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to some of Northern Ireland's big religion stories of 2008.

Inevitably, I've had to leave out many other stories, and doubtless you will soon tell me which I've left out.

It "ill-behoved" those who live in "bishops' palaces" to condemn government policies aiming at alleviating poverty. That's quite a stinging rebuke to the five bishops of the Church of England from the Member of Parliament who represents the church's interests in the Commons. , the Second Church Commissioner, says the bishops' comments on the government's credit crunch policy .

The ecclesiastical gloves are off. Nigel McCullough, the Bishop of Manchester, used his Christmas Day message to accuse the government of people to go into debt.

The bishops believe the government is failing to learn the lesson of the credit crunch -- the lesson being that a financial system based on indebtedness is doomed to collapse -- and are repeating the mistakes that produced the current collapse.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has already compared the government's anti-recession policy to an "".

Dr Williams also gave us, this Christmas, a very thoughtful reflection h.

In 2006, we named the scientist and culture warrior Richard Dawkins as our Person of the Year. In 2007, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness shared the accolade as Person and Deputy Person of the Year. Who should be the choice this year?

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If the length of an obituary is any sign of a person's cultural significance, Conor Cruise O'Brien must stand out as a massive intellectual figure nationally and intellectually. The many words written about him this weekend, from the Irish Times to the New York Times, make a case for the Cruiser as the greatest Irish public intellectual of his generation -- the Republic's Gore Vidal. We also learn that his full name was "Donal Conor David Dermot Donat Cruise O'Brien."

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Sir Ian McKellen has been touring schools this month to talk to children about sexuality and homophobia. He says he's worried that faith schools in England and that, as a consequence, children in those schools may be getting "a second-class education".

A senior Irish Catholic bishop who was private secretary to three popes is facing calls to resign following a from an independent Catholic child protection watchdog.

The response by the diocese of Cloyne, and by its bishop, , pictured, to allegations of child sexual abuse involving serving priests is described as "ill advised, too little, and too late" by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

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What goes around comes around -- even if it is .

was one of post-war Ireland's most significant (and, yes, controversial) public figures and intellectual forces. In this interview, he reflects on history as an academic discipline and as a personal passion.

The list of suggested Person of the Year candidates continues to grow. So far, we have (in no particular order):

The philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock, who argued this year that people if they feel they are a burden to others or to the NHS.

Barack Obama, the first black US .

Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, against the regime of Robert Mugabe.

The broadcaster and journalist John Sergent, who .

Mickey Harte, who united spirituality and sport in acheiving a legendary status within Gaelic sports.

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross for triggering one of the biggest public debates about for a very long time.

Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi TV reporter who at President Bush during a press conference.

Muntadar al-Zaidi's .

Presbyterian Mutual Society, and placed the credibility of the Presbyterian Church's leaders in the balance too.

Dr Donald Watts, the Presbyterian Church's General Secretary, for helpfully explaining that the church's General Assembly had not offered "advice" to church members when it passed a resolution "encouraging" them to "avail themselves of the services" of the Presbyterian Mutual Society.

Sarah Palin, who proved that America's -- or not finished, depending on who you believe.

The Large Hadron Collider, the e, which is trying to locate "the God particle".

The "Credit Crunch", an idea whose idea has come.

The Priests, from parishes in Northern Ireland to recording artists.

Iris Robinson, the Northern Ireland MP for suggesting that gay people could be cured.

James Parker, the man who came to the defence of Iris Robinson by saying that after therapy.

Iris Robinson's "Dr Paul Millar.

You can still suggest candidates for Person of the Year 2008 here. On the 28 December edition of Sunday Sequence, a panel of commentators will share their suggestions. It's not a competition: I get to pick the Person of the Year (it's one of my few remaining pleasures), and I'll reveal his, her or its identity, and explain why I've made that choice, on the blog on December 31st.

"When it comes to money, the general public will conclude that Presbyterians are just as greedy, insecure, opportunistic, selfish and me-first as anybody in the community." That's the message of the Presbyterian Mutual Society's crisis, according to a Presbyterian minister writing in the current edition of the denomination's magazine.

Dr Alan Russell says, "This issue is more than financial: it's moral and spiritual. Let's remember that the Mutual Society was formed by Presbyterians, run by Presbyterians, invested in and borrowed from by Presbyterians -- and brought to its knees by Presbyterians."

Dr Russell, minister of Ballywalter Presbyterian Church, is particularly scathing about those individuals who removed funds from the Mutual Society when they became concerned that their money was not protected by government guarantees: "[they] ... obviously didn't care about the consequences of their actions for others, including the possibility that they might cause hardship and hurt. No thought of bearing one another's burdens here."

Read his article in full below the fold.

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George Bush says this counts as one of the "weirest" moments of his presidency, and it's now a you tube sensation. An Iraqi journalist abandons editorial impartiality to hurl both his shoes at the US president during a press conference in Baghdad.

Even showing the heel of your shoe to someone is considered an egregious insult in Arab culture, because shoes are considered ritually unclean within Islam. For that reason, wearing shoes inside a mosque is culturally prohibited. (And it is not enough to simply remove shoes either; they should be left outside the sacred space or carried in the left hand with the heels together.) Other cultures, of course, of the heeling gesture, but many of these lack the deeply religious significance of the shoe. The president ducks his way out of the shoe-shoot with some grace and dismisses the incident as a bit of silliness, but there's no doubt that, in the eyes of the Iraqi people, he has just been subjected to a gross humiliation on live television.

Am I alone in being unimpressed by the speed with which the president's security reacted in this incident?

In 2006, we named the scientist and culture warrior Richard Dawkins as our Person of the Year. In 2007, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness shared the accolade as Person and Deputy Person of the Year. Who should be the choice this year?

Which man, woman or child has most inspired us, challenged us, impressed, infuriated, or simply pre-occupied us in the past twelve months? The person, in short, who will be forever associated with this year. Who gets your nomination? Will it be a politician, a scientist, a religious leader, an entertainer, a military leader, or a campaigner. It could be a hero or a villain. It could even be an idea whose time has come, or an object that defines this year.

Add your suggestion for my blog's Person of the Year 2008 award below, and say why you think that person, idea or object deserves to win. On the 28 December edition of Sunday Sequence, a panel of commentators will share their suggestions. It's not a competition: I get to pick the Person of the Year (it's one of my few remaining pleasures), and I'll reveal his, her or its identity on the blog on December 31st.

As promised, I've attached the full text of Roddy Cowie's recent Christians in Science lecture, in which he reflected on the possible "re-intergration" of science and Christian belief.

Bryan Appleyard, , explores how some scientists are investigating out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. Can science provide evidence for the continuation of life beyond death?

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The Vatican has issued on ethical issues arising from biomedical research. (The Dignity of a Person), is an attempt to update the 1987 instruction Donum vitae, also produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic Church's highest doctrinal authority. You can read Dignitas personae (in English) in full .

This new document usefully brings together official doctrinal teaching on recent bioethical developments and will now form part of the Magisterium. And those who wish to understand the theological and ethical principles guiding Catholic responses to bioethical developments should now turn first to this document as the clearest and most concise explication of those principles.

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What's on your list of the top religion and ethics books of the year? It could be a novel, a history, a biography, a collection of poems, or a grand analysis of the world we live in. I'll add my list shortly, but let's hear your picks. On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, the broadcaster Michelle Marken and Corrymeela community leader David Stevens will be sharing their books of the year.

David Stevens selected: David Park's The Truth Commissioner (Bloomsbury), Rowan Williams's Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction (Continuum), Marilynne Robinson's Home (Macmillan), and Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (Bloomsbury).

Michelle Marken selected: John O'Donohue's Benedictus (Bantam), Paula Gooder's The Meaning is in the Waiting (SCM), and A Second Glenstal Book of Prayer (Columba).

Tony Blair explains that he delayed his formal conversion to Catholicism because he anticipated ahe'd converted while in office. We can also be grateful that the former PM is keep alive a charming 18th-century translingual word meaning 'beguiling speech':

Palaver , 1733 (implied in palavering), "talk, conference, discussion," sailors' slang, from Portugese, palavra "word, speech, talk," traders' term for "negotiating with the natives" in W.Africa, metathesis of Latin, parabola "speech, discourse," from L. parabola "comparison." Meaning "idle talk" first recorded 1748.

Homosexuality is illegal in nearly half of the world's nations. In most of those countries which ban consensual adult same-sex relationships, the penalties range from a few years in jail to life imprisonment. But in the case of seven countries, all governed by Islamic law, the sentence is death. Two of those countries, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, will sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009. The picture here shows two young gay men . In May, Britain granted asylum to a gay Iranian teenager studying in London who feared execution by Iranian authorities after his boyfriend was hanged for 'sodomy'. Iranian human rights campaigners say more than 4,000 gay people have been executed in their country since 1979.

The United Nations appears now increasingly minded to end the criminalisation of homosexuality, and later this month the UN General Assembly will issue an historic declaration calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality across the world. It's historic because the General Assembly has never before considered the rights of the global gay and lesbian population in any convention, declaration or humanitarian law.

Why, then, is the Vatican this new Declaration?

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The title of my last post prompts this next one.

'Half the congregation sing familiar words from memory, while the rest stumble over revised alternatives. Our readers are telling us straight - for some new versions there should be no room at the inn.' So writes , whose readers are fighting back by voting against the worst theologically-modified, politically-corrected verses currently wreaking havoc at Christmas services worldwide. You can .

Astronomers researching the 'Christmas star' say , not December, and that he was a Gemini, not a Capricorn, as previously believed.

Lady Trimble, one of two Commissioners, who dissented from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission advice to the Secretary of State has set out her reasons for not supporting the final document. She tells the Secretary of State, "As I have not been permitted to have my dissenting views published in that report I must therefore write to you separately, attaching them. This I now do."

Her letter is below the fold.

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The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, faces an ultimatum to resign or be removed from office, following allegations that he has been n the US Senate. Illinois is one of a number of US states to give its governor the right to nominate a replacement senator in the even that a serving senator dies or resigns. That gubernatorial privilege may well be lost as a consequence of this extraordinary affair. And states across the world will no doubt wish to review any patronage privileges they currently maintain in respect of electoral office.

The Northern Ireland Office is to introduce a new system for replacing MEPs who leave office early. Instead of a by-election, the system will permit political parties to choose a replacement candidate.

After a decade of consultation and deliberation, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission today presented its advice on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland to the Secretary of State. "It has made a number of recommendations for inclusion in a Bill of Rights, such as: the right to equality and prohibition of discrimination; education rights; freedom from violence, exploitation and harassment; the rights of victims; the right to identity and culture; language rights; democratic rights; right to liberty and fair trial rights."

The advice runs to nearly 190 pages. You can read the entire document .

Two Commissioners have dissented from the advice -- Jonathan Bell and Lady Trimble; the remaining eight Commissioners have signified their agreement, namely, Prof Monica McWilliams, Mr Thomas Duncan, Professor Colin Harvey, Mr Alan Henry, Ms Ann Hope, Mr Colm Larkin, Mr Eamonn O'Neill, and Mrs Geraldine Rice.

It is for the UK government to decide what happens next. The two main Unionist parties have reacted negatively to the advice.

That's the allegation facing the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who has been arrested and released on bail. The FBI has made public which includes transcripts of telephone conversations.

You can still watch last night's edition of Panorama (here) in which the Independent MSP made the case for a . Ms McDonald, who has Parkinson's Disease, is seeking support for a Bill on End of Life Choices and defends a change in the law by essentially challenging the moral distinction between 'passive' and 'active' euthanasia.

runs as follows: If doctors are permitted, in law, to respond to a patient's wish to refuse to treatment, with the indirect effect that the patient will die, why shouldn't the same doctor be permitted, in law, to assist the patient to die more directly?

Margot McDonald : "Although suicide is not a crime, it is illegal in Scots Law for assistance to be given to end a life, even if that help is requested by the person wishing to die. This appears to be inequitable as it is legal for a person to instruct that no resuscitation should be attempted following an illness, trauma, stroke or coma. The motivation for this instruction, given while the person concerned is capable of making such a judgement in a Living Will, is the person's wish to shorten a life that they would judge intolerable. Why should it be legal for a person to exercise autonomy, and refuse treatment from a physician to preserve his or her life, yet illegal for a physician to respond to a request for medication that would have the same result in ending a life?"

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, is fundamentally opposed to this expression of autonomy. He argues: "If God gives us that gift, He can take that from us but we're not taking it from Him and as it were saying, 'well God, I'm finished with life because I can't cope with cancer or Parkinson's or whatever it has to be'. We just wait on God calling us to himself."

Update: In a separate development, Mary Ewart has defended a TV documentary by an Oscar-winning director .

The Commons has spent the afternoon debating the establishment of a new committee to investigate the police search of Damian Green's parliamentary office. For their part, that they followed both the relevant section of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the protocol laid down in Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice. According to the police statement, no warrant was needed in order to obtain entry to Mr Green's office, since a letter of consent was given by parliamentary authorities.

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And they say America is too litigious? The US Supreme Court from a retired lawyer who argues that Barack Obama's presidency is ruled out constitutionally because his father was Kenyan. Here's the president-elect's

An update on a story we ran last month about the Welsh poet Patrick Jones. The launch of Patrick Jones's new collection of poems, , was cancelled by Waterstone's in Cardiff after the bookstore received complaints from some conservative Christians. A new launch for the book has now been arranged: Borders in Cardiff will host the launch party on Thursday, and the poet will also read from the collection at an event in the Welsh National Assembly . the launch celebration represents a victory for free speech:

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The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, h from office and his regime toppled. He writes:

'The time has come for Mugabe to answer for his crimes against humanity, against his countrymen and women and for justice to be done. The winds of change that once brought hope to Zimbabwe and its neighbours have become a hurricane of destruction with the outbreak of cholera, destitution, starvation and systemic abuse of power by the state. As a country cries out for justice, we can no longer be inactive to their call. Mugabe and his henchmen must now take their rightful place in the Hague and answer for their actions. The time to remove them from power has come.'

Anti-abortion campaigners are angry that Cherie Blair is to address a next Friday at Rome's Angelicum University. Mrs Blair's lecture is titled "Religion as a Force in protecting Women's Human Rights", but John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), believes she has no business speaking at a Pontifical University given her support for organisations he regards as 'abortion-promoters'. He is one of many pro-life supporters writing to the Catholic university and '.

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Well, that's how it will look to some people. Veritas, the Irish Catholic Church's publishing arm, has expressed deep disappointment that its Christmas radio advert has been blocked by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI). The Republic's law bans all advertising which has a religious or political end. In this case, the advertisement invites the radio audience to visit the and to buy gifts from the shop which call attention to the true meaning of Christmas.

The ad reads: 'This Christmas, why not give a gift that means more? Veritas has a range of different and thoughtful gifts, for children and adults alike . . . So to give a gift that means more, drop into your local Veritas shop or log on to www.veritas.ie.'

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On Sunday Sequence we regularly cover the continuing debate about the relationship between religion and science. New atheists like Richard Dawkins argue that 'theology' is not, in fact, an academic discipline, though he grants that studies in the history of religion may still find a place at an intellectually respectable university.

Historically, people of faith have played a very significant role in the development of modern science -- from Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Faraday, Newton, and Mendel through to some of the giants of twentieth-century science such as Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum theory. It's simply a fact of history that theologians and ethicists have learned from scientific developments, and the religious faith of some scientists has motivated their scientific work. It is quite another thing, of course, to suggest that religious doctrines should play a role in the explication of a scientific theory, which seems to be the suggestion at issue in the debate about so-called 'Intelligent Design Theory' or the general 'Creation Science' movement.

When the relationship between science and theology is explored in public debates, it is often a discussion about religion's encounter with the physical sciences. This is quite appropriate. But I've long believed that more attention should be given to the human sciences and their relationship with religious ideas, practices and communities. So I was pleased to learn that the psychologist , (pictured), a regular contributor to Sunday Sequence, is to give a lecture on Monday evening entitled 'Should Christianity be insulated from science, or integrated with it? Roddy Cowie is Professor of Psychology at Queen's University and a member of the Church of Ireland. He'll be speaking in Common Grounds Café, 12-24 University Avenue, Belfast, at 7.00 pm on Monday 8 December 2008. Admission is free, but a reservation is required since space is limited. If you wish to attend, you should contact Dr. Scott Peddie (e-mail: s.peddie@pattersonpeddie.com). The event is organised by . Additional lectures and papers dealing with the relationship between Christianity and science are available on the UK-wide website.

Read on for a taste of what Roddy Cowie will be saying on Monday night.

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"If our politicians are drunk on the job, we've a right to know." An editorial in the Australian Daily Telegraph calls for new rules to "Breath test this mob" before votes in the House. Many workers in Australia, and in the UK for that matter, are already subject to random testing for drugs and alcohol. Rail workers and air crew are required to take tests to ensure the safety of the travelling public. Even the general motoring public in Britain now faces the possibility of in . New South Wales Green Party MP John Kaye says, 'If you are going to have breathalysers for people driving cranes you should have breathalysers for people writing laws.' The call for breath-testing kits to be brought into the Australian assemblies comes after , including anti-social behaviour by politicians.

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An advent treat for you. Foy Vance and Duke Special are joined by the Salvation Army Band for a very special rendition of Silent Night.

As previously reported, the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints of offensiveness against a full-page ad published in the News Letter by . The on the ASA website, along with the text of the ad itself.

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'Are we not embarrassed that all through church history the rules of sexual morality were all thought up by men?' And men who often based their moral assertions on 'outmoded science'? The Catholic moral theologian Fr Sean Fagan appears less embarrassed than outraged by a 'negative' Catholic theology of sex that is, he is convinced, abusive. He also believes that this negative understanding of sexuality may still 'lurk' in the church's attitude to sexual equality and the role of women in the church . In opposition to that theology, Fr Fagan calls for a 'rehabilitation' of the notion of sin -- one that is informed by the human sciences, free of cultural hang-ups, appropriately 'person-centred, realistically shaped by the diversity of human sexual experience and not wholly conditioned by the severely limited experience of celibate male priests.

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The 'fractious, ill-tempered gathering' of evangelicals within the Church of England, colourfully , exposes a tradition in crisis. The National Evangelical Anglican Consultation, meeting in All Souls' Langham Place, London, was asked to sing up as members of a break-away faction of the Anglican communion: that's when things got hot and heavy. Trying to persuade them was Richard Turnbull, the embattled principal of Wycliffe Hall. Not many college principals have lost quite so many of their staff in quite so short a time, and some have alleged that Dr Turnbull's approach to people management is not one of his strengths.

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Not, it appears, in the judgement of the audience gathered tonight at Queen's University for the . The proposition was perhaps a little fuzzy -- "belief in God is the way to peace" -- and some speakers used the lion's share of their allotted six minutes interpreting the meaning of that claim, but the lines of disagreement soon began to emerge. Simple-mindedly, I took the proposition to mean that religious belief tends to promote a more peaceful world. The Socialist activist Eamonn McCann, opposing the proposition, said that religion, in itself, neither promoted peace nor provoked war and offered a material-forces explanation of global unrest. The humanist Terry Moseley argued that violence was as wedded to the great religions as belief in the afterlife. And the historian Todd Weir maintained that one can be an atheist without being a secularist. Meanwhile, the Christian theologian Stephen Williams countered this with an appeal to rediscover a religion of life-transforming commitment rather than mere intellectual assent. Leon Litvack from the Belfast Jewish community challenged the politicisation of the Hebrew scriptures by some Jews, particularly in Israel, and Sheikh Anwar Mady, representing the Belfast Islamic Centre, argued against political caricatures of Islam which defined his faith as though violent opposition to others was one of its tenets.

We'll have a report on tonight's debate on the next edition of Sunday Sequence.