? "A fellow-Christian may believe they [sic] have a profound fresh insight", the Archbishop observed, and "seek to persuade others about it". "A healthy church", he asserted, "gives space for such exchanges". But "confusion arises when what is claimed as a new discernment presents itself as carrying the Church's authority.
That is why pleas for moratoria on same-sex blessings, the consecration of homosexuals as bishops, and cross-border interventions have "found wide support across the range of views represented in the indaba groups", Archbp. Williams asserted. "The Church in its wider life can't be committed definitively by the judgment of some; but when a new thing is enshrined, in whatever way, in public order and ministry, it will look like a definitive commitment".
What is needed is what the text of Lambeth 1998's resolution I.10 actually called for, the Archbishop said: "space for study and free discussion without pressure, pastoral patience and respect, unwillingness to change what has been received in faith from Scripture and tradition". Nor can a traditional understanding and a new one be considered "two equal options", he said: "the practice and public language of the Church act always as a reminder that the onus of proof is on those who seek a new understanding".
"To say that the would-be innovator must be heard gratefully and respectfully", Archbp. Williams said, "is simply to acknowledge the debt we always owe to those who ask unfamiliar questions, because they prompt us to explore our tradition more deeply". That is why its seems "widely agreed" in this Conference "that internal pastoral and liturgical care, strengthened by arrangements like the suggested Communion Partners in the USA and the proposed Pastoral Forum", he said, "are the way we should go" with regard to interventions across provinces "if we want to avoid further ecclesial confusion". For interventions, the Archbishop said, suggest "that nothing in a province, no provision made or pastoral care offered, can be recognizably and adequately Christian" - and that seems a "grave breach of charity".
"So I hope that, if part of the message of Lambeth '08 is that we need to develop covenantal commitments, and that one aspect of this may be what you could call covenanted restraint", the Archbishop summarized, "this will be seen in the context of a unity not enforced but given in Christ".
Covenant of Faith
A covenanted future, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested, "has the potential to make us more of a church; more of a `catholic' church in the proper sense, a church, that is, which understands its ministry and service and sacraments as united and interdependent throughout the world". To move in that direction would be both "weighty" and "prophetic": "the vision of a global Church of interdependent communities is not the vision of an ecclesiastical world empire - or even a colonial relic...", he said. This "global horizon" matters "because churches without this are always in danger of slowly surrendering to the culture around them and losing sight of their calling to challenge that culture.
In this regard, the Archbishop drew attention to "the massive courage and integrity" of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe in the face of "an oppressive regime and a culture of violence".
But that is "a powerful reminder", Archbp. Williams said, that "our global, Catholic faith affirms that the image of God is the same everywhere. "This is the Catholic faith", the Archbishop asserted, citing the examples of "the Zimbabwean woman beaten by police in her own church", "the woman raising her family in a squatter's settlement in Lima or Buenos Aires, and others: "that what is owed to them is no different from, no less than what is owed to any of the rest of us".
And thus it is "our calling", Archbp. Williams said, "to make that further step of a `covenant of faith' that will promise to our fellow human beings the generosity God has shown us; that will honour the absolute and non-negotiable dignities of all and strengthen us to resist any policy or strategy that implies that what is good and just for me is not good and just for all my human neighbors".
No 'Quick Fix'
Asked at the press conference following his address how he felt the Conference had come out, Archbp. Williams said it had "worked out very much as I'd hoped and prayed". It did not evade the questions; neither did it try to achieve a "quick fix".
The Conference was designed, the Archbishop noted, on three assumptions: that the bishops needed to speak to one another in a safe place, that the Communion needed to know the depth of their commitment to it, and that the Communion needed to know what course of action they might deem acceptable.
Moratorium
"Sacrifice has to be accepted voluntarily", the Archbishop responded to a question about whether it was right for the lives and vocations of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Anglicans to be sacrificed for the unity of the Communion. The question is what people are willing to give for the sake of the global fellowship.
Asked to clarify whether a moratorium on same-sex blessings or on authorizing public rites for such blessings was being called for, Archbp. Williams reiterated his observation that a liturgical formulary suggests that this is where the Communion stands, but said that this would not preclude a "variety of pastoral response".
The proposal gives no time certain or set of conditions for lifting the moratoriums, the Archbishop acknowledged. It is "very difficult to come to a common mind", he observed: it is likely they would be in place "unless and until a wider consensus emerges".
Responding to a concern that The Episcopal Church was the object of two of the three proposed moratoria, Archbp. Williams stated that the "current practice" of certain US dioceses "puts our relations under strain", and stands in the way of resolution.
The Archbishop added that, while some say the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of those sexually active with persons of the same sex is "simply" a matter of human rights, that is "an assumption I can't accept".
If the North American churches do not accept the need for the moratoria, the Archbishop stated, "we are no further forward...".
The Covenant Process
How long will it take to carry out the Covenant process? The text should be finalized in the next twelve months, the Archbishop responded. The decision by the Provinces whether or not to buy in on it depends on the "rhythms" of their synods, some of which meet several times a year, and others only every three years. But he would expect a "round up", he said, in 2012 or 2013.
GAFCON
Responding to a question about how he might seek to bring in the GAFCON bishops, the Archbishop said that he will begin by writing a pastoral letter. He spoke of ongoing exchanges with many who had attended GAFCON, including many who were present at Lambeth, and specifically acknowleged that he had held conversations with Archbp. Greg Venables.
The Primates
Paragraph 151 of the Reflections document, a reporter noted, seems to suggest some desire among the bishops to limit the authority of the Primates' Meeting. Archbp. Williams said that the Primates have met regularly over the years: there's nothing special about his convening it. He noted that the last Lambeth Conference had asked the Primates "to do a bit more", but it is the way of such things that when they did "it's not always well received". The real issue, he opined, is balancing the roles of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council.
Asked if he were calling the meeting in order to see if the Primates of Nigeria and Uganda would show up, the Archbishop said he had "no agenda" in calling the meeting.
With respect to finances, Archbp. Williams noted that Primates' Meetings are covered in the Communion's budget. While he did not have details on Lambeth's costs, he said he knows there is a "shortfall", and is looking into meeting it.
Dialogue with Rome
With regard to Rome's recent assertion that "full visible unity" with the Communion was no longer a realistic goal for ecumenical dialogue with the Communion, Archbp. Williams said that Rome had not suspended it or given up on it. The (Roman) Catholic Church is looking to see the results of Lambeth, and he had spoken with Pope Benedict XVI about a possible ARCIC III. The Archbishop affirmed his conviction that a covenanted future would make the Communion "more like a Church", "in the sense that...it represents a challenge to the tendency of local churches to get trapped in the local context".
The Archbishop of Canterbury
In reply to the reporter who asked if he would still be in office when the next Lambeth Conference convenes in 2018, the Archbishop explained that could not really be expected to answer that question. Archbp. Williams said that his ministry as Archbishop of Canterbury "is a task that was set me", and he would continue in it until he is set a different course.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Concerned Roman Catholics Call on Knights of Columbus to Expel Pro-Abortion Politicians
MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 2 /Christian Newswire/ -- Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc. (CRCOA) condemn the Knights of Columbus for their continuing failure to expel pro- abortion and pro-homosexual politicians. The K of C meet in the Hilton Quebec Hotel and in the Quebec City Convention Centre from August 5-7 for their annual Supreme Convention.
Ken Fisher, President of CRCOA, said: "With 50 million abortions since Roe v Wade in 1973, the Knights of Columbus has failed the unborn children miserably. The K of C, founded by Fr. McGivney, ought to be a major force in the pro-life, pro-family movement. Instead, in protecting pro-abortion politician members it has joined the lowest common denominator - "the Culture of Death" - as the late Pope John Paul II named it.
"CRCOA has observed the great decline in Catholic values among the 1.7 million member K of C, which has long claimed to be "the strong right arm of the Catholic Church". Perversely, the K of C has welcomed to its ranks a great number of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual politicians in exchange for a charitable tax-free status on its life insurance business. The charitable work is done, and most of the money is raised, by volunteer K of C members at local and state level - while Supreme Knight Carl Anderson received $1,120,045 in K of C compensation last year", added Fisher.
Boston CRCOA member John O'Gorman said: "Supreme Knight Carl Anderson ignored the situation of 15/Jul/08 when K of C members in the Massachusetts State Senate voted to repeal a 1913 marriage law. State Reps repealed it on 29/Jul/08. The repeal, signed into law by Gov. Deval Patrick on 31/Jul/08, allows same-sex couples from all the 50 states to marry in Massachusetts."
"On 14/June/07, at least 16 members of the K of C in the legislature defeated the efforts of 170,000 signatories to put traditional marriage on the 2008 ballot. 170,000 signatures far exceeded the required number to place the question on the ballot! Seven of these K of C politicians have the highest ratings from the USA's biggest abortionists, Planned Parenthood, who performed 289,000 abortions in 2006. On 4/May/08, Supreme Advocate (lawyer) Paul Devin, who gave money to Pro-Abortion politicians Ted and Joe Kennedy (OpenSecrets.org), ruled that a State Convention resolution by Grand Knight Joe Craven to suspend pro-abortion and pro-gay politicians was 'unconstitutional'", said O'Gorman.
Fisher added: "As Supreme Knight for the past 7 years, Carl Anderson has refused to expel the pro- abortion and pro-sodomite politicians and members. They, Anderson and Devin must go! Supreme Chaplain Bishop William Lori and the other bishops must excommunicate the pro-abortion and pro- homosexual politicians and members." Fisher concluded, "Devin is an Attorney and as such he should know Parliamentary Procedure, but he apparently chose to ignore that when he made that ruling. How can a Resolution that merely calls for the Knights to honor their own constitution's article 162.7 be ruled unconstitutional!"
Christian Newswire
Ken Fisher, President of CRCOA, said: "With 50 million abortions since Roe v Wade in 1973, the Knights of Columbus has failed the unborn children miserably. The K of C, founded by Fr. McGivney, ought to be a major force in the pro-life, pro-family movement. Instead, in protecting pro-abortion politician members it has joined the lowest common denominator - "the Culture of Death" - as the late Pope John Paul II named it.
"CRCOA has observed the great decline in Catholic values among the 1.7 million member K of C, which has long claimed to be "the strong right arm of the Catholic Church". Perversely, the K of C has welcomed to its ranks a great number of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual politicians in exchange for a charitable tax-free status on its life insurance business. The charitable work is done, and most of the money is raised, by volunteer K of C members at local and state level - while Supreme Knight Carl Anderson received $1,120,045 in K of C compensation last year", added Fisher.
Boston CRCOA member John O'Gorman said: "Supreme Knight Carl Anderson ignored the situation of 15/Jul/08 when K of C members in the Massachusetts State Senate voted to repeal a 1913 marriage law. State Reps repealed it on 29/Jul/08. The repeal, signed into law by Gov. Deval Patrick on 31/Jul/08, allows same-sex couples from all the 50 states to marry in Massachusetts."
"On 14/June/07, at least 16 members of the K of C in the legislature defeated the efforts of 170,000 signatories to put traditional marriage on the 2008 ballot. 170,000 signatures far exceeded the required number to place the question on the ballot! Seven of these K of C politicians have the highest ratings from the USA's biggest abortionists, Planned Parenthood, who performed 289,000 abortions in 2006. On 4/May/08, Supreme Advocate (lawyer) Paul Devin, who gave money to Pro-Abortion politicians Ted and Joe Kennedy (OpenSecrets.org), ruled that a State Convention resolution by Grand Knight Joe Craven to suspend pro-abortion and pro-gay politicians was 'unconstitutional'", said O'Gorman.
Fisher added: "As Supreme Knight for the past 7 years, Carl Anderson has refused to expel the pro- abortion and pro-sodomite politicians and members. They, Anderson and Devin must go! Supreme Chaplain Bishop William Lori and the other bishops must excommunicate the pro-abortion and pro- homosexual politicians and members." Fisher concluded, "Devin is an Attorney and as such he should know Parliamentary Procedure, but he apparently chose to ignore that when he made that ruling. How can a Resolution that merely calls for the Knights to honor their own constitution's article 162.7 be ruled unconstitutional!"
Christian Newswire
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Lambeth Report Canterbury: Saturday, August 2nd
From www.forwardinfaith.com
FiF International News
Lambeth Conference - 15
Aug 2, 2008
"Beating About the Bush"
The Lambeth bishops today continued their discussion of the theme they took up yesterday: "The Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process".
This morning, Archbp. Aspinall reported, the discussion was focussed on the three proposals of the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG): the three moratoria, the establishment of a Pastoral Forum, and the role of the Communion's Instruments of Unity.
The archbishop said that while "widely different views" had been expressed in his own indaba group, he was impressed with "the tone in which engagement happened".
Archbishop Paul Kwong of Hong Kong said that he had found much that was good in his first Lambeth Conference, especially the opportunity to discuss views about Communion matters in the direct relation to the Bible text in the Bible studies.
Much time had been spent sharing and listening, the archbishop said. But sometimes it seemed that the Conference was "beating about the bush": he wishes that there were "more time to talk about direct actions".
Archbp. Kwong would like to see "all parties concerned" sit down, and work out some concrete resolution, perhaps aided by a "team with some diplomatic skills". He respects what people have chosen to do and will choose to do as "correct in their contexts". But he would like to see them ask, "what concessions can you make for the sake of the integrity of the Communion, for the sake of Our Lord, and for the sake of the Church?".
It would have been good, the archbishop said, if the Lambeth Conference had been able to offer suggestions about where we can go from here. "I treasure" the listening process, he concluded, but "something concrete, some action" needs to be taken.
Universal Comprehension
Bp. Charles Jenkins said that he had witnessed something of "the miracle of Pentecost" - "universal comprehension", at this Conference.
As a result of the "visionary" and "brave" leadership of Archbishop Williams, the bishop continued, "small voices from the side" are speaking and being heard. In his indaba group, all are "invited and encouraged to speak".
"Yes, there are differences", Bp. Jenkins said, but, in Rabbi Sacks' words, "we are willing to share a common fate"; and that willingness is expressed in their commitment to mission. This is, in his view, a New Testament value, and "something of a miracle".
Archbishop Williams, the bishop concluded, is "leading like a lion and teaching us about Jesus".
Concessions
Asked what sort of concessions or sacrifices he thought the sides would need to make, Archbp. Kwong said he could not speak for the parties concerned. But he did offer an illustration: the decision by the Bishop of Hong Kong and the Revd Florence Li, in the face of strong criticism of her ordination in the 1940s as the first woman priest in the Communion, that she would no longer exercise her ministry. Each Province has a right to do as it thinks best, the archbishop said: "we are not talking about rights", but about "what concession or sacrifice" it would be willing to make.
Responding to another question, the archbishop said he was not calling for plenary debates and votes. He does not have a "framework" in mind, but simply wishes there had been some opportunity at Lambeth "to work on some suggestions" that might help someone do the sort of diplomatic work the Secretary-General of the United Nations does. Bp. Jenkins commented that American bishops in his indaba group have talked about the concessions and sacrifices they might make, and so have the bishops from the Sudan - and "without selling out".
But what about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) Anglicans, the presenters were asked: where are they in this discussion? Archbp. Kwong reiterated that a person or team needed to be found, "to go around, to visit, to talk to all concerned" to see what they are willing to sacrifice. Pressed on the difference between sacrificing oneself and requiring others to sacrifice themselves, he cited a Chinese proverb to the effect that "sometimes the little `we' has to sacrifice for the big `We'".
Bp. Jenkins noted that gay people were part of these discussions, and expressed his personal commitment to "minimize the impact". The difference between voluntary action and the imposition of someone else's decision is "obvious" he said.
Most Contentious
Responding to a question, Archbp. Aspinall said that the Appendix was proving to be the "most contentious" part of the draft Covenant. It is "not setting out to be punitive": there are no sanctions. It outlines "an opt-in process", and if a Province chooses to relinquish its participation, or is judged by the ACC to have done so, an immediate process of reconciliation would begin.
The Windsor Report had recommended the "voluntary withdrawal" of TEC and ACC participants from the ACC, Archbp. Aspinall reminded the press, only through this Lambeth.
Resisting the Covenant
Asked about Bp. Mouneer Anis' assertion that the only bishops who were resisting the Covenant were the Americans, because they didn't like being told what to do, Bp. Jenkins said that none of the Americans in his indaba group was "unable to accept the idea of covenant", though, he added, "we're not necessarily going to be happy about it". In his estimation, most TEC bishops are willing the accept a Covenant "and the moratorium mentioned therein" [sic].
Bp. Jenkins responded to Archbp. Orombi's assertion that the Archbishop of Canterbury is an instrument of colonialism with a reminder that his "colony" was "primarily French; Spain was the other "major landowner". In his opinion, the archbishop's claim can't be justified. Canterbury's role in the Communion comes from our "commitment to place", for that see is "the place from which our spiritual traditions have come".
Focus on Process
For the last ten or twelve years, one questioner noted, there had been a focus on process, with constant referrals to the next meeting. "What time frame is acceptable"?", he asked.
Archbp. Aspinall said it was hard to say. Different ideas were being floated, he said, such as the creation of a Communion-wide Biblical and theological commission to move around the Provinces and hear their people, much on the model of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, over the next three years. But its report would still need to be received by the Provinces.
"Keep your walking shoes on", Bp. Jenkins opined: the Communion will be walking in the desert for quite a while. And in the end, he suggested, "the `fix' may well be adaptive".
Spouse's Group
Mrs. Margaret Sentamu, the wife of the Archbishop of York, spoke about the spouse's group, which followed the same subject matter as the bishops, but in a different way, by sharing stories and through drama.
Mrs. Sentamu mentioned a number of the stories that had been shared. One professional woman told of leaving her job and her homeland when her husband was made a bishop in another country - a ministry which often has him away for six weeks at a time. Another told how she had moved with her husband so as to exercise a ministry of reconciliation between two warring groups; her husband was arrested, and released only through the good offices of a previous Archbishop of Canterbury. "It humbles us" who enjoy the privileges of life in the global North to hear these stories, Mrs. Sentamu said.
The spouses' creation of "The Vine", Mrs. Sentamu said, illustrates their "interconnectedness". The spouses share the burdens of their spouses. And they have great opportunities, she added in response to a question: they are not just "doing things in the back room", but "getting through to the bigger platform".
The spouses' "immense diversity", Mrs. Sentamu concluded, is not "a barrier, but a blessing".
Asked about those who are not here, Mrs. Sentamu said "we are sorry that our spouses are not able to come", and said those present were sending messages that they were missed and are being prayed for.
Did she have a word of encouragement for priests' spouses? That face-to-face encounter creates "strong bonds that hold you together" - which is why Lambeth "has been a worthwhile enterprise".
The bishops' spouses "do play an important role" in the Anglican Communion, Mrs. Sentamu said in response to a final question "and they are already playing it" by modelling reconciliation and unity.
Reflections Group
Archbp. Aspinall announced that the Reflections Group would present the remainder of its report at a 5.00 pm hearing, at which copies will be made available to the press. Lambeth's final press conference, he said, will be held immediately after the tomorrow's plenary session, at about 4.30 in the afternoon.
FiF International News
Lambeth Conference - 15
Aug 2, 2008
"Beating About the Bush"
The Lambeth bishops today continued their discussion of the theme they took up yesterday: "The Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process".
This morning, Archbp. Aspinall reported, the discussion was focussed on the three proposals of the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG): the three moratoria, the establishment of a Pastoral Forum, and the role of the Communion's Instruments of Unity.
The archbishop said that while "widely different views" had been expressed in his own indaba group, he was impressed with "the tone in which engagement happened".
Archbishop Paul Kwong of Hong Kong said that he had found much that was good in his first Lambeth Conference, especially the opportunity to discuss views about Communion matters in the direct relation to the Bible text in the Bible studies.
Much time had been spent sharing and listening, the archbishop said. But sometimes it seemed that the Conference was "beating about the bush": he wishes that there were "more time to talk about direct actions".
Archbp. Kwong would like to see "all parties concerned" sit down, and work out some concrete resolution, perhaps aided by a "team with some diplomatic skills". He respects what people have chosen to do and will choose to do as "correct in their contexts". But he would like to see them ask, "what concessions can you make for the sake of the integrity of the Communion, for the sake of Our Lord, and for the sake of the Church?".
It would have been good, the archbishop said, if the Lambeth Conference had been able to offer suggestions about where we can go from here. "I treasure" the listening process, he concluded, but "something concrete, some action" needs to be taken.
Universal Comprehension
Bp. Charles Jenkins said that he had witnessed something of "the miracle of Pentecost" - "universal comprehension", at this Conference.
As a result of the "visionary" and "brave" leadership of Archbishop Williams, the bishop continued, "small voices from the side" are speaking and being heard. In his indaba group, all are "invited and encouraged to speak".
"Yes, there are differences", Bp. Jenkins said, but, in Rabbi Sacks' words, "we are willing to share a common fate"; and that willingness is expressed in their commitment to mission. This is, in his view, a New Testament value, and "something of a miracle".
Archbishop Williams, the bishop concluded, is "leading like a lion and teaching us about Jesus".
Concessions
Asked what sort of concessions or sacrifices he thought the sides would need to make, Archbp. Kwong said he could not speak for the parties concerned. But he did offer an illustration: the decision by the Bishop of Hong Kong and the Revd Florence Li, in the face of strong criticism of her ordination in the 1940s as the first woman priest in the Communion, that she would no longer exercise her ministry. Each Province has a right to do as it thinks best, the archbishop said: "we are not talking about rights", but about "what concession or sacrifice" it would be willing to make.
Responding to another question, the archbishop said he was not calling for plenary debates and votes. He does not have a "framework" in mind, but simply wishes there had been some opportunity at Lambeth "to work on some suggestions" that might help someone do the sort of diplomatic work the Secretary-General of the United Nations does. Bp. Jenkins commented that American bishops in his indaba group have talked about the concessions and sacrifices they might make, and so have the bishops from the Sudan - and "without selling out".
But what about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) Anglicans, the presenters were asked: where are they in this discussion? Archbp. Kwong reiterated that a person or team needed to be found, "to go around, to visit, to talk to all concerned" to see what they are willing to sacrifice. Pressed on the difference between sacrificing oneself and requiring others to sacrifice themselves, he cited a Chinese proverb to the effect that "sometimes the little `we' has to sacrifice for the big `We'".
Bp. Jenkins noted that gay people were part of these discussions, and expressed his personal commitment to "minimize the impact". The difference between voluntary action and the imposition of someone else's decision is "obvious" he said.
Most Contentious
Responding to a question, Archbp. Aspinall said that the Appendix was proving to be the "most contentious" part of the draft Covenant. It is "not setting out to be punitive": there are no sanctions. It outlines "an opt-in process", and if a Province chooses to relinquish its participation, or is judged by the ACC to have done so, an immediate process of reconciliation would begin.
The Windsor Report had recommended the "voluntary withdrawal" of TEC and ACC participants from the ACC, Archbp. Aspinall reminded the press, only through this Lambeth.
Resisting the Covenant
Asked about Bp. Mouneer Anis' assertion that the only bishops who were resisting the Covenant were the Americans, because they didn't like being told what to do, Bp. Jenkins said that none of the Americans in his indaba group was "unable to accept the idea of covenant", though, he added, "we're not necessarily going to be happy about it". In his estimation, most TEC bishops are willing the accept a Covenant "and the moratorium mentioned therein" [sic].
Bp. Jenkins responded to Archbp. Orombi's assertion that the Archbishop of Canterbury is an instrument of colonialism with a reminder that his "colony" was "primarily French; Spain was the other "major landowner". In his opinion, the archbishop's claim can't be justified. Canterbury's role in the Communion comes from our "commitment to place", for that see is "the place from which our spiritual traditions have come".
Focus on Process
For the last ten or twelve years, one questioner noted, there had been a focus on process, with constant referrals to the next meeting. "What time frame is acceptable"?", he asked.
Archbp. Aspinall said it was hard to say. Different ideas were being floated, he said, such as the creation of a Communion-wide Biblical and theological commission to move around the Provinces and hear their people, much on the model of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, over the next three years. But its report would still need to be received by the Provinces.
"Keep your walking shoes on", Bp. Jenkins opined: the Communion will be walking in the desert for quite a while. And in the end, he suggested, "the `fix' may well be adaptive".
Spouse's Group
Mrs. Margaret Sentamu, the wife of the Archbishop of York, spoke about the spouse's group, which followed the same subject matter as the bishops, but in a different way, by sharing stories and through drama.
Mrs. Sentamu mentioned a number of the stories that had been shared. One professional woman told of leaving her job and her homeland when her husband was made a bishop in another country - a ministry which often has him away for six weeks at a time. Another told how she had moved with her husband so as to exercise a ministry of reconciliation between two warring groups; her husband was arrested, and released only through the good offices of a previous Archbishop of Canterbury. "It humbles us" who enjoy the privileges of life in the global North to hear these stories, Mrs. Sentamu said.
The spouses' creation of "The Vine", Mrs. Sentamu said, illustrates their "interconnectedness". The spouses share the burdens of their spouses. And they have great opportunities, she added in response to a question: they are not just "doing things in the back room", but "getting through to the bigger platform".
The spouses' "immense diversity", Mrs. Sentamu concluded, is not "a barrier, but a blessing".
Asked about those who are not here, Mrs. Sentamu said "we are sorry that our spouses are not able to come", and said those present were sending messages that they were missed and are being prayed for.
Did she have a word of encouragement for priests' spouses? That face-to-face encounter creates "strong bonds that hold you together" - which is why Lambeth "has been a worthwhile enterprise".
The bishops' spouses "do play an important role" in the Anglican Communion, Mrs. Sentamu said in response to a final question "and they are already playing it" by modelling reconciliation and unity.
Reflections Group
Archbp. Aspinall announced that the Reflections Group would present the remainder of its report at a 5.00 pm hearing, at which copies will be made available to the press. Lambeth's final press conference, he said, will be held immediately after the tomorrow's plenary session, at about 4.30 in the afternoon.
Lambeth Report Canterbury: Friday, August 1st
From www.forwardinfaith.com
FiF International News
Lambeth Conference - 14
Aug 2, 2008
"Fostering our Common Life:
the Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process"
For the second time during the Conference, the bishops' indaba groups are meeting twice during the day today to discuss the topic "Fostering our Common Life: the Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process".
Archbp. Aspinall said that his indaba had broken into smaller groups to look at the St. Andrew's draft of the proposed Covenant. His small group agreed "in principle" with the text, but did offer some editorial suggestions. He saw this as a microcosm of the Conference's "commitment to living together as a Communion, and working things through as a Communion".
Covenant Design Group
Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, the chair of the Covenant Design Group (CDG), outlined the genesis of the draft. The Group had been commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in response to the suggestion made in the Windsor Report. It worked in the context of "some dispute and some fragmentation", in a Communion which has "no mechanism for solving our problems" except "holding meetings": "no legal framework, no magisterium that says, you've had your discussion, this is it".
The introduction to the draft, Archbp. Gomez stated, discusses the theology of communion, and of "autonomy in communion", on the basis of the Windsor Report. The first section seeks to describe Anglicans' inherited faith; the second talks about our common mission, and the third outlines "the consequences and commitments" that "flow out of working together".
The document asks the bishops, "Is this the faith we have been taught, and profess?" It is meant to help define "who we are as Anglicans", the archbishop said, for the sake both of our self-understanding and of our ecumenical relationships. In his view, "Anglicanism is Reformed Catholicism".
The CDG's has worked to renew "our commitment to journey forward together". The document is future-directed, Archbp. Gomez noted: it does not address the present issues.
The archbishop believes there is a "general consensus" within the Communion about the way forward, though there is still argument about the details. The CDG will meet in September to do more work on the text. The Provinces have been asked to forward their comments by March; the Group will meet in April to compose a third draft, which will then be submitted to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting in May.
The "Soul" of the Covenant
Bishop Trevor Bawanga of Botswana spoke to the "soul" of the Covenant. He noted that there is consensus within his indaba group about the "need to uphold the Communion" and preserve "its rich heritage".
Bp. Trevor described the work in progress as a "covenant of friendship". Citing a story by Maya Angelou, he said it would help enable Anglicans from different cultures to "discover each other and become friends". It is not to be a covenant of enemies who need to be penalized, but one "of respect, of mutual reverence".
The Covenant, Bp. Trevor urged, "enhances the beauty of Anglicanism", its "capacity to absorb different viewpoints"; it is meant to be "something that will give life", and not destroy.
Is the Covenant Design Group Listening?
In his opinion, Archbp. Gomez said in response to a question, the bishops are serious about a Covenant: over a dozen Provinces have responded formally, verbal input has been received from a block of African Provinces, and individuals and groups have also submitted responses.
Is the CDG listening to the voices that are not at Lambeth, such as that of Archbp. Orombi?, the Archbp. Gomez was asked. The CDG dealt with the issue he raised in both drafts, he answered; and its work was the result of Communion-wide consultation, not driven by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Church of England.
The archbishop agreed with a reporter's observation that there has been some "waxing and waning" with regard to the historic Anglican formularies, but said that there has been no attempt to deny that they are at the heart of Anglicanism. Archbp. Aspinall noted that the language has been changed to take into account the different legal status of the various formularies in different Provinces.
Asked if a document can be built upon "a principle that is incorrect", the principle of preserving full autonomy while seeking full community, Archbp. Drexel Gomez said that in voluntarily entering the Covenant the Provinces recognize the common good, and "will do nothing to break up the common good". Archbp. Aspinall noted that "autonomy" means "self-rule": to adopt the covenant is an act of voluntary self-limitation.
Can the Communion Stay Together?
Can the Communion stay together during the six years it may take The Episcopal Church's General Convention to act on a Covenant?, Archbp. Gomez was asked. He responded that it will, noting that up until last May all the groups represented at GAFCON had responded positively to the principle of a Covenant. "We're not in a hurry", Bp. Trevor added, "we want to do a good job".
Asked what was said in the indabas about what would happen if TEC or some other Province refused to sign on to the Covenant, Archbp. Gomez said "that decision will have to be made by the Communion". But he had always felt the CDG needed to "make space for those who can't sign up yet". Archbp. Aspinall observed that "it will be difficult in every Province of the Communion", because autonomy is guarded jealously.
Asked what would happen when the Covenant is violated, the archbishop said that appendix "tries to set out the ways these things will be dealt with". The CDG has concentrated on setting the framework, so that present draft is quite preliminary; more work will be done at the September meeting. At this point, he said, the CDG has not directly addressed the issue of diminished status. Archbp. Aspinall added that people who entered the Covenant voluntarily would be likely to observe it.
The Windsor Continuation Group and the Covenant Design Group
Is there a disconnect between the Windsor Continuation Group's work, which looks to the present, and the CDG's work, which looks to the future? Archbp. Gomez said that while the WCG is dealing with present issues and recommending actions as the Communion moves towards a Covenant, it is not "pre-empting" it.
Responding to a question about another version of a covenant that is circulating here, Archbp. Gomez said that the CDG's draft is "formulated on a principle of mutuality and commitment": it is "not a legalistic document", he insisted, and it is "not a punitive document". The covenant, Archbp. Aspinall observed, "will address the issue of space" - space for different Provinces and different cultures to develop in their local context.
Archbishop Gomez said in response to another question that although he will retire at the end of this year, he plans to continue as chair of the CDG at least until May.
The Spouses
Alice Chung, the wife of Bp. Roger of Madagascar, reported on the spouses' session on "how God is equipping God's people for his church". The spouses heard about the church's efforts to care for women raped during the war in Congo and to gather and find homes for orphans in Burundi.
In her own Madagascar, Mrs. Chung continued, the church is creating income-generating projects which empower women by teaching them both basic skills, such as reading, and marketable skills, like embroidery. This effort, she said, drew on her own professional background as the former product development manager of a knitwear factory in Mauritius.
Global South Bishops
This afternoon Archbp. Mouneer Anis, speaking for himself and not as the presiding bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, met with the press. The bishop expressed his support for Archbishop Rowan Williams who, he said, is doing his best to preserve the unity of the Communion and resolve issues, and the many positives of the Lambeth Conference - not least the opportunity for the Global South bishops, of whom he is president, to meet alongside others in preparation for their gathering in 2009.
But at the same time, the bishop said, "it is not easy to be here". "Gay and lesbian activists" are "everywhere", he asserted, although when asked he could not say how many were present. And traditionalists, he said, "are the ones who are being blamed" for causing other issues to be left behind by pressing one issue.
The issue of sexuality, Bp. Anis said, is "a very superficial symptom of much deeper illness": "we are not united about the essentials of our faith". Some "friends", he observed, "find it difficult" to say that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The church is being driven by the "morals of the culture", not the morals of the Bible, the bishop continued. If this is allowed "we would lose our distinctiveness as a church", meant to be light in darkness and salt to preserve society.
There can be no "faithful relationships", Bp. Anis contended, without faithfulness to God and to His Word, from which faithfulness to one another is derived. Fidelity to God requires fidelity to His purposes in creation.
Traditionalists, the bishop said, are compared to those who defended slavery. But slavery came not from God, but from human sin. The innovators' agenda leaves human beings in a different form of slavery: "slavery to lust, slavery to the desires of our flesh".
"American friends", the bishop asserted, "are rejecting and resisting the idea of the covenant" because they don't want anything that will "make them accountable to the Communion". The bishop commended the work of the WCG as "so faithful and so honest" in its assessment of the situation. "We are a dysfunctional family", and a Covenant is needed to prevent future crises.
Asked if individuals are healed by "good intentions" or by "positive interventions", Bp. Anis, said his work as a medical doctor had taught him that healing sometimes requires "unpleasant intervention". He was still waiting to see if there would be a "positive intervention" here, he said, but it seems more likely that it will occur at the meeting of the ACC.
Bp. Anis referred to a study of 200 homosexuals by Robert Spitzer which concluded that reparative therapy can be effective. But he also acknowledged both that this was not his area of medical competence, and that the study had failed to convince the American Psychiatric Association to restore homosexuality to its list of psychiatric disorders.
He had not attended GAFCON in part because of conflicts caused by its schedule change, the bishop said. But he was also concerned that it might divide the Global South, which he wishes to see "intact, growing closer, growing stronger". Those who did take part and those who didn't, he noted, are still working together, because they have "the same foundations". He saw nothing to the assertion that the Global South was being set against GAFCON.
Staying Away from Lambeth
Archbp. Orombi had said he could be heard more loudly by staying away from Lambeth. Bp. Anis responded that his absence and that of many others gave proof that "we are a wounded Communion". He had hope they would all be here - their voice would be "much more valued" - but "they still speak in their silence".
Asked about those who describe the innovators' attempts to press their agenda as "a new colonialism", Bp. Anis said, "I do agree", "they really do want to put this kind of life style upon us". The church, he said, had not blessed everything that came along in the first two millenia, and it should not do so now. "When you bless something", he said, "it grows". The church had kept silent in the face of divorce and cohabitation, for instance, and both have now become "a norm".
Bp. Anis suggested that a question about whether he had ever counseled an abused spouse to move out, to get the abuser's attention should be referred to GAFCON. But he took the opportunity to speak to what he described as the "confusion" of objections to the gay agenda and "homophobia". "We love, we welcome homosexuals as long as they are open to the will of God", he insisted; "all of us need the grace of God", and he would deny it to noone.
With reference to his statement at Uganda Christian University that Africa is the future of the Anglican Communion, Bp. Anis noted the recent work of Thomas C. Oden showing that for the first thousand years it was Africa that had shaped the Christian mind. If Africa is faithful to its heritage, he said, "we would be able to shape the Christian mind in the third millenium".
FiF International News
Lambeth Conference - 14
Aug 2, 2008
"Fostering our Common Life:
the Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process"
For the second time during the Conference, the bishops' indaba groups are meeting twice during the day today to discuss the topic "Fostering our Common Life: the Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process".
Archbp. Aspinall said that his indaba had broken into smaller groups to look at the St. Andrew's draft of the proposed Covenant. His small group agreed "in principle" with the text, but did offer some editorial suggestions. He saw this as a microcosm of the Conference's "commitment to living together as a Communion, and working things through as a Communion".
Covenant Design Group
Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, the chair of the Covenant Design Group (CDG), outlined the genesis of the draft. The Group had been commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in response to the suggestion made in the Windsor Report. It worked in the context of "some dispute and some fragmentation", in a Communion which has "no mechanism for solving our problems" except "holding meetings": "no legal framework, no magisterium that says, you've had your discussion, this is it".
The introduction to the draft, Archbp. Gomez stated, discusses the theology of communion, and of "autonomy in communion", on the basis of the Windsor Report. The first section seeks to describe Anglicans' inherited faith; the second talks about our common mission, and the third outlines "the consequences and commitments" that "flow out of working together".
The document asks the bishops, "Is this the faith we have been taught, and profess?" It is meant to help define "who we are as Anglicans", the archbishop said, for the sake both of our self-understanding and of our ecumenical relationships. In his view, "Anglicanism is Reformed Catholicism".
The CDG's has worked to renew "our commitment to journey forward together". The document is future-directed, Archbp. Gomez noted: it does not address the present issues.
The archbishop believes there is a "general consensus" within the Communion about the way forward, though there is still argument about the details. The CDG will meet in September to do more work on the text. The Provinces have been asked to forward their comments by March; the Group will meet in April to compose a third draft, which will then be submitted to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting in May.
The "Soul" of the Covenant
Bishop Trevor Bawanga of Botswana spoke to the "soul" of the Covenant. He noted that there is consensus within his indaba group about the "need to uphold the Communion" and preserve "its rich heritage".
Bp. Trevor described the work in progress as a "covenant of friendship". Citing a story by Maya Angelou, he said it would help enable Anglicans from different cultures to "discover each other and become friends". It is not to be a covenant of enemies who need to be penalized, but one "of respect, of mutual reverence".
The Covenant, Bp. Trevor urged, "enhances the beauty of Anglicanism", its "capacity to absorb different viewpoints"; it is meant to be "something that will give life", and not destroy.
Is the Covenant Design Group Listening?
In his opinion, Archbp. Gomez said in response to a question, the bishops are serious about a Covenant: over a dozen Provinces have responded formally, verbal input has been received from a block of African Provinces, and individuals and groups have also submitted responses.
Is the CDG listening to the voices that are not at Lambeth, such as that of Archbp. Orombi?, the Archbp. Gomez was asked. The CDG dealt with the issue he raised in both drafts, he answered; and its work was the result of Communion-wide consultation, not driven by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Church of England.
The archbishop agreed with a reporter's observation that there has been some "waxing and waning" with regard to the historic Anglican formularies, but said that there has been no attempt to deny that they are at the heart of Anglicanism. Archbp. Aspinall noted that the language has been changed to take into account the different legal status of the various formularies in different Provinces.
Asked if a document can be built upon "a principle that is incorrect", the principle of preserving full autonomy while seeking full community, Archbp. Drexel Gomez said that in voluntarily entering the Covenant the Provinces recognize the common good, and "will do nothing to break up the common good". Archbp. Aspinall noted that "autonomy" means "self-rule": to adopt the covenant is an act of voluntary self-limitation.
Can the Communion Stay Together?
Can the Communion stay together during the six years it may take The Episcopal Church's General Convention to act on a Covenant?, Archbp. Gomez was asked. He responded that it will, noting that up until last May all the groups represented at GAFCON had responded positively to the principle of a Covenant. "We're not in a hurry", Bp. Trevor added, "we want to do a good job".
Asked what was said in the indabas about what would happen if TEC or some other Province refused to sign on to the Covenant, Archbp. Gomez said "that decision will have to be made by the Communion". But he had always felt the CDG needed to "make space for those who can't sign up yet". Archbp. Aspinall observed that "it will be difficult in every Province of the Communion", because autonomy is guarded jealously.
Asked what would happen when the Covenant is violated, the archbishop said that appendix "tries to set out the ways these things will be dealt with". The CDG has concentrated on setting the framework, so that present draft is quite preliminary; more work will be done at the September meeting. At this point, he said, the CDG has not directly addressed the issue of diminished status. Archbp. Aspinall added that people who entered the Covenant voluntarily would be likely to observe it.
The Windsor Continuation Group and the Covenant Design Group
Is there a disconnect between the Windsor Continuation Group's work, which looks to the present, and the CDG's work, which looks to the future? Archbp. Gomez said that while the WCG is dealing with present issues and recommending actions as the Communion moves towards a Covenant, it is not "pre-empting" it.
Responding to a question about another version of a covenant that is circulating here, Archbp. Gomez said that the CDG's draft is "formulated on a principle of mutuality and commitment": it is "not a legalistic document", he insisted, and it is "not a punitive document". The covenant, Archbp. Aspinall observed, "will address the issue of space" - space for different Provinces and different cultures to develop in their local context.
Archbishop Gomez said in response to another question that although he will retire at the end of this year, he plans to continue as chair of the CDG at least until May.
The Spouses
Alice Chung, the wife of Bp. Roger of Madagascar, reported on the spouses' session on "how God is equipping God's people for his church". The spouses heard about the church's efforts to care for women raped during the war in Congo and to gather and find homes for orphans in Burundi.
In her own Madagascar, Mrs. Chung continued, the church is creating income-generating projects which empower women by teaching them both basic skills, such as reading, and marketable skills, like embroidery. This effort, she said, drew on her own professional background as the former product development manager of a knitwear factory in Mauritius.
Global South Bishops
This afternoon Archbp. Mouneer Anis, speaking for himself and not as the presiding bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, met with the press. The bishop expressed his support for Archbishop Rowan Williams who, he said, is doing his best to preserve the unity of the Communion and resolve issues, and the many positives of the Lambeth Conference - not least the opportunity for the Global South bishops, of whom he is president, to meet alongside others in preparation for their gathering in 2009.
But at the same time, the bishop said, "it is not easy to be here". "Gay and lesbian activists" are "everywhere", he asserted, although when asked he could not say how many were present. And traditionalists, he said, "are the ones who are being blamed" for causing other issues to be left behind by pressing one issue.
The issue of sexuality, Bp. Anis said, is "a very superficial symptom of much deeper illness": "we are not united about the essentials of our faith". Some "friends", he observed, "find it difficult" to say that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The church is being driven by the "morals of the culture", not the morals of the Bible, the bishop continued. If this is allowed "we would lose our distinctiveness as a church", meant to be light in darkness and salt to preserve society.
There can be no "faithful relationships", Bp. Anis contended, without faithfulness to God and to His Word, from which faithfulness to one another is derived. Fidelity to God requires fidelity to His purposes in creation.
Traditionalists, the bishop said, are compared to those who defended slavery. But slavery came not from God, but from human sin. The innovators' agenda leaves human beings in a different form of slavery: "slavery to lust, slavery to the desires of our flesh".
"American friends", the bishop asserted, "are rejecting and resisting the idea of the covenant" because they don't want anything that will "make them accountable to the Communion". The bishop commended the work of the WCG as "so faithful and so honest" in its assessment of the situation. "We are a dysfunctional family", and a Covenant is needed to prevent future crises.
Asked if individuals are healed by "good intentions" or by "positive interventions", Bp. Anis, said his work as a medical doctor had taught him that healing sometimes requires "unpleasant intervention". He was still waiting to see if there would be a "positive intervention" here, he said, but it seems more likely that it will occur at the meeting of the ACC.
Bp. Anis referred to a study of 200 homosexuals by Robert Spitzer which concluded that reparative therapy can be effective. But he also acknowledged both that this was not his area of medical competence, and that the study had failed to convince the American Psychiatric Association to restore homosexuality to its list of psychiatric disorders.
He had not attended GAFCON in part because of conflicts caused by its schedule change, the bishop said. But he was also concerned that it might divide the Global South, which he wishes to see "intact, growing closer, growing stronger". Those who did take part and those who didn't, he noted, are still working together, because they have "the same foundations". He saw nothing to the assertion that the Global South was being set against GAFCON.
Staying Away from Lambeth
Archbp. Orombi had said he could be heard more loudly by staying away from Lambeth. Bp. Anis responded that his absence and that of many others gave proof that "we are a wounded Communion". He had hope they would all be here - their voice would be "much more valued" - but "they still speak in their silence".
Asked about those who describe the innovators' attempts to press their agenda as "a new colonialism", Bp. Anis said, "I do agree", "they really do want to put this kind of life style upon us". The church, he said, had not blessed everything that came along in the first two millenia, and it should not do so now. "When you bless something", he said, "it grows". The church had kept silent in the face of divorce and cohabitation, for instance, and both have now become "a norm".
Bp. Anis suggested that a question about whether he had ever counseled an abused spouse to move out, to get the abuser's attention should be referred to GAFCON. But he took the opportunity to speak to what he described as the "confusion" of objections to the gay agenda and "homophobia". "We love, we welcome homosexuals as long as they are open to the will of God", he insisted; "all of us need the grace of God", and he would deny it to noone.
With reference to his statement at Uganda Christian University that Africa is the future of the Anglican Communion, Bp. Anis noted the recent work of Thomas C. Oden showing that for the first thousand years it was Africa that had shaped the Christian mind. If Africa is faithful to its heritage, he said, "we would be able to shape the Christian mind in the third millenium".
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