Again and again I found people willing to give things up for the sake of other folk – in some cases money, in some cases ‘peace of mind’ and for lots of people ‘time’, or ‘only time!’ as one person put it. “Only time!? You know that means a literal piece of your life?” I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

Richard Wood stands high, with Michael Scott and Colin Winter, among those on the roll of Anglican churchmen who stood up against South African white racial supremacy.

Like Scott and Winter, Wood was expelled from Namibia for his active opposition to the Afrikaner Nationalist regime's harshly maintained illegal occupation of its former mandated territory of South West Africa. The Undesirable Persons Removal proclamation of 1920, dating back to the League of Nations days, was used to bring Wood's campaigning to an end in 1975, only to have him, like Winter, continue it from abroad.

Wood had come to South Africa 20 years earlier with his Afrikaner wife whom he had met in London in 1946. After Oldham Hulme Grammar School, Wood undertook electrical engineering training at Regent Street Polytechnic, followed by war service with the RAF. He and his wife then moved to Sri Lanka where he inspected electrical installations on tea plantations.

PCN is a supporter of the Equality Trust. We follow a Jesus who inspires up to act with compassion, to seek justice and to work for a kingdom of righteousness. So are we not angry with how our society is ordered? Are we not dismayed by the sight of foodbanks and alarmed at the rising number of children going hungry? Do we not need to enter into a political debate about all this , to raise questions with our MP, to provoke discussion in the same ways as are doing over climate change?

I have just read a newly published book about Welfare, which is reviewed below. The author is very keen to discuss his book and his passion for a truly just Welfare State with us. Will you let me know if you would like such a discussion on Zoom?

In the meantime below is the book review and I commend such a meeting with Joseph Forde.

Perhaps like many others, when I heard of the British Government’s Rwanda asylum initiative, announced on 14 April, I initially thought it was a line from the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz. It seemed so obviously to be a spoof of the Government’s attempts to distract from Partygate.

Jesus died, if we look closely at the gospel accounts, because he was perceived as a threat to the value system of the Roman Empire and the Jewish religious hierarchy of his day. They considered him to be an insurrectionist, one who wanted to overthrow the system as it was, and had always been from one domination culture to the next.

And honestly, they were right about him. This is what the gospel writers seem to agree was his mission in life: to overturn all the earthly rulers and powers of this world, and to create an egalitarian world that lived in accordance with the values of God. Jesus believed that living by God’s values, not Caesar’s, would transform the entire world.

We are deeply grateful to MACSAS (Ministry and Clerical Sexual Abuse Survivors) and Catholic Survivors for supporting us and guiding our planning. It is immensely humbling that survivors of abuse have put their trust in Root and Branch and Scottish Laity Network.

“Our Church is a place of serious crimes, of frightening attacks on the lives and integrity of children and adults. We must recognize and confess it: we have allowed an ecclesial system to develop which—far from bearing life and opening up to spiritual liberty - damages, crushes, tramples on human beings and their most basic rights.”

Archbishop De Moulins-Beaufort’s second response to the Sauvé report, (The Independent

Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE) 2021.

Read by Very Revd Canon Dr Robin Gibbons on Sunday 6 March 2022

at Pusey House, St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LZ for Lent 1

The first Sunday in Lent is a solemn occasion in the Church Calendar. One of its traditions is the singing or reading of a Penitential Psalm. That’s why we our reading today is one of the greatest Penitential Psalms, Psalm 130, often known as the De Profundis or “Out of the Depths” Psalm. Looking across the world from the War in Ukraine to academic and clerical scandals here in Oxford there does seem to be rather a lot to be gloomy about. But before we sink into too much despondency at the start of lugubrious Lent let me try to lighten our darkness with a humorous story, which perhaps illustrates the hope and the scope of Psalm 130.

This story dates back to a time when I was in the depths, coming to the end of serving an 18-month prison sentence for perjury. Unexpectedly my prison chaplain said to me: “As it’s your last Sunday in here, would you like to give the sermon at our evening service?” Unaccustomed though I had become to public speaking, the old trooper in me made me reply:

“All right, I’ll give it a go – but what should I preach about?”

An Alternative Orthodoxy helps us discern which stories to include and which to transcend.

What happens when the stories of our early lives no longer resonate with what we’re experiencing now? The death of a someone close, condemnation from a once-loving church, an uphill battle for peace and justice — when dogma no longer feels right, when belief no longer aligns with life, it’s time to seek new understanding. The path through this kind of disorder is one Fr. Richard Rohr often calls holding the tension of opposites.

When Debbie Burkholder felt her theology crumble, she felt the call to transcend. But it was not easy. She also experienced anger, disappointment, shame, and loneliness.

Continue reading at:

https://cac.org/news/holding-t...

No one in their right mind should want to be a bishop. It’s a terrible, terrible job. You spend half of your life in pointless meetings reading screeds of minutes covered in ghastly acronyms, and the other half going round the Diocese doing confirmations and ordinations, again and again on some kind of continual liturgical merry-go-round. While vicars have a base, and they can get to know their people over time, Bishops see new people every day, and their relationships can often be little more than meet and greet.

Spiritually it is extremely bad for you; people are either too nice or too horrible. Expectations are unrealistic: you are a fantasy of projection and a lightning-rod for disappointment. And every day having to put up with jokes about actresses and only being able to move diagonally… The golden rule is: if you really want to be a bishop, you almost certainly shouldn’t be one.

Things are about to get a whole lot worse. Bishops are the latest part of the church now slated for reinvention — part of the twaddle-riven Welby-era revolution that is totally transforming church structures.

I was recently sent a plan in embryo for the reorganisation of a deanery in Truro diocese. As I read, gape mouthed, at the plan to close 50% of the churches, radically reduce clergy, and remove swathes of parochial church councils one item staggered me even more. It was then I became further depressed as one further aim was outlined – members of the congregations would be changed from volunteers to disciples and taught how to answer the question “why are you a Christian” in 30 seconds!

The CofE’s report on the consultation exercise on GS2222 (a green paper that proposed making church closures easier and quicker for the benefit of the dioceses) is now out. This document is called ‘GS1312’!

View/Download GS1312 - https://savetheparish.com/2022...

Author and scholar Diana Butler Bass describes friendship with Jesus as something that—contrary to some popular opinion—is the mark of a mature faith. Friendship with God is at the heart of the biblical story:

The Bible tells a different story about friendship with God, especially in the Hebrew scriptures. Friendship is anything but immaturity; it is a gift of wisdom: “In every generation [wisdom] passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets” (Wisdom of Solomon 7:27). Two of Israel’s greatest heroes, Abraham, the father of faith, and Moses, the liberating prophet, are specifically called friends of God. In Isaiah 41:8, God refers to Abraham as “my friend,” a tradition that carries into the New Testament (James 2:23). Of Moses, Exodus says: “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (33:11), a very rare intimacy, for such close proximity to the divine usually meant death (33:20). . . .

The point is that friendship with God establishes the covenant—and that Israel is freed from bondage into a new family forged by friendship through the law given by Moses. Friendship with God is not a biblical side story; rather, it is central to the promises and faithfulness of being a called people, in which all are friends, companions, intimates, siblings, and beloved.

Early Christians, most of whom were Jews, knew all of this and extended the idea of divine friendship to Jesus. The New Testament vividly recounts the closeness of Jesus’s circle of friends, women and men transformed through their relationship with him. . . .

Gilo takes a hard critical look at the Safeguarding Culture and the Administration of the Church of England

We return today to CAC teacher Brian McLaren, who illustrates how one of the Bible’s most challenging books—Revelation—can be a source of wisdom and hope for us today:
There’s a beautiful visionary scene at the end of the Book of Revelation that is as relevant today as it was in the first century. It doesn’t picture us being evacuated from Earth to heaven as many assume. It pictures a New Jerusalem descending from heaven to Earth [see Revelation, chapter 21]. This new city doesn’t need a temple because God’s presence is felt everywhere. It doesn’t need sun or moon because the light of Christ illuminates it from within. Its gates are never shut, and it welcomes people from around the world to receive the treasures it offers and bring the treasures they can offer. From the center of the city, from God’s own throne, a river flows—a river of life or aliveness. Along its banks grows the Tree of Life. All of this, of course, evokes the original creation story and echoes God’s own words in Revelation: “Behold! I’m making all things new!”

continue reading:

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When the last carol has been sung

When the tree has been taken down

Then the work of Christmas begins:

To provide food for the hungry

To welcome the refugee

To heal a broken planet

To bring light into the dark

To seek justice for all

To welcome in the joy & challenge of 2022!