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A Catholic bishop in Northern Ireland has paid tribute to the leadership given by the Queen and the Irish president. says the heads of state, two women of deep personal faith, demonstrated the kind of "spiritual intelligence" that "can take the rubble of the past and make it into foundations rather than a weapons cache."

Read Bishop McKeown's comments in full below the fold.

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is a serial predictor of the end of days. He previously announced that the Rapture would take place on 21 May 1988, then again on 7 September 1994, and now that his most recent prediction, 21 May 2011, has has come and gone, he has "reinterpreted" his prophecy and Judgment Day is now scheduled for 21 October 2011. Apparently an "invisible judgment day" took place last Saturday, so invisible that it took Pastor Camping two days to realise it has happened.

The word "Rapture" was trending on Twitter on Saturday, as was "Harold Camping", mostly because the Twittersphere was enjoying the pastor's apocalytic embarrassment. The Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, was one of thousands who tweeted on the rapture hashtag. His comment: "Thought the Rapture hadn't happened. Then heard Henry Kissinger on R4 and realised it had... and we've been left behind. Awkward... #rapture"

The story has now moved on, like time itself, to those vulnerable people who gave their life-savings to Harold Camping's ministry because they believed his prediction. Camping's Family Radio ministry used the money to buy advertising space and air-time to announce the end of the world. One American athiest, in a moment of entrepreneurial genius, started up a company offering to take care of the pets of any believers raptured on May 21. More than two hundred clients came forward and paid a few hundred dollars each for the peace of mind.

There is, of course, nothing new about Rapture predicting. I recently interviewed a historian who has studied this kind of end-time prediction. I asked him how common it is in the history of religion. Not a day has passed, he said, since the death of Christ when someone, somewhere wasn't predicting his imminent return. In the ancient world, only a few people might have learned about a particular prediction in a particular region, but in the internet age millions can be reached in seconds.

There are moral and theological questions here for responsible church leaders. Many churches continue to teach detailed prophecies about the end of the world; some have even put a date on it. James McConnell, senior pastor of Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in Belfast, told me, in an interview on Sunday Sequence, he is convinced that Christ ill return during his own lifetime. Churches sometimes offer their members worked-out eschatological schemes -- from "" and "" to "" -- and encourage them to see their own lives in the context of the imminent return of Christ.

And it's not only an issue for church leaders. We also know that some advisors to the former US president George W. Bush introduced end-times considerations in White House discussions about the Middle East. I've interviewed Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, who was contacted in 2003 by the office of the French President. They wanted to know more about the bibical prophecies of "Gog and Magog", because President Bush kept refering to them in his last conversation with President Jacques Chirac. The American president had claimed that .

Some commentators point to priestly celibacy and say that's the culprit -- that's why so many Catholic priests have been exposed as child abusers. Others say its the prevalence of homosexuality amongst the priesthood. But neither explanation is correct Being celibate does not make a priest more likely to abuse children, nor does being gay.

Indeed those looking for any simple explanation of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church will be disappointed by the latest report by a research team from the John Jay School of Criminology. The " report states that "No single 'cause' of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests is identified as a result of our research."

"The bulk of cases occurred decades ago," said Dr Karen Terry, John Jay's principal investigator for the report. "The increased frequency of abuse in the 1960s and 1970s was consistent with the patterns of increased deviance of society during that time."

Some commentators have read this claim as an attempt , but in an interview with this week's Sunday Sequence, Dr Karen Terry describes that reading of her report as "simplistic".

This latest John Jay report is long and detailed but is now required reading for the contemporary discussion about clerical abuse.

Below the fold, the American Jesuit priest Fr Thomas Reese offers Will & Testament readers a synopsis of the main findings of the report.

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How should the person of faith relate to the institutions of the state -- a state that sometimes engages in physical force, violence and war? Should Christians accept that the state, even a warring state, enjoys divine approval, or demonstrate that their citizenship is elsewhere by resisting those actions of the state that are inconsistent with the peaceble kingdom of God? These are big questions that go to the heart of the discipline of , and a new book considers a radical approach to that believer-state relationship. In , argues that Christian anarchism is both a unique political theology and a unique political theory. In this interview for Will & Testament, I asked him to explain why he believes represents a form of faithful Christian discipleship.

What is Christian anarchism?
The basic idea behind Christian anarchism is that when it comes to politics, "anarchism" is what follows (or is supposed to follow) from "Christianity". "Anarchism" here can mean, for example, a denunciation of the state (because through it we are violent, we commit idolatry, and so on), the envisioning of a stateless society, and/or the enacting of an inclusive, bottom-up kind of community life. And "Christianity" can be understood, for example, in the very rationalistic way Leo Tolstoy interprets it, through the Catholic framework Dorothy Day approaches it, or through the various Protestant eyes of people like Jacques Ellul, Vernard Eller, Dave Andrews or Michael Elliott. There can therefore be a lot of ways "Christianity" is interpreted, and equally there are many facets to this "anarchism". But one way or the other, Christian anarchism holds the view that, properly understood, what Jesus calls us to in the political sphere is some form of anarchism.

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I don't often post an open thread, but some of you tell me it's a good idea because it lets you get stuff off your chest without throwing the direction of other threads. It also permits you to make suggestions about subjects we might give some more substantial space to on Will & Testament. Let's see. Expatiate at will (sorry about the pun). Keep it legal. The house rules still apply.

America's largest Presbyterian church has taken a step away from orthodoxy, according to the Moderator of Ireland's Presbyterian Church.

(pictured) told Sunday Sequence today that he responds to the Presbyterian Church (USA) decision with "sadness and disappointment", but he accepts that PC(USA) is still fundamentally an orthodox Christian denomination in full communion with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Dr Hamilton said his church's relationship with PC(USA), a denomination founded by a Presbyterian minister from Ireland, had "cooled" over the years and warned that relations between the two churches would be further strained

In the past, the Irish Presbyterian General Assembly has welcomed delegates from PC(USA) and granted them the right to take part in the Assembly's deliberations (without voting). Dr Hamilton said he expects and hopes that practice to continue.

Listen again to the interview with Norman Hamilton here (scroll to 114 mins).

These are some of the week's big religion and ethics news stories. You can talk about the stories on this thread and suggest others.

Religion stories
US Presbyterians vote to
Jim Wallis and Sojourners in inclusive ad controversy.
Muslim Americans split on impact of bin
US preacher warns end of the world is nigh:
David Quinn: Staggering that church still not fully

Ethics in the news
Max Mosley loses European court privacy law bid.
Tony Kushner's honour restored by

Thinking allowed
What will happen to us?

has become the face of "progressive" Christianity in the United States. He's the founder of magazine and the Sojourners community in Washington DC. He's also the author of bestselling books including ; and he has served as a spiritual advisor to President Obama.

Social justice has been a consistent theme of Wallis's life and ministry, particularly justice for the poor and the vulnerable. But his "progressive" credentials are now being challenged by campaigners and commentators in the US after Wallis's online magazine refused to run a video-ad from , a group supporting the full inclusion of lesbian and gay Christians within the church.

Wallis has He says his organization is merely recognizing that this is an issue that divides Christians and churches and he doesn't want Sojourners to be distracted from its primary focus on social justice and defeating poverty and inequality. Read a few of the angry comments on the thread below his statement and you get a sense of how some supporters of the Sojourners mission are responding to his decision. Believe Out Loud have published their response to the controversy . They say this kind of controversy is what Believe Out Loud was founded to address: "to foster among ... those who silently believe in gay rights but have yet to act ... a willingness to have the hard conversation, to voice their inner belief in equality and reverse their congregation's public silence on LGBT inclusion."

Extras

Sarah Posner, author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, has posted on the

John Shore posts an Open Letter to Jim Wallis .

Tim King, communications director at Sojourners, , and his post includes the Believe Out Loud video-ad with an editorial explanation that Sojourners is committed "first and foremost in dialogue on difficult issues within our editorial pages and we typically do not sell display advertising relating to issues amongst people of faith that have unfortunately and too often been reduced to political wedge issues."

On Friday, 's new pastoral resource will be published.

"I think my son or daughter is gay" is authored by Gerry Lynch and will be launched by (pictured) during the Church of Ireland's General Synod.

You can read the guidelines in full . On today's Sunday Sequence I talked to one parent about his daughter's experience of coming out, at the age of 16, within the church.

Changing Attitude Ireland is "a network of people, gay and heterosexual, lay and ordained, working for the full affirmation of lesbian and gay persons within the Churches in Ireland" and for the "blessing of same-sex relationships in church".

The United Nations' former chief global watchdog for human rights, and former president of Ireland, tells Sunday Sequence this weekend that she has a sense of moral unease about the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

I asked Dr Mary Robinson, who is also a former law professor specialising in human rights law, if she agreed with Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the killing of the al Qaeda leader.

Her reply:

"We still probably don't know the full truth, but it does appear that Osama Bin Laden was unarmed when the attack was made. In those circumstances, it would have been appropriate that he would be arrested and brought to justice. That's what happens to perpetrators even of egregious crimes. And I share an uncomfortable sense with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I would have prefered, if somebody is unarmed and can be captured and can be taken into custody, to be brought to justice. A great democracy would do that. It would have been appropriate that he would have been arrested and brought to justice."

Mary Robinson served as President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She currently serves as a member of , an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, "who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity." Other Elders include former US president Jimmy Carter and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

You can hear my interview with Mary Robinson on Sunday Sequence, tomorrow from 8.30 am.