Archive for October, 2009

Muslims and Christians clashed in southern Egypt on Saturday following an earlier murder of a Christian villager by attackers accusing his son of having an affair with a Muslim, according to witnesses.

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Previous Related Post:-

Farouk Henry Attallah a Christian man was killed in southern Egypt by attackers who accused his son of having an affair with a Muslim girl, police said Sunday.

Associated Press

CAIRO  —  Muslims and Christians clashed in southern Egypt on Saturday following an earlier murder of a Christian villager by attackers accusing his son of having an affair with a Muslim, according to witnesses.

Relatives of the slain villager and the girl pelted each other with rocks, broke shop front windows, and shot bullets into the air before police restored calm to the southern village of Dayrut.

The clashes erupted after four relatives from the girl’s family had their detention extended by police investigating their involvement in the murder.

Henry Atallah was shot dead while waiting in his car on Oct. 18 in the nearby village of Attaleen, near the southern city of Assiut.

According to police, the murder was prompted by rumors that Attallah’s son had taken intimate pictures of the girl and distributed them by mobile phone and CD.

Egyptian Christians, known as Copts, make up an estimated 10 percent of Egypt’s 78 million people and generally live in peace with the Muslim majority although they complain about discrimination.

Clashes have erupted in the past in Egypt’s impoverished south over the issue of building churches or just escalated from ordinary marketplace squabbles.

FURTHER INTERNET LINK:-

Egypt: Muslims stone Coptic churches in dispute that started over Christian man dating Muslim woman

Muslims Murder Christian in Egypt, Stone Coptic Christian Churches: FOX Bitchslaps the Copts

Accounts filed at the Charity Commission show that the Government paid a total of £113,411 last year to a foundation run by senior members and activists of Hizb ut-Tahrir — a notorious Islamic extremist group that ministers promised to ban.

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Previous Related Post:-

Hizb ut-Tahrir claims to be a non-violent political party. Its members publicly state this, however critics are not convinced – Hizb ut-Tahrir: “What is required is actual war”

Islamic Extremists call for caliphate in London(istan)

Telegraph

Islamists who want to destroy the state get £100,000 funding

Members of a group regarded as an ‘organisation of concern’ by the Home Office has secured large government grants for schools , reports Andrew Gilligan.

Leading members of a group that wants to bring down the British state and replace it with a dictatorship under Islamic law have secured more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money for a chain of schools.

Accounts filed at the Charity Commission show that the Government paid a total of £113,411 last year to a foundation run by senior members and activists of Hizb ut-Tahrir — a notorious Islamic extremist group that ministers promised to ban.

The public money helped run a nursery school and two Islamic primary schools where children are taught key elements of Hizb’s ideology from the age of five.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, last night described the disclosure as “astonishing and outrageous” and accused the Government of “sleeping on the job”.

Hizb regards integration as “dangerous” and says that British Muslims should “fight assimilation” into British society. It wants to create a global Islamic superstate, or “caliphate”, initially in Muslim-majority countries and then across the rest of the world.

It says that “those [Muslims] who believe in democracy are Kafir”, or apostates. It orders all Muslims to keep apart from non-believers and boycott “corrupt” British elections and political processes. It has a tiny following and its views are rejected by most British Muslims.

Hizb, which operates worldwide, insists it is non-violent and condemned the London bombings.

However its website previously displayed a leaflet urging Muslims to “kill [Jews] wherever you find them” and at a rally in London earlier this year, Imran Waheed, its chief media adviser in Britain, said that there could be “no peace” with Israel, calling on Muslims to “fight” a “jihad… in the way of Allah” against it.

Its anti-Semitism has resulted in the group being banned in Germany and on some British university campuses.

After the bombings in London on July 7, 2005, Tony Blair, who was then prime minister, also promised to ban Hizb, describing it as “fanatical”.

A ban has not been introduced but the Tories have pledged to outlaw the group and the Home Office continues to regard it as an “organisation of concern”.

The three schools — in Tottenham, north London, and Slough, Berks — are run by the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation, a registered charity. The foundation’s lead trustee is Yusra Hamilton, a leading Hizb activist who is married to Taji Mustafa, the group’s chief spokesman in Britain.

At least three of the four trustees are Hizb members or activists, including Farah Ahmed, the head teacher of the Slough school, who has written in a Hizb journal condemning the “corrupt Western concepts of materialism and freedom”.

On their website, the schools say their “ultimate goal” and “foremost work” is the creation of an “Islamic personality” in children The creation of an “Islamic personality” is a key tenet of Hizb’s ideology.

The schools’ history curriculum states that children are taught that “there must be one ruler of the khilafah [caliphate]”. The schools’ website says that “in the glorious history of Islam… the Sharia was the norm”.

Children learn Arabic from the age of three. A spokesman for the foundation insisted that it was not a Hizb ut-Tahrir operation but involved “Muslim women from a wide variety of backgrounds”.

The spokesman claimed that Mrs Hamilton resigned two years ago. However, Charity Commission records, accessed yesterday show that she remains the lead trustee.

In January 2009, Mrs Hamilton was described by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, as the “proprietor” of the Shakhsiyah Foundation’s Slough school. The Foundation’s annual report of December 2008 shows her as a trustee.

Mrs Hamilton is listed on the electoral roll as residing just around the corner from the Foundation’s Tottenham school, with Mr Mustafa under his real name, Urutajirinere Fombo.

Contacted by telephone, he confirmed his identity as Mr Mustafa and said that Hizb did not “run” the foundation, but added: “We would certainly approve of those in the Muslim community who seek to establish good Islamic schools.”

The Shakhsiyah Foundation spokesman said the government money, from Whitehall’s “Free Entitlement” and “Pathfinder” programmes, had been claimed by parents on behalf of the school.

However, a spokesman for Haringey council, which administered the grant, said this was incorrect and that the foundation had applied for the money.

The Tottenham school’s landlord, a moderate Muslim organisation, said it had serious reservations about its tenant. “They have a contract with us,” said Serkan Yumakci, a spokesman for the landlord.

“But if we had known then what we know now, things would be very different.” Mr Yumakci said that Mr Mustafa had previously been a frequent visitor to the school but had now been asked not to come by the landlord.

A report out next week by the Centre for Social Cohesion, a think-tank, says that Hizb is creating a number of similar “front organisations” to win public money and enlist support from mainstream politicians.

“Hizb is a fringe group but it is being given a public platform, legitimacy and funding by the very institutions it wishes to destroy,” said Houriya Ahmed, one of the authors of the report. “Just as everyone sees the BNP for what they really are, it’s time for us all to recognise how dangerous and divisive this group is.”

Outside a Victorian Gothic priory in Tottenham, which houses two of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation’s schools, boys spilt out at home-time in their royal blue uniform sweatshirts.

Even the smallest girl wore the hijab. Most parents said they liked the school, but not all were aware of its links with Hizb. “We don’t really know about it,” said one father.

Others, however, were more political. “Hizb ut-Tahrir is not an extremist group,” said one mother, Khadija. “They’re people who want to stop the US domination of the Middle East.” Was it a good school? “It’s a lovely school,” she said.

“Because they love Islam.” When the school realised there was a journalist outside, a teacher came to tell the parents not to talk to us. Some, however, ignored their orders.

“To be honest with you, I don’t prefer this school,” said one father. “They don’t teach good English. Personally, I would say it’s not good for integration.”

“It is a good school,” his daughter, aged about six, interrupted. Asked what she was taught, she replied: “Arabic.”

Elsewhere in north London, a new organisation called MCRCIA, Muslim Community Representatives in Camden and Islington Association, has organised or participated in a number of community events in the two boroughs.

Its website includes endorsements from a local Labour councillor and a representative of the area’s police and community consultative group.

However, the symbol MCRCIA chooses on its blog is the logo for a Hizb ut-Tahrir campaign, Stand for Islam. A spokesman for MCRCIA said it had “links” with Hizb, but it was not a “front organisation” and its members were not in Hizb.

The CSC report said that a number of other front organisations have been created in Tower Hamlets, several of them meeting in council-controlled buildings and community centres.

Hannah Stuart, another CSC researcher, described the proliferation of such groups as “genuinely worrying,” adding: “Young people who get involved with Hizb ut-Tahrir’s fronts are tricked into believing its radical agenda represents true Islam.”

Hizb has sometimes been accused of being a “conveyor-belt to terrorism”, a charge it vehemently denies.

The Shakhsiyah school in Slough has been praised in a “light-touch inspection” by Ofsted, which said it “provides a good quality of education and meets its aims effectively” and that “pupils develop knowledge and understanding of British institutions and traditions”.

However, there is no Ofsted report on the Tottenham school.

A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokesman said: “We give that money to local authorities and they are responsible for ensuring that providers are appropriate.”

FURTHER INTERNET RESOURCE

UK: Sharia supremacist group gets $165,000 in taxpayer funding

Islamists who want to destroy the state and establish a unitary Islamic caliphate received £100,000 Government funding

Hizb Awarded £113,000 of Public Money

BEERSHEVA, Israel – A long-awaited trial is underway in Israel that brings Light to Treatment of Messianic Jews

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Previous related Posts from the Rosh Pina Project

More on the Beersheva trial

Outrage against Messianic Jews in Beersheva

CBN

BEERSHEVA, Israel – A long-awaited trial is underway in Israel.

In 2005, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protestors invaded a Messianic Jewish congregation, overturned furniture and harassed the members for hours.

Now, the congregation is suing the chief rabbi of the town and a powerful anti-missionary organization for their alleged involvement in the fracas.

Congregation Nachalat Yeshua (Yeshua’s Inheritance) in Beersheva planned a special baptismal service on Christmas eve in 2005, which that year coincided with the first night of Hanukkah (the Festival of Lights).

But before the celebration ever got underway, nearly 1,000 violent protestors, who opposed their faith in Yeshua (Jesus), invaded the premises.

“Christmas Eve in 2005, my wife and I and three sons came to the congregation in the morning and we saw many ultra-Orthodox people outside, and there were even more inside. They had already taken over the congregational time,” said Michael Cederburg, a member of Nachalat Yeshua.

Chairs were thrown and people knocked around as hundreds of protestors sang, danced and rioted. Despite a heavy police presence, the trouble continued for three hours. Cederburg’s son captured some of the events on camera.

“People were trying to take the camera from his hand. It was a violent demonstration,” he said.  “I was standing in the back next to the door here and my son and I and somebody came out of the crowd, a big guy and said ‘I hate you, I hate you, go to Gaza’ and he hauled off and hit me across the face and I was just stunned. Things like that happened that day,” Cederberg said.

Pastor Howard Bass spent the time trying to calm and protect his congregants, but he also came under attack.

“I was standing by the baptismal surrounded by these religious protestors and they kind of picked up and pushed me into the pool. Thankfully, I landed feet first and avoided all the other things they’d already thrown in [there],” he recalled.

But what came next upset Bass even more.  He says the chief sephardic rabbi of Beersheva, Rabbi Yehuda Deri, arrived at the scene and police turned over two of the handcuffed protesters to him without asking Bass if he wanted to press charges.

“They just said it was a police matter,” he said. “But this is sort of the feeling we have as believers here in the country – that we have no voice when it comes to the legal system.”

When the chief rabbi tried to whitewash the 2005 incident in a radio interview the next day, Bass said he felt something needed to be done. After much prayer and consultation with other Messianic leaders throughout Israel, they decided to go to court.

“We had a right to do what we were doing, which was to assemble together to worship our God, and what they were did was illegal,” Bass said.

“The police even admitted that the demonstration was illegal and they did other illegal acts and of course this is what we’re trying to prove in the courts,” he said.

The second day of the trial took place on Sunday, June 21. An additional hearing is scheduled to take place in November, with a verdict expected by the end of the year.

“It’s not against Israel. It’s not against the Jewish people. It’s not to be taken by anybody to use it that way, but we do want the truth of Yeshua to be brought forward,” Bass said.

“We’re not ashamed and [we're] hopeful that God by His own righteousness will do what He has to do in the verdict to accomplish His purposes, even more than we understand,” he said.

“Whether it goes in our favor [or] against us, we don’t know, but we want God’s purposes to be fullfilled,” Bass said.

Bishop Hind said he would be “happy” to be reordained as a Catholic priest and said that divisions in Anglicanism could make it impossible to stay in the church. He is the most senior Anglican to admit that he is prepared to accept the offer from the Pope.

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent – Telegraph

Senior Anglican bishop reveals he is ready to convert to Roman Catholicism

The Rt Rev John Hind, the Bishop of Chichester, has announced he is considering becoming a Roman Catholic in a move that could spark an exodus of clergy.

Bishop Hind said he would be “happy” to be reordained as a Catholic priest and said that divisions in Anglicanism could make it impossible to stay in the church.

He is the most senior Anglican to admit that he is prepared to accept the offer from the Pope, who shocked the Church of England last week when he paved the way for clergy to convert to Catholicism in large numbers.

In a further blow to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hopes of preventing the Anglican Communion from disintegrating, other bishops have cast doubt over its survival.

The Rt Rev John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, even claimed that “the Anglican experiment is over”. He said it has been shown to be powerless to cope with the crises over gays and women bishops.

In one of the most significant developments since the Reformation, the Pope last week announced that a new structure would be set up to allow disaffected Anglicans to enter full communion with Rome, while maintaining parts of their Protestant heritage.

The move comes after secret talks between the Vatican and a group of senior Anglican bishops. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not informed of the meetings and his advisers even denied that they had taken place when the Sunday Telegraph broke the story last year.

Now Bishop Hind, the most senior traditionalist in the Church of England, has confirmed that he is willing to sacrifice his salary and palace residence to defect to the Catholic Church.

“This is a remarkable new step from the Vatican,” he said. “At long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England. I’d be happy to be reordained into the Catholic Church.”

While the bishop stressed that this would depend on his previous ministry being recognised, he said that the divisions in the Anglican Communion could make it impossible to stay.

“How can the Church exist if bishops are not in full communion with each other,” he said.

Conservative archbishops and bishops have broken ties with their liberal counterparts following the US Episcopal Church’s consecration of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop.

Bishop Broadhurst said that the Pope has made his offer in response to the pleas of Anglicans who despair at the disintegration of their Church.

“Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues,” said the bishop, who is chairman of Forward in Faith, the Anglo-Catholic network that represents around 1,000 traditionalist priests.

“There is widespread dissent across the [Anglican] Communion. We are divided in major ways on major issues and the Communion has unravelled.

“I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own.

“I personally think it has gone past the point of no return. The Anglican experiment is over.”

The Rt Rev Martyn Jarrett, the Bishop of Beverley, also said there were questions over the church’s survival, adding that the Church of England has changed too dramatically for some traditionalists.

“They are beginning to reflect that the theological position of the Church isn’t what they believe,” he said.

“The offer from the Vatican is momentous and I felt a great sense of gratitude that the Roman Catholic Church is thinking about the position of traditionalist Anglicans.”

Clergy at the Forward in Faith conference, which met in Westminster yesterday, expressed relief that the Pope had provided them with an escape route.

Fr Ed Tomlinson, vicar of St Barnabas, Tunbridge Wells, said that he would be following the lead of Bishop Hind.

“The ship of Anglicanism seems to be going down,” he said. “We should be grateful that a lifeboat has been sent.

“I shall be seeking to move to Rome. To stay in the Church of England would be suicide.”

Hundreds of traditionalist clergy could join the exodus, though most are waiting for the exact details of the new apostolic constitution to be published.

Battles lie ahead over whether priests who leave to join the Catholic Church will be allowed to take their churches with them, but some bishops have already warned against property seizure.

Dr Williams was only informed of the details of the Pope’s decree last weekend and is understood to have been “implacably opposed” to the move.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said he was “appalled” that his successor was given such short notice and was excluded from discussions on the issue.

The Rt Rev Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph and a close colleague of Dr Williams, said that the archbishop was likely to be saddened by the developments.

“Rowan has worked very hard for unity both within the Anglican Communion, and with Rome, and I suspect he may feel that what has happened is little short of a betrayal, not by the Catholic Church, but by some of those in his own ranks.”

“He is likely to be saddened that they felt driven to seek such a radical solution and that some of them now feel they have to go.”

“Up until now, the Roman Catholic Church has been putting its weight behind Rowan, but now it is appearing to put its weight behind the conservative groups it can most easily win over.”

“The danger is that they’ll have every disaffected Anglican beating down the pathway to their door and asking for special treatment.”

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that the planning behind last week’s announcement began in 2006, when the Pope asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to consider how they could invite Anglicans into the Roman Catholic fold.

He had reached out to disillusioned Anglicans three years earlier, when as head of the Congregation, the most powerful of the Vatican’s departments and successor to the medieval Inquisition, he wrote a personal letter to Anglicans in America. He reassured them of the Catholic Church’s support of their stand against the liberal tide.

Potential breakthrough in Ami Ortiz case

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

By way of brief background on this story:-

In 2008, a bomb disguised as a Purim package was delivered to the home of the Ortiz family. The parents are Jewish Messianic pastors. They weren’t home but their 15 year old son Ami was. He was nearly blown to pieces, but recovered miraculously. Now they’ve arrested a suspect – 18 months later:

You’ll find his story at http://www.amiortiz.com

Continuing news from The Rosh Pina project

Leah Ortiz writes:

We have incredible news and answer to prayer. A suspect has been arrested in our case! Actually he was arrested about 2 weeks ago, but there has been a continuing gag order placed on the story. Therefore we cannot tell you all the details because we don’t have them yet. To be noted that we didn’t hear the news from the police, but from our lawyer and media sources, and today the American Embassy called us to tell us that there was an arrest! We are dual American and Israeli citizens, and I thanked them for having the consideration to inform us.

Concerning the suspect, we only know that he is an Orthodox Jew, originally from the U.S. He was living in a settlement in our area, is married, the father of four children, and is now being held by the secret services because the case is wider than we expected. We know that weapons and explosive material were found in his home, and that there is a lot of hard evidence against him. We also know that there are those in Ariel who are under intense investigation as well, but we’re not sure if any other arrests have been made. We also know that his lawyer went before the judge to ask for the suspect to be released on bail, and he was refused because of the amount of evidence against him in his file. We expect that the gag order will be lifted maybe on Wednesday or Thursday, and then we will know more details and the press will be all over the story for a few days.

GREAT RELIEF

Our family has experienced great relief. We are happy that we don’t have to look over our shoulder, we don’t have to check our car before we get into it, and we can open our front door with more confidence. Before this we knew there was a murderer roaming free, perhaps standing in line with us in the post office, or continuing to keep surveillance on our house. We also feel sorrow for the suspect who has so ruined his life, the lives of his family, and has brought a bad name on the people of Israel. We can testify that the nation as a whole condemns this man’s actions. We have received telephone calls and communications from Israelis throughout this past year and a half, from every town, city, and village in Israel. They have been secular, orthodox and ultra orthodox Jews, and the message has been the same – shock, grief and anger over the incident, and the need to let us know that they condemn this vicious act. They all blessed Ami with wishes for a full recovery, and hopes that he would succeed in life and fulfil his dreams.

PRAY FOR WISDOM

Please pray for us as the media interviews begin, both domestic and international, for wisdom and for the name of Yeshua to be lifted up. Please pray for Ami, as he goes back to the moment and shares it publically. He took the news very coolly. I don’t think he wants to let his heart get involved in any way, which I understand. Right now he is with all the 11th graders in his school in the northern Negev, in a pre-army type of experience called in Hebrew the “gadna” which means “youth battalions”. It’s kind of a light basic training simulation with many lectures from the army about what they can expect, and what their possibilities are.

Psalm 27:1-6 sums it all up-

1 The LORD is my light and my salvation-
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life-
of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.
3 Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.
4 One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.
5 For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock.
6 Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;
at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make music to the LORD.

Thank you for standing with us as you have helped us to pray this through, and for continuing to be with us in prayer.

In the Messiah, Leah

Be careful what you ask the Pope for, because he might just give it to you. That’s the truth slowly sinking in to attendees at the annual conference of Forward in Faith, held in London today.

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Previous related posts:-

About 500 members of Forward in Faith, the leading traditionalist grouping, will be in London to debate Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican “ordinariate” or diocese to operate under a new Apostolic Constitution.

A well-connected Rome source reports that Forward in Faith, the umbrella group for conservative Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England, is talking to the Vatican about corporate union

Leaders of more than 400,000 Anglicans who quit over women priests are to seek immediate unity with Rome under the apostolic constitution announced by Pope Benedict XVI.

Damian Thompson is Blogs Editor of the Telegraph Media Group.

Be careful what you ask the Pope for, because he might just give it to you. That’s the truth slowly sinking in to attendees at the annual conference of Forward in Faith, held in London today. For ages, many Anglo-Catholics have said they would come over to Rome, but on their own terms (not unreasonable ones, in my opinion). And now the Vatican has said: OK, you can have your own church-within-a-church, only for form’s sake we can’t call it that.

Uh-oh. Suddenly one or two Anglo-Catholics who used to bleat on about how the only obsctacle to coming over was the ghastly RC bishops’ conference are having second thoughts, even though that ghastly conference has been written out of the picture. On the other hand, other Anglicans whom you would never expect to be attracted by a Roman offer are taking it seriously, so dramatic are its contents.

The “flying” Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, told the Forward in Faith meeting today: “We are Western Christians, Catholics of the Latin Rite, separated from the Holy See.” Well, now there’s a way to demonstrate that. It’s already clear that Burnham and most of the big guns in the Anglo-Catholic movement will join the Personal Ordinariate, surmounting practical problems. Most young priests will do likewise, I suspect. Many lay people will be less keen, in some cases because (as one disillusioned Catholic convert put it yesterday) they’re as attached to their church buildings as they are to their faith.

We shouldn’t expect a definitive response from Anglo-Catholics for some months. But my gut feeling is that the Personal Ordinariate will work, and work well, though its final shape may surprise us. More on this later.

Rome’s Via Media

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Cross-posted from the excellent Cranmer Blog

There is something quite seismic afoot, which really does confirm what Cranmer has been saying for many years: Pope Benedict XVI is the foremost theologian of the age, and certainly the finest intellect to hold the Papal Office in a century. He is also gifted with shrewd and highly-attuned political antennae, which the Anglican hierarchy cannot but wonder at. Indeed, he leaves them standing.

Ever since the Bull Apostolicae Curae issued by Leo XIII in 1896, the Church of England has been in no doubt regarding Rome’s view on ordinations conducted with the Anglican rite, which Cranmer introduced in 1550. They are, declared Pope Leo, ‘absolutely null and utterly void’. And so absolutely and utterly worthless were they that he implored those who sought orders to return to Rome where they would find ‘the true aids for salvation’.

This was reiterated as recently as just a year ago, when Cardinal Dias quite rudely implied that the Church of England is suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s and ecclesial Parkinson’s. And Cardinal Kasper, speaking with ‘the frankness which friendship allows’, declared that Rome’s recognition of Anglican orders was ‘definitively blocked’.

But Pope Benedict has retracted the ‘definitively’, set aside the ‘absolutely’ and dispensed with the ‘utterly’. The tedious ecumenists have been blown out of the water: their time has run out. It seems, after all, that there is to be accommodation of Anglican orders within the Roman Catholic Church. And Cranmer is of the opinion that this is one of the most significant shifts in post-Reformation Christendom.

There is no doubt that the timing of the Pope’s Apostolic Constitution with its ‘Personal Ordinariate’ incursion into the Anglo-Catholic or ‘High Anglican’ wing of the Church of England is unfortunate. That the Archbishop of Canterbury was given just a few weeks’ notice appears a little rude, not to say quite disrespectful. And yet there is a sense in which Dr Williams has been quite naïve; indeed, had he been possessing of half the antennae of His Holiness, he would have seen this coming years ago.

There has long been profound concern among Anglo-Catholics that the ‘liberal’ wing of the Church was on the ascendancy. The fine scholarship of Anglican historians and theologians was being subsumed to such ephemeral obsessions as the ordination of homosexuals and women. It is wholly consistent with the Church of England’s belief about itself – that it is part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – that the ordination of women to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible recognition of Anglican Orders by the Roman Catholic Church. Since there are so many traditionalists within the Anglican Communion who accord with this, it is difficult to ignore the subtle but evident allusion to the call of Pope Leo XIII that they should return to Rome where they would find ‘the true aids for salvation’.

And yet there remain some very great and significant differences between the Anglican and Catholic churches, including the very office of the Papacy, Rome’s assertion of authority, its belief in the insufficiency of Scripture, and the enormity of the claim to Papal infallibility.

And yet perhaps about 700,000 Anglicans out of 80 million worldwide are now considering the Pope’s invitation to swim the Tiber; not to convert, as such, but to dwell under their own tabernacle within the Roman Catholic Church with the ability to retain some distinct Anglican practices.

There is a sense in which Pope Benedict has graciously offered to sustain the Catholic wing of the Church of England, about which the Archbishop of Canterbury appears not to care very much at all. The Vatican has said that it is simply responding to approaches by Anglicans in search of a spiritual home, and so they have obliged. And what can be wrong with starving children being fed by the friendly neighbours next door if their own parents refuse to nourish them as their health and wellbeing require?

The problem is that the move has damaged the foundation of Anglican identity: it has upset the balance of Hooker’s ‘Catholic and Reformed’ via media. Indeed, the Pope’s invitation can only have the effect of making the Church of England more Protestant, which, in the present age, simply means more liberal, secular and relativist: there are very few parishes now which have much time at all for the XXXIX Articles or the historic character inherited from the days of Queen Elizabeth I. The Catholic tradition is important to the identity of the Church of England, and it is worth fighting to preserve.

So, what is to be done?

There has already been a little spluttering of objection: the Archbishop of Canterbury has delivered a not-so-veiled rebuke for having little warning, and his predecessor Lord Carey has indicated that he is appalled by the untimely discourtesy. He said: “I think, in this day and age, this was inexcusable that Rome decided to do this without consultation.”

But Cranmer is a rather more intrigued by the legal implications: he is persuaded that the path to Rome will be rocky for any Anglican province or diocese, and they may not find in the Roman Catholic Church quite the spiritual haven that they expect. There may be dispensation to use The Book of Common Prayer, but it is very doubtful the extent to which a distinct and genuine ‘Anglican identity’ might be preserved within the Roman Catholic Church. There are very many Anglo-Catholics indeed for whom their Anglicanism consists of far more than Cranmer’s masterpiece. In addition, Anglican clergy are unlikely to take their entire congregations with them, and risk losing their houses and church buildings. There will be no financial compensation, as there was for disgruntled clergy following the decision to ordain women priests, not least because the Church cannot afford it.

And let us not forget the considerable implications that the ‘church within a church’ model presents for the Roman Catholic Church. The incorporation of highly-educated and conservatively-Catholic-minded (even Tory) Anglican vicars and bishops could create some uncomfortable competition for the more liberal (and Labour) Roman Catholic priests and bishops in England and Wales. And why should they maintain an enforced celibacy when the Anglican ministers may marry? There can be no doubt that married clergy coming in from the Anglican Church will raise yet again the issue of clerical celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church.

Cranmer wonders if the arrival of the Catholic-Anglicans might not be a Trojan horse of unintended reformation within the Roman Catholic Church.

And he is yet to examine the Apostolic Constitution and the extent to which it will confer or claim jurisdiction, and precisely over what such conferred or claimed jurisdiction will be. While this is not quite an hegemonous power grab, it has certainly taken a detour around the Archbishop of Canterbury, and has thereby arguably humiliated the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The first Elizabethan era was concerned to retain the Church of England’s Catholic identity: it would be ironic if it were to be wholly lost during the second.

While Cranmer has no doubt that His Holiness will be familiar with the provisions of the Act of Settlement 1701 – and doubtless also highly attuned to the increasingly widespread belief that it is time for it to be repealed – any jurisdiction claimed by Rome within this Realm may yet be fraught with some intractable religio-political complexities.

From the Question Time archives…

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

I am stealing this video straight from Edmund Standing’s Blog, because I thought it was rather funny and because of his earlier “gravity” comment :) :-

Can secular society cope intellectually? – Two recent newspaper articles raise the interesting question of whether modern secularism can really cope with intellectual challenges.

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

John P Richardson

Can secular society cope intellectually?

Two recent newspaper articles raise the interesting question of whether modern secularism can really cope with intellectual challenges.

The first, by Antonia Senior in The Times, is titled, ‘A flawed philosophy that bolsters the BNP’. The philosophy to which she refers is what she calls ‘moral relativisim’:
Truth, and moral worth, are entirely relative to a culture or society. I think bacon is divine; you are a vegetarian; he thinks pig meat is an affront to God. Each of these positions is true, because truth is in the eye of the believer.
This viewpoint she describes, with some justification, as “ incoherent, logically flawed and utterly tired.” And in case anyone should think she is exaggerating, she quotes Germaine Greer on the issue of female circumcision:
Germaine Greer famously accused the critics of circumcision as launching attacks on “the cultural identity” of the circumcised. “One man’s beautification is another man’s mutilation,” she said.
By contrast, she herself believes,
It’s impossible to be a cultural relativist when faced with daily examples of other cultures getting it wrong. There is no validity in any view of right or wrong expressed by the Taleban. There is no truth in any cultural creed that treats women as inferior, let alone those that mutilate them. There is no cultural excuse for child abuse disguised as exorcism.
And doubtless there are many who would agree with her. However, she continues,
Relativism is in retreat, but there is no coherent moral framework taking its place. It helped us move from the certainties of the imperial age into a more tolerant era, but it’s almost impossible to work out what comes next.
The difficulty, as she acknowledges, is that,
The only way to decide if a proposition is true or not, or if an action is right or wrong, is to test it and debate it. This takes more rigour than a lazy assumption that all views are truth and rightness is relative. It’s also tricky if you are an atheist, as so many of us are.
But such rigorous analysis is needed. Otherwise, “paralysed by our inherited relativism, fearful of seeming racist and adrift in a Godless world, we fall silent just when we should be debating and talking.” And then, “Into this silence strides Nick Griffin”.
It is Nick Griffin who also prompts an article by Matthew Parris, again in The Times, who claims that he has only twice been moved to tears by our political life. The first occasion was when Clause 28 of the Local Government Act was passed by the House of Lords. The second was when surveying what the national press had to say about Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. What he saw in the papers was,
… an entire national intelligentsia, in a time of relative peace and stability, unthreatened by any serious challenge to the values they hold dear, and in the face of no more than a gnat of a man leading no more than a rag-tag party with no more than a dishcloth of a manifesto, flinch — seriously flinch — in its commitment to free speech.
By contrast, he asked,
Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop.
But of course the answer is no —we do not have this ‘relaxed confidence’ amongst the intelligentsia, and we especially do not have it amongst those in charge of our institutions of government and mass communication. And the reason for this, I would suggest, is twofold.
The first is that they are products of an educational system which did not teach them to think. It especially did not teach them to think about positions which disagreed with the popular morality of their educators. I remember once in my early years as a University Chaplain, some time in the 1980s, having a conversation with a lecturer about his students’ essays on the subject of abortion.
“What do you teach them about the arguments against abortion?” I asked him.
His answer was, “I would never dream of teaching them the arguments against abortion.”

Clearly he felt this was morally justified. But educationally, of course, it is disastrous. But it is also disastrous tactically, for if we do not know the arguments against our position, how will we cope when we come against someone who does? My suspicion is that at least some of the nervousness about allowing Nick Griffin on television was not that he is a palpable fool but that he might turn out not to be. And judging by Tom Sutcliffe’s report in The Independent (despite its headline), that proved partially to be the case:

The challenge for the panellists was to pry this limpet of strategic blandness from the rock and expose the unsightly muscle beneath – something achieved with only variable success.
The test will be whether Mr Griffin is invited back so that his opponents can finish the job.
But the other reason why our intelligentsia lack confidence is that, thanks to recent government policy, they have come to rely on force, not on argument. Why bother presenting a case when you can just ban someone from speaking, or blockade the arena where they would appear, or —best of all —pass a law which will make it illegal for them to speak in these terms at all.
The justification for this is that we are ‘safeguarding’ society. But the reality is that we are doing nothing of the kind. On the contrary, as Parris writes, there is an argument that,
… free speech will strengthen and sharpen the critical faculties of the whole citizenry, producing a society less susceptible to herd mentality.
Unfortunately, a citizenry susceptible to a herd mentality is not only what we are dangerously close to having, it is what our social and educational policies and practices of the last several decades have tended to produce. We are a society that, like the Question Time audience, cheers and boos to the cues in which it has been coached. And woe betide the person who truly stands out, or goes against the crowd. But sometimes one gets the feeling we are just being set up for the next stage, whatever that might be.
John Richardson
24 October 2009

British National Party (BNP) & Nick Griffin

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

As debate is currently raging throughout the Christian world online, regarding the recent appearance on the BBC Question Time show of Nick Griffin from the BNP, I have decided to collate a few Internet links that have been guiding the debates for your info:-

Let’s ignore the BNP

Don’t Leave It to the BNP to Stand Up for Britain – The British National Party offers little more than Holocaust denial and far-left economic policies that would ruin the UK.

British National Party Gains Further After BBC’s Question Time Fiasco – Nick Griffin looks comparably good to British voters after the BBC stages an attempt to humiliate him and a mob storms the studio.

A few days after Question Time, public opinion has changed. This was a heresy trial

One in five would consider voting for the BNP?

He wants the day to come sooner. When we settle the score – This link (25/10) is particularly damaging to the BNP in terms of them denying their anti-Semitic leanings…

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has called on Christians to “stand shoulder to shoulder” in rejecting the British National Party and its leader Nick Griffin, who he branded a “squalid racist”.

Carey rejects BNP Christian claim

WHY “QUESTION TIME” FAILED TO DESTROY THE BNP

Peter Hain says his fears have been proved right after a poll suggested support for the BNP has risen after Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time.

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser – Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a “truly multicultural” country, a former Government adviser has revealed.

One in five ‘would consider voting BNP’ after Nick Griffin Question Time appearance – More than a fifth of the public would consider voting for the British National Party, according to the first opinion poll taken since the appearance of its leader, Nick Griffin, on Question Time.

Opinion poll: more than half of British voters think the BNP ‘has a point’

The frenzy over the participation of BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time this week has been a classic case of failing to identify the real elephant in the room.

As the dust settles over the Question Time BNP appearance, one thing is certain – the programme’s editors broadcast an atypical programme that was designed to attack Nick Griffin rather than explore (as it usually does) the issues of the day.

Churches need new approach to fight BNP effectively

Why the churches should listen to what Nick Griffin said on Question Time

The British National Party does not speak for British Christians, says Evangelical Alliance

Birmingham churches unite in opposition to BNP’s ‘Christian Britain’ claim

David Duke: Griffin was ‘transparently dishonest’ on Question Time

The BNP legal director’s national socialist vision

So how did it go for Griffin?

The Day After the Night Before

Can secular society cope intellectually? – Two recent newspaper articles raise the interesting question of whether modern secularism can really cope with intellectual challenges.

A flawed philosophy that bolsters the BNP – The chatter of the chattering classes fades to a whisper whenever cultural difference comes up. That’s why extremists flourish

Why sacrifice free speech to swat a gnat? – In the face of a rag-tag party with a dishcloth of a manifesto, we flinched — yes, flinched — in our commitment to liberty

According to reports, Communities Secretary John Denham has been calling on faith groups to nail the lie that the BNP is a “Christian party”

Are one in five really considering voting for the BNP? If so, and Nick’s appearance on QT was the catalyst, some thoughts belatedly occurred to me.

BNP Reaps 9,000 New Enquiries

‘In the Circumstances Nick Was Brilliant’

The former Archbishop of Canterbury says that the BNP must not be allowed to hijack Christianity.

Britain’s New Star on the Far, Far Right – A media circus starring the Holocaust-denying, openly racist leader of an openly racist party.

I’ll add more as they become available.

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