Rowan Williams writes in the Guardian about A new spiritual politics of limits
Terry Philpot writes in Face to Faith about how The Catholic church has done much lately to protect children, but little to protect priests.
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about John Donne on a chill island
In The Times the Credo column is written by the Archbishop of Sydney. No, not that one, the other one. See World Youth Day took Sydney by storm and prayer.
Earlier Simon Barrow wrote on Ekklesia about Peacemaking after Christendom. Read more about his book Fear or Freedom?: Why a Warring Church Must Change.
In the Church Times Giles Fraser wrote Try being transformed by joy.
Quote. Christians ought to throw better parties. Unquote.
Thanks Giles F., could not agree more … all the pained religion is vexed and vexing … curled in upon its own pleasuring sufferings and superiorities, ungenerous to a fault.
This is not much of our life-transforming, world transforming, church community transforming story of a deity who so loved the world, then. Funny how such a strict, plain, and self-regarding method of reading the scriptures so quickly gets us there in the middle of conservative bell jar lands. Thanks.
I don’t seem to be able to find a link to contact the owners of this site. However, two further stories over the last couple of days from the Irish Times might be of interest to those who wish to know the attitude of Irish Bishops at Lambeth 2008.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0725/1216917539183.html
Irish Church leaders split North-South
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0726/1217013245796.html
Archbishop of Dublin and Glenadalough says there is room for differing opinions
The World Youth Day held in Sydney was a marvelous success. One of the best things was the whole thing about how the Australian Catholic church has not consistently meted out justice to the victims of sexual abuse from its priests. Early on the Pope affirmed the Prime Minister for the government’s courage for apologising to the Stolen Generation. About the same time, one of the Catholic bishops accused abuse sufferers of “dwelling crankily on old wounds”. That led to a spate of articles and discussions about how the Pope lauds the secular state for taking responsibility for past abuse,… Read more »
Interestigly, R.C. Archbishop Pell of Sydney happens to be a close friend of Anglican Archbp. Jensen, of the same Australian metropolitan area. they both share a widely-advertised problem with women and gays in the Church. Sad that Archbishop Pell made no mention, in his Times ‘Credo’ article, of the belated apology which had to be made by the visiting Pontiff to the record number of victims of paedophilia by the clergy of his own archdiocese. Perhaps he, too, thinks that all Gays are Paedophiles, and that the very mention of them would have compromised his own stance towards what he… Read more »
I’d like to clarify Cheryl’s comments about the Pope meeting representatives of Broken Rites. He met with them at a mass celebrated in a chapel at St Mary’s Cathedral (or the Archbishop’s house — it wasn’t 100% clear from the reports I saw) at 7am: well before the cathedral would normally be open to the general public. The small congregation included Cardinal Pell, and the representatives of BR had been selected by the archdiocese, apparently on the grounds that they had accepted the diocesan compensation program, which includes agreement clauses that prevent the complainants from speaking to the media or… Read more »
The ‘official Church’ makes it very very hard for people to find G-d. It’s tragic :— The family who’d flown from the UK to publicly raise the issue with Cardinal Pell were not invited to the mass. Indeed, any victims who’d sued the hierarchy in the secular courts — or publicised their cause with the media — were clearly not welcome to this meeting. Furthermore, the meeting was a very late footnote in an otherwise lengthy trip, at least by public diplomatic standards. While the Pope’s public facing of the issue is a refreshing change, many bishops remain unreconstructed in… Read more »
Kieran
You have more insight and understanding of the dynamics. Thanks for sharing them.