The Church of England has criticised the conduct of Barclays in its annual report, after a year dogged by scandal and resignations at the bank.
See the article here: Church: Barclays ‘let down society’
A village shop that is run from the aisles of a working church has opened in Berkshire.
Read the rest here: VIDEO: Church becomes home to new store
Preview of C’est Chill Tuesday, November 27 at 2 PM St. Charles Church, 35 Barrette Street, corner of Beechwood and St-Charles
View original post here: New Signature Event Celebrates Vanier’s Renaissance
The Church of England’s vote against allowing female bishops is baffling. Anglicans could do with being more like Samaritans
✒I have been meditating on the Church of England’s decision not to allow female bishops, or rather on their decision not to allow female bishops in spite of the fact that a large majority of the General Synod voted in favour. God may move in a mysterious way, but not half as mysterious as man.
Since I am not a believer, it ought to be none of my business. But the church is not just any old sect: it is woven into our communal life, which is why even agnostics and atheists like to get christened in church, marry there, and are often laid to rest there. The Queen is the head of the church, and MPs – voted in by Christians, non-believers, Muslims and people who call themselves Jedi Knights – have the power to overturn the church’s decisions. In this country we believe religion is too important to be left to the religious.
If you want to see steaming resentment, you should ask an old-fashioned C of E vicar about evangelicals. Forget John Major v the Eurosceptics, or Neil Kinnock against Militant. This is real hatred. I recall a vicar saying, with curled lip, that he had been to a happy-clappy service at Holy Trinity, Brompton, in London. “At the end they asked, ‘hands down anyone who’d like coffee after the service’.”
After the news of the bishops emerged, I did what I always do in times of trouble – consult not the Good Book, but a good book. This was Thinker, Failure, Soldier, Jailer, a collection of obituaries from the Daily Telegraph, the paper that first started printing warts and all descriptions of the dead. My eye was caught by Yosef ben Ab-hisda Ha’abta’ai (literally known to his friends as Joe Cohen). He was the 124th high priest of the Samaritans, not the people who talk despairing souls out of suicide, but the original Israelite sect, as in the parable.
They are a very strict group and only a few hundred remain. Samaritan men are allowed to marry ordinary Jewish women, but if a woman were to leave and marry a Jewish man, the punishment would be stoning to death.
But they don’t do that. They just ignore their strictest laws and leave the woman alone. Quite simple. There might be a lesson for the C of E there: it’s only the word of man that is inflexible. The word of God means whatever is convenient at the time.
✒ Intriguing how the language changes, not always for the worst, but usually. Bruce Kirby writes to say that he gets his phone service from TalkTalk. It’s essential because he cannot get a mobile signal at his house. But the TalkTalk service went down at a particularly difficult time last month. His mother had just died and he needed to make many urgent calls.
So he borrowed a neighbour’s phone and called the TalkTalk helpline. They said it would take five days to restore the service. Bruce explained the situation, but far from expressing sympathy, the man at TalkTalk told him there was “no escalatory pathway”. The more Bruce pleaded, the more the bloke on the other end repeated the line about an escalatory pathway. By this time I would have hurled the phone against the wall.
On a tube the other day, the driver, an impatient young woman from her voice, got angry about people trying to get on while that horrible screeching noise – “eek, eek, eek”, like the shower scene in Psycho – was sounding. “The chimes are a signal that the doors are closing!” she barked at us.
The chimes? “Chimes” is a lovely word. The chimes of freedom. “We have heard the chimes at midnight,” said Falstaff. How can it have been usurped by this hideous racket?
And these days everyone – including Ed Miliband in the Commons this week – seems to have adopted the American pronunciation of either and neither. Wrong. As the song has it, “you say ee-ther, I say eye-ther.” But a lost cause, clearly.
✒I’ve had some kind replies to my brief series of very simple recipes. Here’s one I made last weekend. Pheasant is incredibly cheap at the moment, and you should be able to get a brace from a fishmonger or butcher for less than the price of one chicken. Two birds will serve three or four people.
Boil some cheap red wine in a casserole and add a bit of stock. Brown the pheasants and put them in. Brown some onions or shallots, plus some bacon bits if you like. Throw in mushrooms and carrots too, and garlic if you fancy. Put a lid on the casserole, boil up again, then cook on a low heat for an hour or so till the pheasant is nice and tender. Could not be easier, or tastier.
✒ I don’t want to bang on for ever about Peter Morrison, the drunken paedophile whose incompetence brought down Margaret Thatcher, but your stories keep coming. This is from Christopher Gordon, who got it first hand. Morrison, while he was a minister, needed to get a train at St
Category : Business, World News
A credit union in South London may lose £670,000 of its members’ money because a director used the funds to make unlawful loans to a church.
Excerpt from: Credit union director disgraced
Cathedral authorities accused of colluding with big banks during evensong protest on eve of anniversary of start of Occupy camp
The traditional solemnity of St Paul’s Sunday evensong was disrupted when four members of the Occupy London movement, which camped outside the cathedral for four months, chained themselves to the base of the pulpit.
While the choir sang, four women dressed in white shouted their own sermon to mark the anniversary of the start of the Occupy camp outside St Paul’s, accusing the cathedral authorities of colluding with banks and failing to help the poor.
Occupy had been invited to read a prayer at the service, but if the gesture was an attempt at reconciliation, it was firmly rejected. After Tanya Paton, of Occupy Faith, had read her prayer, the four women rose from their seats and chained themselves to the pulpit. “In the fight for economic justice Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, but you invited them in and instead evicted us,” shouted activist Alison Playford.
“Your collusion with the City of London Corporation led to our violent eviction on your doorstep. You testified against us which acted to uphold injustice and inequality that is growing by the day. St Paul’s Cathedral you must stand up and be counted at this great trial of history.”
Activists from Christianity Uncut held a simultaneous protest outside, unfurling a large banner which called for St Paul’s to “Throw the money changers out of the temple”.
The female protesters said they did not plan to leave. City of London police arrived at the cathedral, but staff told them they were happy for the protesters to remain.
The Very Reverend David Ison, dean of St Paul’s, spoke immediately after the women to give his sermon, mildly joking that he now had a “captive audience”. He told the protesters that they were welcome in the church and he would be happy to speak to them after the service. “I hope you will listen to what I have to say,” he said, before arguing that “tribalism” was not the way to defeat poverty and inequality.
“We need partners, allies whether they are bankers or campers, conservative or liberal, religious or not. God’s invitation to us is to follow Jesus Christ and to change ourselves and the world to one which is inclusive and generous and calls all of our self interests into question whether it’s the interests of the Church of England or Occupy or the City of London.”
Speaking later, he said: “I’m just sorry they decided to do this, which makes it hard for members of Occupy Faith, who have been working together with us on something which is respectful.”
But members of Christianity Uncut said they had been requesting a meeting with St Paul’s since some protesters were forcibly removed from the cathedral’s steps by police given permission to do so by the cathedral authorities, following an eviction order by the City of London.
“Christians were dragged away from St Paul’s while they were kneeling in prayer,” said 25-year-old Siobhan Grimes, one of the protesters. “We have been trying to have a meeting since then and this is obviously what you have to do to get one.”
Playford said it was time for St Paul’s to get off the fence. “The cathedral makes platitudes to Occupy but they colluded with the City of London and missed a perfect opportunity to enact the teachings of Jesus,” she said. “The poor and needy came to them and they shut the door and got rid of us as soon as possible.”
The protest marked a further deterioration in relations between St Paul’s and the Occupy protesters who camped outside. Monday marks the first anniversary of the occupation – part of a global movement born in the wake of the financial crisis – which involved hundreds of protesters living in the camp while calling for an end to the perceived excesses and injustices of the global financial system.
The women cut themselves free at about 10pm after police entered St Paul’s and warned them they faced arrest, according to an Occupy spokesman.
“They have now left the cathedral,” he said. “Some of the awareness-raising they wanted to do has been done. The dean has also agreed to meet them and talk.”
Raising tensions between the cathedral and protesters resulted in the resignation of the canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, who left his post because he did not want to see “violence in the name of the church”, and a chaplain, Fraser Dyer.
Since being removed by police in February, Occupy have opened short-lived camps in Finsbury Square and Shoreditch, east London, but the movement no longer has a physical base.
“We are calling on people to take the conversation out of St Paul’s and into their homes,” said Occupy campaigner Ronan McNern.
“There is more need for this movement than ever. The welfare state is being dismantled and our call is still for people to stand up and challenge this injustice and inequality. The tents have gone but we are still here.”
 Globe and Mail |
Sun Myung Moon, Church Head Who Ran Business Empire, Dies
Businessweek By Mark Schoifet on September 02, 2012 Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born founder of the Unification Church and self-proclaimed messiah who built a secretive global business empire that sells cars, guns, newspapers and sushi, has died. He was 92. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon dies at 92 Rev. Moon, religious and political figure, dies in South Korea at 92 Rev. Sun Myung Moon dies at 92 Category : Stocks
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