Episcopal Bishops OK Trial Gay Blessing, Transgender Ordination

Continuing its divorce from Gospel values and descent to irrelevance, the Episcopal Church USA is on its way to permitting the ordination of your family dog.

The Rev. Carla Robinson, a transgender priest and deputy from the Diocese of Olympia, addresses the House of Deputies July 9 during their debate on gender identity and the rights of transgender people. ENS photo/Matthew Davies

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - Episcopal bishops approved an official prayer service for blessing same-sex couples Monday at a national convention that also cleared the way for transgender ordination.

At the Episcopal General Convention in Indianapolis, the House of Bishops voted 111-41, with three abstentions, to authorize a provisional rite for same-sex unions for the next three years. The liturgy next goes to convention's deputies for their authorization.

In a separate vote Monday, the full convention approved new anti-discrimination language for transgendered clergy candidates and church members. Some dioceses already ordain transgendered people or elect them to positions of parish leadership. However, advocates for the amendment argued they needed an explicit statement of acceptance as the churchwide policy.

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David Maraniss and Obama's Communist Mentor

From American Thinker

By Paul Kengor

Barack Hussein Obama and Communist Mentor Frank Marshall Davis

It's interesting that not only does Barack Obama need continued vetting, but so do his biographers. The culprit is the same: the liberal bias that dutifully protects Obama like white knights guarding the king's castle, shamelessly tossing journalistic objectivity right out the window. As Sean Hannity likes to say, when it comes to Obama's background, it has fallen to us conservatives to do the job that the mainstream "Obama-mania media" plainly refuses to do.

The most recent Obama biography getting a vetting by conservatives is David Maraniss' Barack Obama, the Story. Here at American Thinker, Jack Cashill has intrepidly taken up the charge, thereby provoking the wrath of the nation's "journalists" for daring to flag the contradictions in their reporting. In his most recent post, Cashill looked at several Maraniss passages related to Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. He quoted my forthcoming book on Davis, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, the Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor. I had sent Cashill a galley copy of my book, and he has done his homework well, juxtaposing my research on Davis with that of Maraniss. I'd like to here follow up.

Jewish Financiers Abandon Obama

 Democrats beware: Jewish money is on the move.

Barack Hussein Obama bows to Saudi King Abdullah

From Financial Post

By Lawrence Solomon

Even before the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare last Thursday, leading more than 50,000 outraged Americans to send Mitt Romney more than $5-million by the following day, the Obama re-election campaign was hurting. “I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far,” Obama wrote small donors early in the week, in imploring them to open their pocketbooks. By the end of the week he was making a similar plea to big donors, stressing urgency in getting cash fast, to secure ads for the fall.

National View: S.C. Governor, GOP Activist Clash

John Rainey

South Carolina politics never fails to amuse.

A recent ethics imbroglio between Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and GOP activist John Rainey is a case in point.

The squabble would be of passing provincial interest if Haley weren’t a rising star often mentioned on lists of potential vice presidential candidates.

And had she not called Rainey, a nationally recognized philanthropist and community bridge-builder, a “racist, sexist bigot.”

Such charges deserve clarification and context.

Nikki Haley

Haley made the remarks during a state House Ethics Committee hearing that was prompted by a complaint Rainey filed alleging that Haley had lobbied illegally while she was a legislator. Haley has been cleared of any wrongdoing and there’s no need to re-litigate here, though Rainey promises that the issue is not dead.

Meanwhile, her invectives toward Rainey, though perhaps understandable given an exchange between them (about which more anon), are contradicted by his record. Rainey is anything but racist, sexist or bigoted.

Read the rest of this entry at the Duluth News Tribune >>

Taverner Choir and Consort - "Beatus Vir" - Claudio Monteverdi

The text of Monteverdi’s Beatus vir  is from the Latin Vulgate Bible.  The translation is from the Douay-Rheims Bible.

Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord: he shall delight exceedingly in his commandments.

His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the righteous shall be blessed.
 
Glory and wealth shall be in his house: and his justice remaineth for ever and ever.
 
To the righteous a light is risen up in darkness: he is merciful, and compassionate and just.
 
Acceptable is the man that showeth mercy and lendeth: he shall order his words with judgment:
 
because he shall not be moved for ever.
 
The just shall be in everlasting remembrance: he shall not hear the evil hearing. His heart is ready to hope in the Lord:
 
his heart is strengthened, he shall not be moved until he look over his enemies.
 
He hath distributed, he hath given to the poor: his justice remaineth for ever and ever: his horn shall be exalted in glory.
 
The wicked shall see, and shall be angry, he shall gnash with his teeth and pine away: the desire of the wicked shall perish.

The Ordinary Polish Catholics Who Brought Down Communism

Communism never inspired love in a deeply faithful people 

From Catholic Herald (UK)

By Father Alexander Lucie-Smith

 

Poles attend the installation of Pope John Paul II AP/Press Association Images

Every now and then you feel a sudden stab of sympathy for a group of people for whom, frankly, you never thought you would feel sorry. I was standing in front of a huge black and white photograph. It was taken from the tower of St Mary’s in the Market Square in Krakow; it showed a huge concourse of people in the square, about half a million of them, dressed in white. This was an event of which I had never heard – the “White March” of 17th May 1981. John Paul II had just survived the attempt on his life, and half a million people from his former diocese had walked through the city in solidarity with him, finishing their march in the square, where a mass was celebrated by Cardinal Macharski. (There are some pictures of it here.) 

Ecumenism in Action

 Anglican Choir Sings at Papal Mass

From L’Osservatore Romano

By Nigel Marcus Baker

The English essayist and poet, Joseph Addison (1672-1719), in his 1694 ‘A Song for St Cecilia’s Day’, called music: ‘the greatest good that mortals know / And all of heaven we have below.’ We have had a practical demonstration of that claim all last week, as Westminster Abbey Choir, singing either alone or alongside the Choir of the Sistine Chapel, have brought to us that ‘all of heaven’ in services and concerts in Santa Maria Maggiore, the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s Basilica, and Santa Maria sopra Minerva.