Pope Benedict's arrival in Britain breaks new ground on many levels, with a state welcome from the Queen and the beatification of Cardinal Henry Newman. But buried in the itinerary is another and, some would say, more piquant landmark.

Next Friday, the pope will meet the Rev Jane Hedges, canon steward of Westminster Abbey and a campaigner for women bishops in the Church of England. It will be the first time the head of the Vatican, which earlier this year declared female ordination a "crime against the faith", shakes hands with a clergywoman.

Their meeting will act as a reminder of the differences and difficulties between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic church. The abbey team is aware of the many historic aspects to the visit.

Read here

The Church of Finland has defrocked the leader of the church’s traditionalist movement, the Luther Foundation, saying that by accepting consecration at the hands of foreign Swedish and African Lutheran bishops, Bishop Matti Väisänen had violated his ordination vows to the state church.

On Aug 11, the Diocese of Tampere removed Bishop Väisänen from the ranks of its ministers. Spokesman Leevi Häikiö told STT television the diocese had no choice in the matter.

“Defrocking Väisänen will influence how his actions and the religious ceremonies he administers will be evaluated. In our eyes Väisänen is now a layman,” Mr. Häikiö said.

Formed in 1999, the Luther Foundation began as a confessional movement within the state church for those opposed to the ordination of women. In 2006 the Finnish Bishops’ Conference ruled that male priests may not refuse to work with women priests, and stated that those who rejected the validity of women’s orders would not be appointed as parish vicars. The church has also refused to ordain clergy opposed to women priests.

In 2007 a state court fined the Rev. Ari Norro 20-days pay for refusing to con-celebrate the Eucharist with a woman priest. The Hyvinkää District Court held that religious convictions cannot trump the state’s sexual discrimination laws, and that by agreeing to serve in the ministry of the state church, a clergyman forfeited his rights of conscience.

Read here

European Christians must have more children or face the prospect of the continent becoming Islamised, a senior Vatican official has said.

Italian Father Piero Gheddo said that the low birth rate among indigenous Europeans combined with an unprecedented wave of Muslim immigrants with large families could see Europe becoming dominated by Islam in the space of a few generations.

"The challenge must be taken seriously," said Father Gheddo, of the Vatican's Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.

"Certainly from a demographic point of view, as it is clear to everyone that Italians are decreasing by 120,000 or 130,000 persons a year because of abortion and broken families – while among the more than 200,000 legal immigrants a year in Italy, more than half are Muslims and Muslim families, which have a much higher level of growth."

He said: "Newspapers and television programmes never speak of this. However, an answer must be given above all in the religious and cultural fields and in the area of identity."

The priest blamed Christians for failing to live up to their own beliefs and helping to create a "religious vacuum" which was being filled by Islam.

He predicted that Islam would "sooner rather than later conquer the majority in Europe".

Read here

[.....]  Watching the cringeworthy festival of pre-visit idiocy bursting out of Britain, both secular and ecclesiastical, has been a lesson for many in just how deeply the elite British institution hates and fears the traditional Christian mores and the world’s last unequivocal upholder of them – the Catholic Church. The media, to no one’s surprise, has let out all the stops and has abandoned even its normal thin pretense of objectivity, while the local Church has responded with a ringing silence, if not open agreement, to the increasingly personal attacks on Benedict XVI and his goals.

A small sample will illustrate. The Independent, a publication not widely praised for its total devotion to factual accuracy in religious matters, today ran the headline “Pope chooses rap song as soundtrack for his UK visit.” The pope, writes Jerome Taylor, the paper’s religious affairs correspondent, is “a liturgical traditionalist who is known to favour the Latin mass with all its ancient trimmings. But when it comes to finding a song that will appeal to young worshippers, the Pope has opted for rap.”

[.....]  Here is a nutshell example of the Scylla and Charybdis Benedict must navigate between in Britain: a brazenly mendacious and viciously anti-Catholic British secular media on one side, and on the other, obstructionist “Magic Circle” Church officials who will cling, to their last breath, to the now-institutionalized liturgical and social revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s.

A formal tenet of the worldview of these greying ecclesiastical hipsters is that “the youth” will not be interested in religion unless it is accompanied by the heavily amplified “latest sound.” This, despite the evidence of young people around the world flocking to the traditional Latin Mass, breaking down the doors of classes in Gregorian chant and polyphony and besieging seminaries and convents where these cultural treasures are preserved. Meanwhile, the British secular media will do anything, including make things up, to make Benedict look like a hypocrite.

Read here

• There was a huge exposition hall with dozens of booths displaying pornographic material including sex toys.
• There was one booth manned by two middle-aged men that only displayed thong underwear!
• There was a public demonstration of putting a condom on a sex toy.

• a redefinition of gender to include the "spectrum of gender identities" – including "intersex" and "queer,"
• "comprehensive sexuality education"
• "safe abortion"

Organizers of the papal visit to England and Scotland have released a detailed itinerary for the Holy Father's journeys in the popemobile from September 16 to 18. Pope Benedict's routes will take him through Edinburgh and London, with several stops highlighting the rich Catholic heritage of Great Britain.

On Thursday, September 16, beginning around 12:30 p.m., Pope Benedict will travel in the popemobile through Edinburgh in Scotland, from Holyrood Palace along Abbeyhill, Regent Road, Princes Street, Lothian Road, Tollcross and Morningside. His destination on the first afternoon of his visit is the official residence of Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

Read here

What does the shape of your skull, your ethnicity, your body shape, the length of your arm compared to your torso and your the length of your ring and index fingers have in common? The answer is that they have all been used, or are used, to tell what mental health issues you are likely to have, your character, your tendency to commit certain crimes and even, with the length of your middle finger, your sexuality. Before we look at the issue of homosexuality we need to recognise how these other issues have been used – the history of what many people would condemn as pseudo-science and even racism.

The first one to mention is the issue of the skull. The most famous form of diagnosis using the skull is phrenology. This was based on the idea that the brain is the organ of the mind, that certain areas of the brain have certain functions, and that we could work out a person's personality by measuring the skull (measuring the bumps) over the corresponding brain area. A large bump showed that that area of the brain was dominant compared to a part with a small bump. Phrenology had 27 area which could be measured, these were:

Read here

Three years later, Mr. Lee, at just 25, is getting a chance to find out. Today, Mr. Lee and five other teachers — all veterans of Teach for America, a corps of college graduates who undergo five weeks of training and make a two-year commitment to teaching — are running a public school here with 650 children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

As the doors opened on Thursday at Brick Avon Academy, they welcomed students not as novice teachers following orders from the central office, but as “teacher-leaders.”

“This is a fantasy,” Mr. Lee said. “It’s six passionate people who came together and said, ‘Enough is enough.’ We’re just tired of seeing failure.”

Read it all.