Behind the Anglican split

No one should be surprised at the news today that the conservative movement of the Anglican Church is splitting off from Canterbury, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church of the USA. My only surprise is that the break did not come sooner.

On the surface, the battle is about gay marriage and gay ordination. Below the surface it is clear that the basic issue is interpretation of the bible. The struggle is between fundamentalist literalism and modern critical interpretation -- and it is not restricted to Anglicans and Episcopalians. It is everywhere in the mainline churches, including the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholics were told by Pope Pius XII way back in 1943 that interpretation of the bible should take into account the times in which the books were written. The "interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East."

That seems like simple common sense, but over the course of the 65 years since Pope Pius wrote, countless parishioners have seldom if ever been taught about critical (in the sense of analytical) interpretation of the bible. Over decades, I have met folks with college degrees who still interpret the bible literally. They can read chapter after chapter without taking into account metaphor or poetry or myths that were meant to illustrate our origins.

The standoff between literal interpretation and modern scholarship is only going to grow -- and not just among the Anglicans.

20 years ago yesterday

Yesterday (June 23), the Toronto Star published an article about scientist James Hansen. Exactly 20 years earlier, Hansen had become the first leading scientist to warn of the dangers of global warming before a congressional committee. Now he warns that Earth is nearing a tipping point. He is calling for a national carbon tax and says that "CEOs of energy companies may be guilty of crimes against humanity and nature."

Hansen says that we “have reached a point of planetary emergency." He reports that the world’s safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been exceeded.

In these 20 years, Hansen points out, "no major U.S. law restricting greenhouse gas emissions has been passed, 21 new coal-fired generating units have been built at power plants in this country and total U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed by about 18 per cent." He warns of greater forest fire risk in Canada, the extinction of polar and alpine species, danger to the coral reefs and the ocean life that depends on them because of carbon dioxide in the oceans, and refugees from melting ice sheets in Greenland and the western Antarctic.

Heading for $1 trillion in Iraq?

Ye gods. The House has now voted to give the Lame Duck President and the Pentagon another$162 billion for another year of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The vote was 268 to 155.) Next step, the Senate. If it goes along with the House, Bush's Iraq war-and-occupation machine will have garnered over $650 billion since "Shock and Awe" in 2003.

Yes, there is money there for returning veterans, unemployment benefits and flood relief. But the bulk assures that the occupation of Iraq will continue to drag on with no set time for withdrawal. (Did I just hear an echo of John McCain's "one hundred years" statement?)

In the meantime, the number of U.S. troop deaths stands at 4,101 and the number of US wounded at somewhere between 30,00 and 100,00. The Just Foreign Policy people estimate Iraqi deaths at 1,225,898. (To learn more, go to www.antiwar.com/casualties and justforeignpolicy.org)

We all know that overt violence in Iraq has gone down. But more violence is smoldering around any corner. I don't expect that McCain and Lieberman will be going shopping in Baghdad anytime soon. Just this week: a car bomb in Baghdad killed 51 Iraqis, wounded 75, set about 20 shops on fire and razed a large building. An Iraqi TV journalist was shot to death in Mosul. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle hit a checkpoint in Baghad, killing a guard. Another car bomber hit a checkpoint in Baquba, killing a cop. The whole country (if one can call Shiite land, Sunni land and Kurd land a country) is broken up into religious and ethnic enclaves. Bush's monumental disaster remains monumentally disastrous.

Why can't a House and Senate majority stand up to "The Decider," especially when his approval rating (CBS, June 1) stands at 25%? A word Rep. Raul Grijalva used for fellow Democratss running away from decent immigration reform is also apt here. The word is "spineless."

On Lou Dobbs & CNN

The Hispanic Institute (Washington, D.C.) has called for a national boycott of CNN because of commentator Lou Dobbs.

Good for the Hispanic Institute. (If I were in favor of deportations, I would put Dobbs on my list somewhere between Bush-Cheney and Fox's Bill O'Reilly.)

For a long time, I have been convinced (and have stated publicly) that the raving Dobbs is a racist xenophobe. He has spread fierce lies on his CNN program. He has avoided revealing the racist backgrounds of some of his guests and their organizations. In many an interview and many a rant, his body language and flustered tone have have made me cringe. (Good grief, the guy even wants to get rid of St. Patrick's Day. I am not kidding!)

Dobbs slices the baloney faster than any butcher in the land. He labels undocumented migrants as responsible for high crime rates, even though their rate is lower than the national average. He spreads cockeyed misinformation about the financial burdens of immigration. He has long supported and loudly praised various types of border vigilantes. And sometimes he -- ye gods, I'm actually going to quote Ronald Reagan here -- goes "Looney Tunes" by fomenting the preposterous idea that Mexico is conspiring to "re-conquer" the Southwest. In a similar vein, his program once blamed migrants for bringing leprosy into the US. (The Wikipedia article on Dobbs says that he compared the critics of his leprosy piece to "commies" and "fascists." Eventually he did disclaim the leprosy stuff.)

For abundant details on Dobbs' feverish crusading, go to the web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center: At the top right of the home page, click on "Search" and then type "Lou Dobbs" where it says "keywords."

I take no joy in promoting a boycott of CNN. They have some truly great people on the air. (One is them is a good friend of many years.) But maybe a boycott can get the CNN honchos to dump Dobbs. For his new job, he could go to Yuma as one of those citizens he calls for to replace the migrants who are picking lettuce in triple-digit weather. (There would be benefits for you, Lou -- the job doesn't require a coat and tie.)

VIVA EL BOICOTEO!

Unrelenting patriarchy

Last Thursday the Vatican issued a decree imposing excommunication on any woman who is ordained to the priesthood and any bishop who ordains a woman. These are automatic excommunications, the stricter of the church's two kinds of excommunication.

This new decree should be of no surprise. In May of 1994, the late Pope John Paul II wrote a letter ("Ordinatio Sacerdotalis") in which he stated that women cannot be ordained because Jesus chose only male apostles. Then he wrote: "Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance…I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

"Definitive" in Vatican-speak is just short of "infallible." (There were rumors at the time that John Paul was going to go the official "infallible" route but that Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, talked him out of it.)

For the response from Roman Catholic Womenpriests to Thursday's decree, go to:

http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/articles.htm

I had long hoped to see women officially ordained in my church during my lifetime. Now that seems most unlikely. But I am convinced that the day -- their day -- will come.