The Presbyterian Moderator made it clear on today's Sunday Sequence that there would be a debate about the Mutual Society crisis at this year's Assembly. A number of PMS savers have told the programme that they were hearing rumours to the effect that the Assembly would hear a "statement", rather than a debate. The Moderator has.
On yesterday's Talk Back, a Presbyterian Mutual Society saver explained why he, and others, would be holding a protest at the opening session of this year's Presbyterian General Assembly. Mervyn Redmond, a spokesman for the Shore Street PMS Action Group in Donaghadee, said, 'We feel betrayed' by the Presbyterian Church.
'We and our families and forebears have always turned to the Church in times of serious difficulty, but during this desperate situation we are reduced to confronting the Church leaders and elders because they have refused to take a compassionate and fruitful initiative,' he said in a press statement.
I've asked many Presbyterian ministers, elders and memebrs just how serious a challenge to the church is posed by collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society. In short, no one can remember a comparable public controversy involving the church. Some say this has been the greatest challenge to the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in the denomination's history. Serious questions are being asked by PMS members about the way this crisis has been handled by Church House officials, and some of those questions may be raised during the debate on Tuesday.
Was enough done to respond practically to those PMS members who have been placed in financial difficulties as a consequence of the mutual's collapse? Just how close is the association between the church and the mutual society? They share a website and email address, and they once shared a building. Some PMS members say the communications and PR material they receieved from the Mutual Society and the church gave the impression that the mutual was an agency of the church. Even though they accept the church official statement that the two organisations are "legally separate", those investors are asking who is responsible for giving that impression of a closer association?
When I asked Mervyn Redmond what he wanted to see now from his church, I was struck by his answer. He said he wanted the church to look like they cared, that they were listening, that they were interested in the plight of PMS members who thought they were helping their church when they placed money with the mutual society.
On Tuesday afternoon, at the General Assembly, Mervyn Redmond and others will be listening carefully for clear answers to those questions, and for signs of a compassionate and caring response.
Update: The leaders of the Catholic, Methodist and Anglican churches in Ireland have released a joint statement: "We have become increasingly aware of the difficulties faced by people whose access to their savings has been blocked by the Presbyterian Mutual Society being placed in Administration. Since assistance has been offered to others, it is our hope that the Northern Ireland Executive and the UK Government will take urgent action to resolve these difficulties." The statement is signed by Cardinal Seán Brady, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Archbishop Alan Harper, Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, and Rev. Aian Ferguson, President of the Methodist Church
Derick Bingham about the latest phase in his treatment for cancer. He's been able to leave hospital for a short visit home, and a decision has been taken 'not to give Derick, now in remission, another course of chemo at this time'.
Patsty McGarry of the Irish Times , and how our programme may have influenced the public debate about how the church should repond to child abuse.
Money quotes: 'Then, at the weekend, Cori felt unable to supply ´óÏó´«Ã½ Northern Ireland's Sunday Sequence programme with a representative for a discussion on the Ryan commission report. It seemed there would be no one to represent the church on the programme. Further inquiries led to Cardinal Brady's general assistant Fr Tim Bartlett going forth, like Noah's dove, to test the waters, while speaking in a personal capacity. We now know he did so with the permission of Cardinal Brady, who was also aware of Fr Bartlett's strong personal views on the subject. On the programme, with some prompting by Sunday Sequence presenter William Crawley, Fr Bartlett eventually crossed the ecclesiastical Rubicon and called on the congregations to revisit the deal.'
'The umpire had struck. Within a very short time Fr Bartlett's own bishop, Most Rev Noel Traenor, Bishop of Down and Connor, rushed in where angels might not tread. He praised Fr Bartlett for his views and his courage, ringfencing his priest from the likely consequences of such courage where the congregations were concerned. Then Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan discovered his voice and called on the congregations to contribute more to the State redress scheme for former residents of institutions. A momentum was building.'
The research findings are not without controversy, but it's claimed that this fossil, nicknamed 'Ida', is a significant -- in fact, the missing link and, thus, our earliest ancestor. Read the key research paper making that claim . Others .
A reproduction of Ida arrived in London's Natural History Museum today, ahead of David Attenborough's about the fossil find, which . Ida was named after the young daughter of one of the leaders of the research team that investigated the find. It's been given the scientific name Darwinius masillae, a designation honouring Charles Darwin. As you might expect, creationists are less than impressed by the fossil. According to , 'Nothing about this fossil suggests it is anything other than an extinct, lemur-like creature.' They also wonder why 'Evolutionists only open up about the lack of fossil missing links once a new one is found.' One thing is sure: we'll all be getting to know Ida pretty well over the next few weeks.
An aside: I've been watching Richard Dawkins in conversation with Paul Davies at the , and Dawkins suggests that Charles Darwin never actually completed his degree at university. Paul Davies appears to agree with that claim. At the risk of challenging Dawkins on Darwin, I've always understood that Darwin finished a degree in theology at Cambridge (Christ's College, ironically enough), having abandoned his earlier studies in medicine at Edinburgh. Hence, the use of the on the title page of The Origin of Species. Perhaps Dawkins is referring to the abandoned medical degree. In any case, it's an interesting conversation. Watch it .
, France considers the 'religion' of Scientology. The trial of one of the world's most controversial religious sects . the official Scientology website. Alternatively, you could listen to Tom Cruise's idiosyncratic explanation of the religion .
The basic beliefs and practises of Scientology are listed .
When Tom Cruise mentions "KSW", is what he has in mind.
The Church of Scotland's supreme court has agreed to end public debate about homosexuality for a period of two years, while a special commission investigates the theological and legal issues surrounding the appointment of gay ministers within the church. The General Assembly has instructed all authoritative bodies within Scotland's national church to avoid any public comment on the matter -- including press releases, briefings to the media, and blogging -- and to avoid taking any decisions in relation to 'contentious matters of human sexuality, with respect to Ordination and Induction to the Ministry of the Church of Scotland, until 31 May 2011'. The Assembly also made it clear that the moratorium is not retrospective, and emphasized that its earlier decision to uphold the installation of a gay minister in Aberdeen stands.
Some conservatives on the floor of the house pointed out that the Assembly's decision, on Saturday evening, to sustain a call from a parish in Aberdeen to a gay minister, the Reverend Scott Rennie, left open two possible legal challenges before any installation could take place. First, the minister's current Presbytery would have to take a decision to permit the Rev Scott Rennie to leave his parish, and, second, a service of Installation or Induction might also be construed as an action of a court inconsistent with the moratorium. The Moderator, Dr Bill Hewitt, emphasized, with the support of the Assembly's Acting Principal Clerk, that the spirit of the decision on Saturday evening was clear: the Reverend Scott Rennie was permitted to accept the call to a parish in Aberdeen and, there being no other legal impediments to his installation, that he could be installed. The Acting Principal Clerk, Dr Marjorie MacLean, advised Mr Rennie not to rob any banks before his installation, since this could constitute a legal impediment; but his sexuality, and the fact that he lives openly with his partner, is not.
We wait to see whether today's decision will have any ramifications for the Irish Presbyterian Church, whose General Assembly meets in the first week of June. Will any Presbyterian ministers seek to introduce a resolution responding to the historic events of this week in their mother church? I suspect not; but time will tell.
The Church of Scotland's is currently debating that would create a special commission to investigate theological and legal issues related to homosexuality, and, subject to that commission's report in 2001, impose a moratorium on public comment and decision-making 'in relation to contentious matters of human sexuality'. You can watch the debate live .
have picked up on our discussion, yesterday, on Sunday Sequence. Fr Timothy Bartlett, a senior aide to Cardinal Sean Brady, told the programme that he believes Catholic orders implicated in the abuse of children in Ireland should pay more compensation than the 128m euro they negotiated with the Irish government in 2002. 'The agreement must be looked at again. In my personal view,' he said, 'they need to pay more.' Bishop Noel Treanor later described Fr Bartlett's intervention as 'a comment of integrity'.
Update: The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, has said the deal to compensate the victims of sex abuse in residential institutions run by religious orders should be revisited.
Not according to the archbishops of Canterbury and York. Rowan Williams and John Sentamu have picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the BNP, whose recent ad campaign The archbishops which essentially calls on Christians to vote for parties other than the BNP.
Money quote: 'Christians have been deeply disturbed by the conscious adoption by the BNP of the language of our faith when the effect of those policies is not to promote those values but to foster fear and division within communities, especially between people of different faiths or racial background.'
That's how the Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Donald Patton (pictured), responded to last night's decision by Scotland's national church to approve the appointment of an openly gay minister who lives with his partner. When I asked him if he could envisage a future in which the Presbyterian Church in Ireland would make about gay ministers, Dr Patton replied, 'I think our Assembly simply wouldn't tolerate a situation like that.'
Watch an interview with the gay minister at the centre of this controversy, the Rev Scott Rennie, . Mr Rennie explains that the 18-month ordeal of the appointment and appeal has taken its toll on him: 'I've been personally hurt and, as you can image, it's made life pretty stressful.'
The General Assembly to allow the sppointment of a gay minister, the Rev Scott Rennie. A further debate about changes to the church's law that would prevent such an appointment in future will be held on Monday. On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, I'll ask the Moderator of the Irish Prebyterian Church what ramifications this decision could have in Ireland.
Today's papers have picked up on our moment of 'Holywood realism' on yesterday's Talk Back programme, when I interviewed the legendary actor Tony Curtis. The Daily Telegraph has the headline: . The Daily Mail: . The Belfast Telegraph: .'
Here's what happened. It seems that Tony Curtis, who took our call while doing a book signing at Harrods in London, had forgotten that we would be broadcasting live, otherwise he wouldn't have used the language he did on the show. When he realised it was live, he was very upset about the language he'd drifted into -- an F-word and two B-words -- and apologised profusely.
In fact, he was concerned that the people of Northern Ireland might be angry with him when he visits here next week to talk about his recently published memoirs. I assured him that Northern Irish people are very understanding, that his reputation as a Holywood legend remained intact, and ended this edition of Talk Back by suggesting that this programme would go down in history as one of the more 'unpredictable' moments in broadcasting.
Now, members of the public are coming up to me in the street to ask that we pass on their best wishes and admiration to Tony Curtis. I suspect many more will turn out to warmly greet Mr Curtis when he visits Northern Ireland on Wednesday.
When I got back to my desk after yesterday's programme, one of the letters waiting for me was from a listener who was concerned because she had heard me use the word "gosh" on a previous edition of Talk Back. Also enclosed in the envelope was a booklet explaining that "gosh" was ; my use of the term, according to the letter, amounted to 'taking God's name in vain.'
It's a funny old world.
That's how one victim of clerical abuse described his experience of physical and sexual violence at the hands of Catholic religious brothers in Ireland. contains an horrific litany of abuse carried out against vulnerable children in 250 schools over a period of six decades. The report describes ritualised beatings, torture, sexual humiliation, and rape perpetrated by priests, brothers and nuns in church-run institutions. Mr Justice Ryan says rape was "endemic", and . The Ryan Commission's report is a catalogue of horrific violation; it is an account of one of the darkest episodes in the history of the Irish state.
We committed almost all of today's Talk Back to covering the Ryan revelations. Some of out callers told their personal stories, some simply expressed their shock, their deep confusion about how supposedly spiritual people could commit such appalling crimes against children. More than one compared the torture revelations to what we've heard about the mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanemo Bay. Children were scolded, burned, waterboarded, flogged, sexually abused and violently raped by men and women who said they had religious vocations.
Our programme, which is available on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer, began with Mike Philpott's deeply personal reflection on this story. The Ryan Commission accounts triggered memories for Mike he would sooner forget. Mike has permitted me to reprint his reflection below the line.
He's beginning to look like the Malcolm Tucker of the Catholic Church. Peter Jennings (pictured), press secretary to the new archbishop of Westminster, has gained a certain reputation amongst Britain's religious press corp. He's been my guest a few times on Sunday Sequence and he's always been charming and very articulate, it would appear. Last month, . This month, at an Oxford University student. Matthew Tye, a 22-year-old postgraduate student, has written a letter of complaint to Archbishop Vincent Nichols and claims that Mr Jennings repeatedly called him a s*** at an event held in Blackfriars, Oxford, which was attended by Francis Campbell, the UK's Ambassador to the Vatican.
Peter Jennings has told the papers that he 'deeply regretted the incident and any embarrassment caused', although he regards the matter as 'a typhoon in a tea spoon'.
The Church of Scotland's debate about the inclusion of gay and lesbian church members will heat up considerably this week, as the denomination approaches its annual General Assembly. The Assembly will not only consider an appeal against the appointment of an openly gay minister, but will also vote on a resolution that would have very serious implications for gay people throughout Scotland's national church. The resolution reads: "This Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit, re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between a man and a woman".
Some well-known church leaders from Northern Ireland have added their names to encouraging the General Assembly of Scotland's national church to prohibit a gay minister from taking up a new pastoral position in Aberdeen.
The petition, organised by the Fellowship of Confessing Churches, a conservative campaign group within the Church of Scotland, also calls on the General Assembly to support a controversial Overture (or resolution) that "this Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit, re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between a man and a woman". To date, have signed the online petition. Of those, more than 2,000 are , including Irish denominations.
The list includes a number of former Presbyterian moderators (Dr Alistair Dunlop, Dr John Lockington, and Dr Ivan McKay, and others), a former president of the Irish Methodist Church (Rev Jim Rea), and executive level administrators within the Irish Presbyterian Church (Rev Trevor Gribben, Deputy Clerk of the General Assembly; Rev David Bruce, executive secretary of the Board of Mission in Ireland; and Rev Ronnie Hetherington, Director of Ministerial Studies). Other signatories include the Rev Martin Smyth, former South Belfast unionist MP, and the Rev Bobby Liddle, who authored the Presbyterian Church's 2007 report on homopbobia, alongside ministers from various denominations, elders, theological lecturers, students and church members.
The history of the church is littered with theological battlefields. In the distant past, churches debated, and divided over, questions about the person and work of Christ, and the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the other persons of the Trinity. In the medieval world, churches devided over the metaphysics of the eucharist, and issues of power and authority. In the twentieth century, churches divided over the role of women in the church, and the politics of race. Then came ethical debates about abortion. But in recent years, particularly within Protestantism, homosexuality has become the key battleground issue. The presence and role of gay and lesbian Christians within churches has not only divided liberals and evangelicals, it has also divided 'conservative evangelicals' from 'progressive evangelicals'.
Homosexuality is now, without doubt, the most divisive theological issue facing the world's major Protestant denominations. The argument within Anglicanism has been likened by some to a theological civil war -- with no sign of a ceasefire anytime soon. Now, the Church of Scotland, Scotland's national church and the mother church of Irish Presbyterianism, is about to face its most challenging debate about homosexuality to date. Some say this debate has brought the Church of Scotland closer to schism than any other issue since the Year of Disruption in 1843. Next week, its votes on whether a gay minister can be appointed to a parish in Aberdeen.
"From a natural justice perspective I feel a justifiable exception would be the fairest manner to deal with the current situation." , in 2006, tried to claim for a £3,100 Sony 40 inch TV set. The suggests that £750 is a reasonable expense for a television, and no one would deny that MPs need to have access to the media from their home.
There's an engaging dialogue about the ethics of remuneration here, involving two philosophers and a remuneration expert . Test case: One Conservative MP claimed 78p for two tins of pet food. Is it ethical to expense your pets' needs?
Professor James Connelly: This reminds me of Plato's The Ring of Gyges, where Plato asks: "What would you do if you put on a ring that made you invisible?" Some MPs seem to think they were wearing the ring when they put in these claims. Now they look pretty stupid.
Baroness Warnock: Absolutely not. They can feed their own bloody pets.
Last night, to mark the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's election as prime minister, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Parliament re-ran the entire TV coverage of election night, presented by a youthful David Dimbleby, with political interviews conducted by Robin Day at the other end of the studio. It was, I am not ashamed to admit, a great night of TV.
In her first speech to the cameras, delivered on the steps of Downing Street after returning from the palace, Mrs Thatcher quoted words attributed (probably wrongly) to St Francis of Assisi -- and we marked the 800th anniversary of his conversion on last Sunday's programme.
I thought today it would be interesting to recall a later speech about religion by Mrs Thatcher, in which she appeared to use theology to provide a justification for her political and economic policies. , given to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in May 1988, was nicknamed "the Sermon on the Mound" by the press (the mound being the hill upon which the church's Assembly Hall stands). Read the speech in full .
So far, 15 countries have officially reported cases of the H1NI infection, and the pandemic alert has been raised to recognise the imminent likelihood of a global influenza outbreak. On the plus side: The World Health Organisation says the the world is better prepared for an flu pandemic than at any time in history. It's not just governments and health organisations that are preparing for that eventuality. Some churches already have detailed action plans. Not least the Catholic diocese of Lancaster. They've published . You can hear my interview with the guide's author, the Reverend Nick Donnelly, on tomorrow's Sunday Sequence. We'll also be exploring some of the theological and ethical issues raised by the possibility of a flu pandemic. Did God create the H1N1 virus?
, Britain's twentieth poet laureate, and the first woman to be appointed to the position, if she thinks poetry 'to some extent takes the place of religion' in a secular society. She replied, 'It does for me: I don't believe in God.' Her sonnet 'Prayer' is the voice of that secular spirituality:
Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
(from Mean Time [Anvil, 1994])
Listen to Carol Ann Duffy read some of her poems.
'Capitalism is nothing but a false religion, with Mammon as its god and Adam Smith as its high priest.' .
'Communism is nothing but a false religion, with [INSERT] as its god and Karl Marx as its high priest.' .
'Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.'
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
Bill Maher's film Religulous redeploys the claim, often made, that the biblical story of Jesus is a re-run of the Egyptian myth of Horus.
Did the writers of the New Testament 'borrow' from a older myth? Is the gospel account a kind of mthological plagiarism? It's said that Horus, like Jesus -- or Jesus, like Horus -- was born of a virgin, had twelve disciples, walked on water, delivered a 'sermon on the mount', performed mircles, was executed beside two thieves, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
We'll be exploring the similarities between Horus and Jesus on Sunday morning, with an Egyptologist, a humanist and a Christian theologian.
If you're in Derry tonight, you mighty like to hear a lecture from one of the world's leading eco-theologians. Mark Wallace will be speaking on 'Christianity in an Ecological Age' at 6.30 tonight in the University of Ulster's Magee campus. Mark Wallace is Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of the forthcoming Green Christianity: Five Ways to a Sustainable Future (Fortress, 2009), and has written Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature (Fortress, 2005), Fragments of the Spirit: Nature, Violence, and the Renewal of Creation (Continuum, 1996; Trinity, 2002), amongst many other publications.
Here's the abstract for Professor Wallace's Magee campus talk: 'The great work of our generation will be to develop sustainable lifestyles that kick the habit of dependence on cheap fossil fuels, the primary source of global climate change. A return to animism - indigenous communities' belief that the natural world is charged with sacred presence - has the power to fire the imagination and empower the will in order to break the cycle of addiction to nonrenewable energy. The environmental crisis is a crisis not of the head, but of the heart. The problem is not that we do not know how to stop climate change, but rather that we lack the inner strength to redirect our culture and economy toward a sustainable future. The time has passed for new technologies to quick-fix the problem - only an attitude of attunement to the presence of spirit in all things can save us now'.
I only ask the question because I finally got to see Orson Welles's most famous film on a big screen last night at the QFT. I've seen it on DVD a number of times, but seeing it projected large changed my experience completely. The theatricality of the film is hidden, to a great extent, until it is shown big. Inevitably, some cited the film last night as the greatest movie ever made. Composing that kind of list is always a dangerous business. But I'm willing to play. Your nominations, please ...
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