Thursday, May 9, 2013

Scrolling around...May 9, 2013

Dallas Willard (1935-2013): A Reader’s Appreciation
...Opening Willard’s book, I read: “The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.” In that sentence, I felt, was my diagnosis. I had grown up in an Evangelical Christian home, I “had faith in Jesus,” but what I didn’t have was a sense of how Jesus’ life connected to the practical problems I faced in my day-to-day existence. I had imbibed what Willard memorably calls a “gospel of sin management,” a message that enabled me to be confident of post-mortem salvation but left me largely clueless as to how to handle my troubles as a teenager...

Albert Mohler: Sneering at Parents, Hiding Behind “Science”—The Emergency Contraception Controversy
Looking for evidence that our society is losing its mind? Just look at the controversy over so-called “emergency contraceptives” and a federal judge’s effort to make these drugs available, over the counter, to girls of any age.

Last month, Judge Edward Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York handed down an order forcing the Food and Drug Administration to make emergency contraceptives, sometimes called the “morning-after pill,” available without a doctor’s prescription or parental permission to girls without any restriction on age.

Judge Korman’s order would open the door for girls as young as 10 or 11 to obtain the morning-after pill without any involvement by either a doctor or a parent. That same girl, of course, could not be given an aspirin in a school clinic without parental permission, much less a simple antibiotic like penicillin. Nevertheless, this federal judge ruled that girls and women of any age must be allowed over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptives...

One of the more remarkable aspects of Francis’ pontificate has been his rhetorical style. Whereas Benedict XVI generally spoke in carefully crafted Latin paragraphs, Pope Francis has adopted a more casual style of Italian—often speaking without prepared notes. Most notable of all, Francis has gone about coining striking phrases that capture spiritual concepts in contemporary terms...

China may not overtake America this century after all
Doubts are growing about whether China can pass the US to become the world's biggest economy this century amid warnings that the country’s 30-year miracle is nearing exhaustion...

'Stop Being a Baby'-Infanticide and the infantilization of women
...All beliefs and intuitions about whether and when abortion is moral or immoral amount to a priori assumptions, although one hopes such assumptions would be informed by an informed understanding of reproductive biology. If you do not think abortion is immoral, it follows that a woman who seeks or obtains an abortion is not morally culpable. To put it more precisely, it follows that seeking or obtaining an abortion cannot be a sufficient condition for moral culpability.

But Myers is making a far broader claim. He is asserting that a woman's seeking an abortion is sufficient to establish that she is not culpable for any consequences that proximately result from her "choice," including the deliberate killing, after birth, of the baby she sought to abort. Myers is, in other words, positing that women who seek abortions are categorically free of culpability.

That is the sort of moral immunity we normally extend to persons who lack the capacity to understand either the consequences of their actions or the difference between right and wrong: very young children, extreme mental defectives and, more controversially, the severely mentally ill. In absolving women seeking abortions of all moral culpability, then, Myers is infantalizing them. Yet even Myers's dubious premise, that women seeking abortions are innocent by definition, does not lead to his monstrous conclusion, that Gosnell is innocent...
Celebrated abortionist Carhart jokes about breaking babies apart with pickaxes and drill bits

Late-Term Abortion Doc Caught Comparing Unborn Baby to “Meat in a Crock Pot”

The mass exodus of Christians from the Muslim world
A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway. Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other.

We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world, much of which prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian, came into being.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”...

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Backyard garden...

Some shots of our spring garden...

Bleeding heart

Ferns
 
Birdbath
 
Cardinal on the cupola of our garage
 
Pictures by Raymond Dague

Monday, May 6, 2013

Scrolling around...May 6, 2013

Albert Mohler: Confessional Integrity and the Stewardship of Words   ...Theological education is a deadly serious business. The stakes are so high. A theological seminary that serves faithfully will be a source of health and life for the church, but an unfaithful seminary will set loose a torrent of trouble, untruth, and sickness upon Christ’s people. Inevitably, the seminaries are the incubators of the church’s future. The teaching imparted to seminarians will shortly be inflicted upon congregations, where the result will be either fruitfulness or barrenness, vitality or lethargy, advance or decline, spiritual life, or spiritual death.

Sadly, the landscape is littered with theological institutions that have poorly taught and have been poorly led. Theological liberalism has destroyed scores of seminaries, divinity schools, and other institutions for the education of the ministry. Many of these schools are now extinct, even as the churches they served have been evacuated. Others linger on, committed to the mission of revising the Christian faith in order to make peace with the spirit of the age. These schools intentionally and boldly deny the pattern of sound words in order to devise new words for a new age — producing a new faith. As J. Gresham Machen rightly observed almost a century ago, we do not really face two rival versions of Christianity. We face Christianity on the one hand and, on the other hand, some other religion that selectively uses Christian words, but is not Christianity...

Doctors warn of 'aggressive' new sexually-transmitted superbug
...The antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea HO41 was reportedly discovered in Japan two years ago in a 31-year-old female sex worker.
"This might be a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly," Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine, recently told CNBC. "Getting gonorrhea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days. This is very dangerous."...

Dear Mr. President
...Mr. President, we are at opposing sides. I did not vote for you, but I heard you many times talk about how we needed to come together. Like it or not, you are my leader, and I try. I hold your office in high esteem, and I am called to pray for whoever holds that office. I try to raise my children to at least see the other side and seek to understand it. I believe in education, not indoctrination. Always seek to walk in another's shoes. I don't believe that you need to agree with someone's point of view to have compassion for that person.

I cannot tell you how disappointed I was when I heard your speech recently at a Planned Parenthood event. You did not seek to see our side. I know you don't want to work with our side, but I had hoped that at least you would try to see it. In the speech, you could have said "I'm grateful it wasn't in a Planned Parenthood clinic where Gosnell worked. Your clinics are sterile and safe. He broke several laws put in place for the safety of women, and I hope he is punished to the full extent of the law." That's what I was honestly expecting from you. Acknowledging the horror while holding to your pro-choice stance and still worshipping Planned Parenthood.

Instead, you called out states that would put any restrictions on abortion clinics. Apparently, the laws Gosnell broke were ones you didn't think should have been there in the first place. Those laws were restrictions on abortions to protect women, and you said in this speech that those types of laws were bad. I ask you, Mr. President, do you believe this Gosnell situation was good for women?

That was your statement we've been waiting for. Then you flippantly threw around God's name, and asked him to bless the work of abortion.

You said people sought to restrict women and take away their choices.

Mr. President, I don't believe you understand. I don't believe you want to understand, or seek to understand...

How The Benghazi Talking Points Were Changed
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes obtains a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the revisions made to the CIA’s talking points on the Benghazi consulate attacks...

Growing religious intolerance, not just dictatorships but also Western countries  The picture the U.S. commission on international religious freedom (USCIRF) is painting in its report on religious freedom in the world, is getting gloomier and gloomier. The USCIRF is an independent federal consultation body established by the International Religious Freedom Act, to monitor religious freedom violations on an international level. Its annual report for 2013 is now out and gives an overview of the state of religious freedom throughout the world, as well as listing the governments that commit the most serious violations against religious freedom...

Blast hits Catholic church in northern Tanzania
A suspected bomb blast struck a Catholic church in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Sunday, police said, wounding a number of people...

Gosnell 'Story' Not New, Babies Born Alive Left to Die for Years
...Creger states that interviews in 1983 with Department of Human Resources (DHR) officials revealed no clear rules for treating infants who had survived abortions. As a result of her expose, Midtown Hospital was asked by DHR to draft new guidelines for caring for surviving babies, though the decision as to how to handle a born-alive infant was ultimately left to the physician...

NFL to re-educate and counsel players on homophobia

Life in the Ruins, and the Dangers of a Euphemism Addiction
...Mollie Hemingway writes for the Get Religion blog, which monitors and analyzes media coverage of religion. She made it her mission a few weeks ago to get the mainstream media talking about the horrific conditions in Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion clinic, on display during the man’s recent trial. After five weeks of testimony, both sides rested in the ongoing trial this Monday. Hemingway talks about the media and the trial and the implications of this all...

Pope tells Argentine Bishops to use doc restricting communion for pro-aborts  ...The text states in paragraph 436 that "we should commit ourselves to ‘eucharistic coherence’, that is, we should be conscious that people cannot receive holy communion and at the same time act or speak against the commandments, in particular when abortion, euthanasia, and other serious crimes against life and family are facilitated. This responsibility applies particularly to legislators, governors, and health professionals."

Pro-life activists were thrilled at the election of Pope Francis given his strong defence of life as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. His decision to bless a child-in-the-womb as one of his first public acts, was also a great sign of hope. Last month, Pope Francis’ Good Friday Stations of the Cross included prayers for conversion for those who promote abortion and euthanasia...

A.S. Haley: Judge's Ruling in St. James Case Puts Cloud on Many Former Episcopal Properties in California

May 2, 2013

Excerpt:
So according to Judge Dunning's May 1 ruling, the trust imposed on all Episcopal parishes in California may only be dissolved in the manner by which it was imposed in the first place -- by a canon duly enacted by General Convention.

Do you understand now the huge impact this ruling could have if it is affirmed on appeal?

According to it, since no sale of any California property owned by an Episcopal parish ever received any release of the Dennis Canon by General Convention, then all of those properties that have been marketed and sold since 1980 -- parking lots, rectors' residences, and auxiliary properties, to say nothing of church buildings themselves -- are still subject to the Dennis Canon trust, no matter what any diocesan bishop or standing committee purported to allow. They were not the General Convention.

To reach her ridiculous conclusion, therefore, that no one diocesan or standing committee may waive or release the Dennis Canon on behalf of any Diocese, or on behalf of the national Church, Judge Dunning has managed at one stroke to cloud the titles of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pieces of property sold and conveyed by Episcopal parishes in California since 1980.

And that is just one problem with her seriously flawed decision, which relies upon circular reasoning and deliberate misreadings of parish governing documents, as well. The decision is not only a travesty of justice, but as I say, it should make title companies all across California fear for all of the various policies they have issued to buyers of church property since 1980.  the rest

GAFCON 2013: Nairobi, Kenya, 21st-26th October 2013

May 4, 2013

The Second Global Anglican Future Conference will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, 21st-26th October 2013. The focus will be on our shared Anglican future, as we engage with the missionary theme, ‘Making Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.’

The first conference, GAFCON 2008, was held in Jerusalem. GAFCON gave birth to a movement, the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. The aims of the GFCA are to proclaim and defend the apostolic gospel within and beyond the Anglican Communion and to recognise and share fellowship with orthodox Anglicans globally, especially those who have been disaffiliated by false teaching and behaviour.

We continue to face the triple challenge of sceptical secularism, militant religion and compromised Christianity. GAFCON 2013 has been summoned so that GFCA can help both plan for and experience the future of the Communion of which we, with many others, are part.

The invited delegates, laity, clergy and bishops, are united by their commitment to the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement as well as the aims of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. They will assemble to listen to God, to pray, to deliberate, and to plan about the Anglican future, seeing it as a great spiritual and missionary fellowship, energised by the defence and proclamation of the gospel.

The General Secretary of the GFCA, Archbishop Peter Jensen said, ‘God is establishing new churches creating new believers and transforming lives. Our hope for the future is in him. Our aim is to move forward confidently, to plan and experience in fellowship a future for Anglicans in which his Word is honoured and our witness is clear. We are looking forward with great expectation to seeing God at work as we meet in Nairobi.’ Gafcon site

Sunday, May 5, 2013

CANA East Inaugural Synod May 2-4, 2013

Raymond and I attended the CANA East Inaugural Synod in Philadelphia.  Here are a few of the pictures that Raymond shot during this time.  -PD

 Banners
 
 CANA East Synod
  
 Bp. Julian Dobbs
 
 Fr. Brian E Smith interviews Fr. Gus Calvo
 
 The charter
 
 Prayer time
 
 Prostrate
 
 Laying on of hands
 
 Presenting the Bible
 
 Bp. Bena preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit
 
 Bishops confer
 
 The bishop and the newly ordained
 
 The Bishop and Chancellor Raymond Dague
 
 Offertory dance
 
 Conga drums
 
 Joyful choir
 
Pictures by Raymond Dague
(click on picture to enlarge)  
 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Scrolling around...May 1, 2013

Foreigners now hold more than $13 trillion in American securities, a record set as the U.S. seeks to assert itself as the safest port in troubled global waters.

China and Japan combined owned more than $3.4 trillion, including $2.4 trillion in debt, a number that has grown since the data set was compiled...

Many in Muslim world want sharia as law of land: survey
Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says.

Suicide bombing was mostly rejected In the study by the Washington-based Pew Forum, but it won 40 percent support in the Palestinian territories, 39 percent in Afghanistan, 29 percent in Eygpt and 26 percent in Bangladesh.

Three-quarters of respondents said abortion is morally wrong and 80 percent or more rejected homosexuality and sex outside of marriage...

Religious Groups Fear Christian Purge From Military
Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that military personnel who proselytize should be court martialed...

Gosnell the baby-killer and the liberals who shielded him
One of the most disgusting serial killers in American history is standing trial in Philadelphia at the moment – and, since it’s happening in the US, where reporting restrictions are light, the media are free to discuss his case.

Only they haven’t – at least, not until recently, and even when the crimes are reported, they haven’t merited many headlines. Which is horrifying, when you consider what the killer is accused of. I’m going to leave out the nastiest details – but, seriously, if you don’t want to feel sick to your stomach, look away now...

Anthony Foxx Declares Thursday 'A Day Of Reason,' And of Prayer, in Charlotte
Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who President Barack Obama tapped Tuesday to be the next transportation secretary, just declared Thursday "A Day of Reason" in his home city, and asked Charlotte's citizens to observe the day.

May 2 is traditionally the National Day of Prayer, a government-designated religious event intended to encourage people to "turn to God in prayer and meditation." Foxx separately issued a "National Day of Prayer" proclamation for the city of Charlotte.

Foxx said in his proclamation that May 2 should be A Day of Reason because "the application of reason, more than any other means, has proven to offer hope for human survival on Earth."...