WASHINGTON — Newly elected leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender. Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, was elected on Sunday as the first woman leader of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. She will formally take office later this year. Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual. ‘I don’t believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us,’ she said. ‘Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender.’ Jefferts Schori’s election seemed certain to exacerbate splits within a Episcopal Church that is already deeply divided over homosexuality with several dioceses and parishes threatening to […]
NEW YORK — The urgent needs created by three major natural disasters – the tsunami in Asia, earthquake in Pakistan and hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Wilma – drove American philanthropy to its highest level since the end of the technology boom, a new study showed. The report released Monday by the Giving USA foundation estimates that in 2005 Americans gave $260.28 billion, a rise of 6.1 percent, which approaches the inflation-adjusted high of $260.53 billion that was reached in 2000. About half of the overall increase of $15 billion went directly to aid victims of the disasters. The rest of the increase, meanwhile, may still be traced to the disasters since they may have raised public awareness of other charities. ‘When there is a very significant need, when people are clearly aware of that need, they will respond,’ the chairman of Giving USA, Richard Jolly, said. ‘Were it not for the disasters, what we would have expected is more of a flat number. With the staggering need generated by the disasters, it’s very in keeping with what has happened in the past – the American public stepped forward and provided additional support.’ The three natural disasters […]
UK experts revealed an improved method which could allow hundreds of couples to avoid the risk of having children with a killer disease. It will be quicker and more accurate than existing screening. More disturbingly, a London hospital applied to use IVF sex selection techniques to help couples with a family history of autism – by destroying all their male embryos. There is no reliable genetic test for autism, but boys are more likely than girls to have the condition. Implanting only females would dramatically reduce the risk, but mean many perfectly healthy male embryos would be discarded. Ethical campaigners said the move was yet another example of how the goalposts were being moved ever wider. Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: ‘It is not about taking an embryo and curing it, but about diagnosing and then throwing away.’ Simone Aspis, of the British Council of Disabled People, warned: ‘Screening out autism would breed a fear that anyone who is different in any way will not be accepted. It would create a society where only perfection is valued.’ Scientists at University College Hospital in London have applied to the watchdog Human Fertilisation […]
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Episcopal Church USA, which shocked the Christian world by approving an openly gay bishop in 2003, delivered a new shock Sunday by electing a progressive woman as its presiding bishop. Katharine Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada, is the first woman named to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest Christian denomination and one that largely does not accept female clergy. Her election brought screams of delight in the governing meeting Sunday afternoon, particularly by women celebrating 30 years of women’s ordination in the 2.3-million-member U.S. church. It also provoked outraged from traditionalists. Like most in the 77 million-member Communion, they object to her 2003 vote in favor of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the world’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop, and to her support for the blessing of same-sex unions in Nevada. ‘God welcomes all to his table. People who agree and people who disagree. … All of the marginalized are most especially welcome at the table,’ she said at a news conference Sunday. Traditionalists say homosexual behavior is ‘incompatible with Scripture’ and the bishop-elect’s views will deepen the acrimony within the global Anglican family and the […]
Killers are on the loose in the Palestinian territories-and they’re not just targeting Israeli enemies. Fears of ‘all-out chaos’ are growing. At first, the threats trickling in to the Palestinian intelligence headquarters in Gaza seemed like childish pranks. Operatives chuckled about a Hamas-run Web site featuring a caricature of their boss, intel chief Tareq Abu Rajab: the Islamists had digitally grafted an image of a dog’s head onto the Fatah loyalist’s body. But then intelligence agents eavesdropping on a Hamas radio frequency intercepted a transmission that seemed deadly serious. ‘On Friday,’ a voice crackled in Arabic, ‘the dog will die.’ Abu Rajab’s security detail kept the boss away from the office that Friday. But the next morning, May 20, the intel chief stepped into his private elevator and punched the button for the fourth floor. A moment after the doors clamped shut, at 10:10 a.m., a bomb blast ripped a hole in the elevator’s steel doors, spewing fire and a dense cloud of ash into the hallway. Choking on the stench of burning hair, Haitham Hamid, one of Abu Rajab’s bodyguards, crawled toward the elevator. He discovered the corpse of another bodyguard dangling from his ankles in the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
