The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from opponents of same-sex marriage who want to overturn the District of Columbia's gay marriage law.
The court did not comment Tuesday in turning away a challenge from a Maryland pastor and others who are trying to get a measure on the ballot to allow Washingtonians to vote on a measure that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
A couple of limmericks...the first is clean :>)
Now the limericks. The first is my favorite clean one.
There was a young lady from Clyde
Who ate a green apple and died
The apple fermented
Inside the lamented
And made cider inside her inside.
The Business Committee has also scheduled for debate the following motion from Mr John Ward that was not debated at the November Synod during the discussions on the Anglican Communion Covenant, for lack of time. The motion seeks to specify two-thirds majorities (rather than simple majorities) in the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and the House of Laity at the Final Approval Stage for the draft Act of Synod adopting the Anglican Communion Covenant. The Covenant was referred to dioceses in December and is expected to return to the General Synod in 2012.
It seems incongruous to argue, as supporters of the Covenant do, that it is exceedingly significant document that is required to save the Anglican Communion, but that it pass only the most minimal test a democracy allows.
Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier returned Sunday to Haiti after nearly 25 years in exile, a surprising and perplexing move that comes as his country struggles with a political crisis and the stalled effort to recover from last year's devastating earthquake.
Duvalier, wearing a dark suit and tie, arrived on an Air France jet to hugs from supporters at the Port-au-Prince airport. He was calm as he was led into the immigration office. He left the airport without making a statement to journalists, waving to a crowd of more than 200 supporters as he got into an SUV.
"He is happy to be back in this country, back in his home," said Mona Beruaveau, a candidate for Senate in a Duvalierist party who spoke to the former dictator inside the immigration office. "He is tired after a long trip."
Beruaveau said he would give a news conference on Monday.
The three former bishops, (from left) John Broadhurst, Keith Newton and Andrew Burnham, after the ceremony. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesIn its 100-plus years Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of English Catholicism, will have seen few stranger sights than Saturday's procession of three Anglican bishops' wives, in matching beige coats, one with an outsized brown hat, going up on to the high altar to embrace their husbands, all newly ordained as Catholic priests. Catholicism isn't that keen on women on the altar – to the pain of the demonstrators from the Catholic Women's Ordination movement protesting outside the cathedral's doors – and it doesn't usually countenance priests having wives.
But this was no ordinary ceremony. Almost everyone who spoke during it used the word "historic" to describe the ordination as Catholic priests of John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton, all formerly Anglican bishops.
What is breathtaking about the whole initiative is the speed at which 550 years of post-Reformation practice is being overturned. Until two weeks ago Broadhurst, Burnham and Newton were still Anglican bishops. In the space of 14 days, they have completed a journey that usually takes other converts seven years: 12 months to go through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults to become a Catholic, and six years in a seminary.
In the face of poverty, climate change, natural disasters and all the other challenges facing our planet for religious institutions to be consumed in bickering about whether women can be priests is the stuff of satire.Read it all.
It is only institutional religion that continues to regard women as second-class citizens. If Catholicism believes that recruiting a handful of renegade Anglicans who share its institutional misogyny will buttress its position it is mistaken.
In accordance with the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus of Pope Benedict XVI (November 4, 2009) and after careful consultation with the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has today erected a Personal Ordinariate within the territory of England and Wales for those groups of Anglican clergy and faithful who have expressed their desire to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church. The Decree of Erection specifies that the Ordinariate will be known as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and will be placed under the patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman.
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Also today Pope Benedict XVI has nominated Reverend Keith Newton as the first Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Together with Reverend Burnham and Reverend Broadhurst, Reverend Newton will oversee the catechetical preparation of the first groups of Anglicans in England and Wales who will be received into the Catholic Church together with their pastors at Easter, and to accompany the clergy preparing for ordination to the Catholic priesthood around Pentecost.
Will members of the Ordinariate still be Anglicans?
No. Members of the Ordinariate will be Catholics. Their decision is to leave the Anglican Communion and come into the Catholic Church, in full communion with the Pope.
The central purpose of Anglicanorum coetibus is "to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared". Members of the Ordinariate will bring with them, into full communion with the Catholic Church in all its diversity and richness of liturgical rites and traditions, some aspects their own Anglican patrimony and culture.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords continues to be miraculous after being shot through the brain one week ago today, and doctors treating the congresswoman say her breathing tube could be removed as early as today.
"We couldn't have hoped for any better improvement than we are seeing now given the severity of her injury," Dr. Michael Lemole, a neurosurgeon at University Medical Center who has been treating Giffords.
Doctors reported yesterday that Giffords has been opening her eyes more frequently since miraculously opening them on her own for the first time since the shooting after a visit from President Barack Obama and some of her congressional colleagues.
Doctors also said Giffords was moving all of her limbs, performing more complex brain tasks, and is breathing on her own.
O Lord, your compassions never fail and your mercies are new every morning: We give you thanks for giving our sister Gabrielle hope of health renewed. Continue in her we pray, the good work you have begun; that she may daily increase in bodily strength, and rejoice in your goodness. Amen.
I don't care if no one likes it, she said,
unless no one likes it.
