The Pittsburg Post Gazette is marking the fiftieth anniversary of Jonas Salk's anti-polio vaccine with an fine series of articles including historical materials and reports on current progress toward elimination of polio. Polio is now a serious problem in only a few countries, particularly where there is war, poverty or trouble that makes delivery of large scale vaccination difficult. But it is once again on the increase in those places, having been eliminated in the Americas and the Western Pacific, for example. Vaccine will be required for decades, as polio can be dormant for years and regions need to be ready to contain outbreaks that can occur haphazardly. The World Health Organisation and UNICEF have a Polio eradication website with up to date information. Rotary International has also made a huge contribution. This picture was taken of me a few months after I had had a serious fever. It was to be years later, after my legs had failed to grow to the same length as each other and I began to limp, that pioneering polio specialist Dame Jean Macnamarra was able to tell my worried parents that I had had polio.

She became particularly interested in physical methods of treatment, developing them for use in her own practice. Splints and various other strange looking contraptions were used to immobilise limbs and protect muscles from damage. Years of corrective therapy followed with the patient's whole family encouraged to play a part. Macnamara continued her work with polio sufferers for the rest of her life, forming close relationships with many of the families. -- Tim Sherratt in Australasian Science, Summer 1993, p. 64. reproduced by the Australian Science Archive Project

Dr Dame Jean Macnamara, DBE

That's just what happened to me: while I was a child there were splints and calipers, a special chair and a long woolly stocking I wore on my left leg to encourage it to grow faster, while the other leg stuck out in the cold from my shorts! The treatment was helpful, though by the time I was a teenager no more treatment was possible, even though some effects remained. I have been much better off than many who have experienced polio, especially as I can walk normally, but it has caused some problem or other almost every day of my life. Some people experience post-polio syndrome forty or more years after the initial illness, but so far I've had few serious problems.

Hundreds of articles appear on the internet about almost every topic imaginable, but I find this article to be a handy (admittedly simplified) summary of the current debate on homosexuality and the Bible. These are some are some edited extracts from an article by Kelly Hawes in the Galveston County Daily News of 24 April 2005, reporting a talk at Trinity Episcopal Church, Galveston, where Dr L. Michael White spoke on "The Bible and the 'H' Word: What does the Bible really say about homosexuality?"

White calls homosexuality and abortion the two most divisive issues facing the country today. In both discussions, he said, the two sides tend to see the issue in black and white with no shades of gray. "There is much rancor and debate," he said. "If this were an easy topic, we probably wouldn't be here today." The debate on homosexuality is about basic cultural values, he said, but it's important that the two sides agree on the terms.

"The movement to recognize gay and lesbian people in churches has stopped talking about the Bible," he said, "whereas the other side says it's all about the Bible. The two sides are like ships passing in the night." During a recent appearance at Trinity Episcopal Church, White contended that those arguing for inclusion were making an error in strategy. "To not talk about the Bible is to lose automatically in the minds of those on the other side," he said.

White is the director of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins at the University of Texas at Austin. White received his doctorate in 1982 from Yale University, and he moved to the University of Texas in 1996 from Oberlin College, where he was chair of the Department of Religion. He has also taught at Yale and at Indiana University. He specializes in the religions of the Roman Empire, focusing heavily on the social context of Jews and Christians in the Graeco-Roman period by blending historical, literary and sociological research with traditional biblical studies and archaeological field work.

White said a lot of people might be surprised to learn what the Bible really says about homosexuality. "The words that we often assume are found in the Bible are not even really there," he said. The word 'homosexual' was not coined until 1869 as an effort by the medical profession to arrive at a more neutral term than 'sodomy' or 'sodomite,' White said, and even those words did not come into being until the 11th century, almost 2,000 years after the first portions of the Torah were written. Nonetheless, all appear in some translations of the Bible.

White noted that the only references to same-sex relations in the Old Testament come in two passages in Leviticus, a book scholars believe was written in about the fourth century B.C., almost 500 years after the first version of the Torah emerged. In the original Hebrew, those passages label incest and bestiality as tebel, which means 'improper mixing.' They describe sex between men as toebah, which means 'abhorrent by reason of impurity.' The word applied to incest and bestiality, White said, would clearly indicate a greater transgression. The Bible uses the term it applies to sex among men to describe many other things, including lying, cheating and burning incense. The differentiation is lost, he said, in the translation to Latin, which used the same word to translate both tebel and toebah.

White notes still other problems in translation. The Greek word arsenokoitais, for example, is translated in the King James Version as someone who defiles himself with men. In the New American Bible, circa 1970, the translation became "practicing homosexuals." In the New International Version three years later, it was "perverts."

White was even more emphatic in his analysis of a verse in the New Testament book of Romans that has been interpreted as a condemnation of homosexuality. White says he and many other scholars believe the verse actually refers to a practice called 'pederasty', an ancient Greek tradition in which older men had sex with young boys. "It is to pervert the New Testament to try to make those passages apply to homosexuality in general," White said. Still, he said, it would be wrong to deny that the Bible frowns on homosexual relationships. Of course, it also frowns upon the presence of menstruating women in church, and it celebrates the murder and mutilation of a woman whose only sin was to have been raped."

As well as being Anzac Day, 25 April is the feast of St. Mark, a reminder to pray for St. Mark's National Theological Centre, where I am a graduate student, as well as filling some other roles. God of all truth, teach us to love you with heart and mind. Bless St. Mark's National Theological Centre that it may be a lively centre for sound learning, new discovery, and the pursuit of wisdom. May all who teach and all who learn seek and love the truth, and in humility look to you, the source of all wisdom and understanding, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (APBA, p. 206)

25 April is Anzac Day and each year more and more Australian and New Zealand pilgrims gather at the Anzac site in Turkey, as well as at commemorations throughout Australia and New Zealand. A bond is forming between the Australian, New Zealand and Turkish peoples as we remember together the events of ninety years ago.

Before the First World War most Australians were eager to fight if necessary die for the sake of their country and their British heritage (my grandfather among them). In The broken years, Australian soldiers in the Great War (Penguin Books, 1975), Bill Gammage uses the diaries and letters of a thousand Australian soldiers to reconstruct the valour and the tragedy of their experience. He shows how and why the 1914-18 war was to have profound effects on the attitudes and ideals of Australia as a nation. The horror and tragedy of conflict brought fundamental changes in outlook and initiated the bittersweet Anzac tradition. We have been in several wars, but since the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, it has been impossible for us to be a war-loving nation. The movie Gallipoli (1981) directed by Peter Weir, tells the story of two athletic young Australian men who joined the Australian Light Horse in World War I, only to be sent to Gallipoli as infantry canon fodder in the campaign against the Turks.

I saw the movie in the 1980s, soon after it was released. I remember watching its portrayal of lines of beautiful, proud young men running futilely into the enemy fire, for no cause but poor generalship. And I remember leaving the cinema shaking with shame and anger at the horror and waste. I am still angry.

The final scene in the movie is based on these events described by Gammage (p.74) and in the longer quote below from C.E.W. Bean's history:

At four on the afternoon of 6 August the artillery began a gentle bombardment. It intensified early on the 7th , but a four twenty three am, seven minutes before time, it ceased. The light horsemen stood still in the silence. In the enemy trenches soldiers cautiously emerged from shelter, lined their front two deep, fired short bursts to clear their machine guns, levelled their rifles, and waited.

At four thirty precisely the first line of the 8th Light Horse leapt from their trenches. As their helmets appeared above the parapet, an awful fire broke upon them. Many were shot, but a line started forward. It crumpled and vanished within five yards. One or two men on the flanks dashed to the enemy's parapet before being killed, the rest lay still in the open. ... The second line saw the fate of their friends. Over their heads the Turk fire thundered undiminished, drowning out any verbal order. In front the slope was shot bare of foliage. Beside them lay dead and wounded of the first line, hit before they cleared the trench. But they waited two minutes as ordered, then sprang forward. They were shot down. The 10th Light Horse filed into the vacant places in the trench. They could hardly have doubted their fate. They knew they would die, and they determined to die bravely, by running swiftly at the enemy.

This is the account by C.E.W. Bean, former Australian Official War Historian, in his shortened account of the war, Anzac to Amiens 4th ed. (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1968), pp. 154-157. Simply to take the time read this is a fitting remembrance of those who gallantly gave so much for so little.

As a unionist, I know that 1st May is of course May Day; but it is also the feast of St. Philip and St. James. We are planning a service of celebration for our Parish of St. Philip, on the following Sunday. I'm not sure what I think about saints' days. All believers are saints, it seems to me. But a 'patronal festival' is an opportunity to celebrate our local church family.

So I've done some research on St. Philip; there's not much known about him. There were two James among Jesus' twelve disciples. James 'the Greater' is described as a son of Zebedee and Salome (Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; 16:1) and brother of the apostle John. He is called 'the Greater' to distinguish him from apostle James 'the less,' who may have been shorter or younger. It is St. James the Less who is celebrated with St. Philip on May 1st. (One tradition has it that the two are buried side by side in Rome; hence the celebration on the same day.)

And that brings me almost to the nub of my story. I received my primary (elementary) education from my father, John, who was then a young school teacher working in small rural schools in the Western District of Victoria. From 1957 to 1959 he was the only teacher at Pomborneit North, a tiny hamlet on the Princes Highway between Colac and Camperdown. (This is the house we lived in, next to the school. The school building has been moved away, but the house is still there. Drystone walls are very characteristic of the locality.)

On Sundays I attended the St. James the Less Church of England Sunday School, Pomborneit North. The Superintendent was Marguerite McGarvie, who still lives locally. The Sunday school closed 25 years ago for want of pupils. There are still services at the church twice a month, though Marguerite tells me the congregation is just a handful of people. It was a traditional style of Sunday school and quite small, perhaps 10 children? I can't recall exactly. We older children (I was nine when I started there) learnt the Book of Common Prayer Catechism by heart, including the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle's Creed. Each time someone asks me my name, the response from the Catechism still comes straight to mind:

Question: What is your Name?
Answer. Brian.
Question. Who gave you this name?
Answer. My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

During my first year there I was awarded a prize, a small copy of the Book of Common Prayer (1662). The book has long since fallen apart and the print was very small, but I cut out the inscription and stuck it into a new copy (which also has large print!). (In 1993 I saw this painting, The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt, in the North Transcept of St. Paul's Cathedral in London). So on the feast day of St. Philip and St. James, I will give thanks for the my local parish of St Philip's, for St. James the Less Church of England Sunday School at Pomborneit North, and for Marguerite McGarvie, who taught me to remember that, in God's good grace, I have become "a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven."

We have wanted some oriental lillies for some time, and today James bought some. So delightful. Here they are, flourishing in our garden.

USA

In response to the request of the Primates of the Anglican Communion, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church of the USA has decided to withdraw its representatives from official participation in the Anglican Consultative Council at Nottingham this June.

We are mindful that Christ has made us members of one body, and that no part can say to any other "I have no need of you." At the same time we wish to express our openness to the concerns and beliefs of others. In the spirit of the Covenant Statement recently adopted by our House of Bishops, we voluntarily withdraw our members from official participation in the ACC as it meets in Nottingham. As an expression of our desire "to bear one another's burdens" (Galatians 6:2), we are asking our members to be present at the meeting to listen to reports on the life and ministry we share across the Communion and to be available for conversation and consultation.

The Archbishop of Canterbury commended ECUSA's decision:

I have just received the news of the decision about ACC. Thank you all. I can guess how hard it will have been, but you have acted very generously and constructively and I hope this will bear the fruit that it should.

In a personal response, the President of Integrity said that the decision of ECUSA's Executive Council:

offers a creative and grace-filled compromise that gives one hope that the spirit of Anglican comprehensiveness may, after all, prove strong enough to survive the barrage of partisan polemic and polarizing rhetoric that sadly seems to dominate our ecclesial discourse.

The Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network doesn't like the decision:

What the response of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council to the 2005 Primates' Communique gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. While it gives an appearance of complying with the Primates' request, in actuality it does not. The Primates asked the ECUSA delegation to withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council (AAC) -- the only appropriate response is therefore to stay at home.

Nor does the American Anglican Council like the decision:

The Executive Council's letter to the Anglican Consultative Council is manipulative and deceptive. The Primates were clear and direct in their call to the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada. . . . The Executive Council is setting up an opportunity to lobby and influence the ACC meeting. Given the fact that ECUSA is insisting on such a presence, it seems a matter of justice and fair play that those who are excluded from ECUSA and isolated because they stand against revisionism should also be present and "available for conversation and consultation". We call upon the Anglican Consultative Council to deny the Executive Council's request; however, if the ECUSA delegation attends, we believe it is critical to include voices that offer a very different perspective, one that is consistent with Scripture and the accepted faith and order of the Anglican Communion.

As Thinking Anglicans notes, the critics failed to note this paragraph in the Primates' communiqué:

16. Notwithstanding the request of paragraph 14 of this communiqué, we encourage the Anglican Consultative Council to organize a hearing at its meeting in Nottingham, England, in June 2005 at which representatives of the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada, invited for that specific purpose, may have an opportunity to set out the thinking behind the recent actions of their Provinces, in accordance with paragraph 141 of the Windsor Report.

It's hard to play nicely when everyone is bored witless by the game.

Canada

The Council of General Synod, which governs the Anglican Church of Canada between triennial General Synods, will consider the primates' request at its next meeting 6-8 May.

Scotland

Meanwhile the Glasgow Herald of 14 April reports that the Moderator General-designate of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland has supported an earlier decision by his church's General Assembly not to debate the issue of homosexuality.

Here he is sensibly following the recent example of the much smaller Scottish Episcopal Church whose bishops recently confirmed long-standing policy that being a member of a same-sex couple was not a bar to its ministry. (Though a group claiming to represent mainstream Episcopalians in Scotland has asked the bishops to retract the confirmation.)

The Scots, Presbyterian and Episcopal, are showing sense here. If the war is unwinnable and the only outcome is MAD (mutual assured destruction) why start fighting?

In a few hours will be the funeral of His Serene Highness the late Ranier III, Sovereign Prince of Monaco.

I mention this because I remember a school English class where each student gave a short talk on whatever topic we chose. I had been fascinated by a National Geographic article on Monaco ("Miniature Monaco" by Donna and Gilbert Grosvenor, April 1963, pp. 546-573), so the Principality became the topic of a tale of the swashbuckling Grimaldi family and their fairytale kingdom. Well the truth is a little less romantic, perhaps. The most pressing challenge for the new Prince, Albert II will be to control unsavoury money laundering without emasculating his country's banking system and driving away legitimate profitable investors.

I like well-made maps, such as this example from National Geographic, which I've edited to squeeze into the page.

The world's micro-states are interesting studies in success and failure. Some of the smallest are prospering (Monaco, San Marino), including some that are autonomous territories of large countries (Gibraltar, UK), Norfolk Island, Australia). Nauru, on the other hand, formerly an Australian/UK/NZ Trust territory, has been a lamentable failure. About 13,000 people share a mere 21 sq km of (largely unproductive) land. But at independence there were large cash reserves from phosphate mining royalties. Too much has been frittered away by poor investment, corruption, carpetbaggers and mismanagement.

The Vatican is the fully independent country that has the smallest citizenship, about 960. Almost all were born outside the Vatican. Well, I guess they don't make a lot of babies.

In the battle to get on top of the shingles and assorted uncomfortable side ailments, my doctor and I have worked through a vertiable pharmacopoeia: amoxycillin; atorvastin; betadine (iodine); citalopram; claratyne; codeine, gastrolyte, docusate sodium, diazepam; endone (oxycodone hydrocloride); epilim (sodium valpoate); famciclovir; ibuprofen; immodium, lignocaine gel; paracetemol; penoxymethyl penicillin and xylocaine ointment.

After all that, my doctor, who is SE Asian in background, decided my system needed a rest and prescribed rice porridge.

Rice porridge is about the blandest food on earth --- odourless, colorless, tasteless. It reminds me of Clag, an Australian brand of starchy non-toxic paste that I used in kindergarten to stick pieces of paper together.

The two have about the same result -- they glue you up.

These prayers were included in the service of blessing of the marriage of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall held at Windsor Castle yesterday.

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please thee in newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all them that with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him: Have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins; confirm and strengthen you in all goodness; and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

These are the general confession and the absolution from the "Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion" in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. If they have been used genuinely then, at least in the sight of God, the sins and errors of the past are forgiven and forgotten. Let them be so.

Camilla is now Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall and Rothesay, Countess of Chester and Carrick, and Baroness Renfrew, and wife of the Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland. While the UK and Australia remain monarchies, she should be respected as such, if the tabloids can be persuaded to lay off long enough.

After thinking and writing about healing recently, perhaps its encouraging that according to this at Quizilla, the archangel I most resemble is Raphael.

"You're most like the Archangel of Healing. You want people to shape up, and you nag. But you mean well, and you're well loved despite it. Or because of it. You bring the donuts, even as you tell people to eat more veggies." (!)

Raphael is not well known to Protestants. (He is the main character in the Book of Tobit, from the apocrypha. Only Gabriel and Michael are mentioned in the New Testament, as well as Satan.) Raphael is a Hebrew word that means "God is healing". (More here.) There's no saint's day on 28 February, my birthday. Maybe Raphael could fill in?

ABC TV's weekly half-hour dancesport competiton Strictly Dancing is good fun. Winners of last Friday's show, Adam Francis and Alexander Bryan, from Melbourne, wowed the audience and achieved a high score from the judges. They are exciting to watch. Adam (on the right in this picture) is gay, but his dance partner Adam (on the left) is not, and dances with a woman as partner in other competition.

Adam and Alexander saw that in Europe same sex couples are becoming accepted within dance sport competition and decided to try it here. "The Australian scene is a little bit behind, and we're trying to show that it's also acceptable for any two guys to dance together, or any two girls." They recently won the Midsumma same sex dancesport championships 2005 in the Latin and New Vogue styles.Adam is a professional dancer and dance teacher. "If I have any spare time it would actually be practicing dance, so basically if I'm not sleeping or eating I will be dancing." "I used to be a swimmer and a bit of a computer geek" says Alex, until one day when he went along to a dance class with a girl that he liked, and he's been there ever since. Alex says he and Adam are quite similar, "a bit cheeky, a bit crazy, very caring, very kind and considerate." He feels the connection that they have gives them a competitive edge, "we try and portray the whole sexual thing as just two guys dancing together, and however people interpret that then that's fine, but we try and play our part as men." (source: www.abc.net.au/strictlydancing/txt/s1335512.htm)

P.S.Adam and Alexander won convincingly their 'Block A' semi final on 22 April and will next appear in a Group Final on of 21 October and hopefully the Grand Final on 11 November!

CXWeb gives an insight into the astonishing amount of people, equipment and work needed to set up a show like this.

Heavenly Father, into whose hands Jesus Christ commended his spirit at the last hour; into those same hands we commend your servant John Paul, that death may be for him the gate to life and eternal fellowship with you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Office of Commendation, Celebrating Common Prayer, © SSF, 1992.)

In The Independent (2 April), Catherine Pepinster, editor of The Tablet asks Do we really need this spectacle of the dying? "Some have found the sight of the Pope inspiring. I would have preferred him to have a less public end," she says. She contrasts the final days of Cardinal Hume with those of Terri Schiavo and of John Paul II.

. . . the late Cardinal Basil Hume, who was a much respected and loved leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales . . . had the kind of death most of us would wish to have. After being told that he was seriously ill with cancer, and that he had months to live, he had time to prepare for his death, and make his peace with the world and with God. Cardinal Hume, announcing that he was dying, stressed: "Above all, no fuss." He then retreated from public life, finally dying surrounded by family and his closest associates. If only it had been the case for the American Terri Schiavo, and for Pope John Paul II in these, his final days. The agony of these two people has been a spectacle, a media circus at times bordering on the unseemly, with every gasp, every agonised movement, every moment of struggle monitored by the cameras. . . .

Some have found the sight of him [the Pope] struggling to breathe -- to speak one final time -- inspiring. I, for one, would have preferred him to have a less public end. Just as respect for human dignity does not require life to be continued at any cost, so solidarity with the dying does not need them to be put on public view. Prayer alone is enough.

I agree, though I have admired John Paul's example of endurance and benefited from it (for I have physical hassles myself). Jesus endured a public death, the horrific detail of which was open to all to see. Is it the gift of God that our deaths, whenever possible, should be surrounded by intimacy and peace?

As the daily office of Compline (prayer at the end of the day) says, "The Lord almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end."

Let us now praise famous men (book title) - James Agee.

I honour John Paul II for his courage and faith, his dedication to the ways of peace and life, and his work for economic and political justice and freedom. But, under him, on questions of sex, gender and sexuality the Vatican has lacked compassion and competence -- on women in the church, priestly celibacy, contraception, sexual abuse scandals (badly mishandled) and homosexuality. (Vatican demands that Catholic parliamentarians vote against civil rights for homosexuals have been as appalling as they have been laughable.)

Much of this relates to thorough going ignorance (yes ignorance, at least as expressed in the Vatican's official documents) of women and their place in God's scheme of things, and poor science (non-science) relating to human sexuality. The damage to the Gospel witness of the churches (especially in the West) because of these errors has been considerable.

P.S. The National Catholic Reporter (25 Feb 2005) lists here Catholic theologians and others disciplined by the Vatican during the papacy of John Paul II. "Though not an exhaustive list, it is a substantial representation of the range of people subject to papal discipline during the past 26 years."

As the health fails of HSH Prince Ranier III of Monaco, his son Prince Albert has been appointed Regent, to govern in his stead. Not far from Monaco, in another tiny, secretive, monarchy, the Vatican, Pope John Paul II is gravely ill. We pray that he will end his days in comfort and peace. But if he were to remain ill, who would make decisions in his place? I cannot comment on the death of Terri Schiavo, though I pray for the peace of all concerned. But her story again shows how important it is to authorise a trusted someone to make important decisions should one become incapacitated, possibly decisions of life and death.

James and I are fortunate that the relevant laws in the Australian Capital Territory make it simple to create an enduring power of attorney. Each of us has given the other written authority to consent on his behalf "to medicial tratment generally being witheld or withdrawn, notwithstanding that this may have the effect of shortening or terminating life."

I love James. I trust him. If necessary, he will decide concerning my life. End of story.