A friend said I might find the Enneagram interesting?

Main Type	Overall Self

Type 1	Perfectionism	||||||||||||||||||	78%
Type 2	Helpfulness	||||||||||||	46%
Type 3	Image Focus	||||||||||||||	54%
Type 4	Hypersensitivity	||	10%
Type 5	Detachment	||||||||||||||||||	78%
Type 6	Anxiety	||||||||||||||	58%
Type 7	Adventurousness	||||||||||||	42%
Type 8	Aggressiveness	||||||||||||	46%
Type 9	Calmness	||||	18%

In Australia, the problem for Starbuck's has not been a weak economy, but weak coffee. In the The Guardian (30 Jul 08), expatriate Australian Brigid Delaney applauds the closure of 70 per cent of Starbucks' 84 stores in Australia--including four in Canberra. I'm none too sorry myself.

In 2001, the battle of the coffee machines came to Lygon Street in Melbourne. The old masters of the Mediterranean who brought their coffee-making skills to Melbourne as post-war migrants were facing a new enemy: Starbucks.

Lygon Street is sacred ground for caffeinistas: its boasts a large student population, a bloody history with a spate of gangland murders, and has the highest concentration of pasta and density of latte fumes per square kilometre. In short--it's unique. Not the place for cookie-cutter American chains, complained the old guard.

In an interview with ABC radio in 2001, local traders said they had gone to the Melbourne City council to get the Starbucks closed down. Jean Carlo Justi of Universita Cafe told the ABC: "I think that people know Starbucks you know, they should think that they are a fish like out of water in a way because it's not in tune with our street . . . We are more cosmopolitan."

Yet Starbucks moved in . . . However, over the years the Lygon Street Starbucks seemed a bit forlorn. . . . Then came the announcement this week that Starbucks was staging a massive retreat from Australia, with 70% of its 84 stores closing because of under-performance.

. . . Australians are fairly relaxed about munching on an American chain store burger or seeing a Hollywood blockbuster or partaking in any number of consumer activities that have been imported from America--yet with coffee we tend to be passionately snobby. . . . Starbucks said the Australian closures were not connected to recent closures in the US, linked more directly with the economy: so could it be that our coffee snobbery felled the US giant?

Expert in strategic management at the University of Sydney, Associate Professor Nick Wailes, told the Canberra Times that global companies had to understand local culture. "Starbucks original success had a lot to do with the fact that it introduced European coffee culture to a market [the United States] that didn't have this tradition. Australia has a fantastic and rich coffee culture and companies like Starbucks really struggle to compete with that." Retail analyst Barry Urquhart told The Age that Starbucks failed in Australia in part "because they didn't understand and respect the unique and differing characteristics of the Australian coffee consumer". "In America, Starbucks is a state of mind. In Australia, it was simply another player," he said.

Delaney concludes, "There are probably many complex reasons why Starbucks failed in Australia but one stands out--they just didn't know how to make good coffee--not like the old masters.".

Just so. Life is too short for bad coffee.

But does coffee make life shorter or longer? Bordeaux-based journalist Michael Johnson muses on this question in the IHT (29 Jul 08). He says that coffee marketers,

all must be delighted at the June issue of Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association, which has published a new study asserting that "high consumption of coffee and tea may reduce the risk of cerebral infarction (embolic strokes) among men."

The study, conducted in coffee-mad Finland, was managed by the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm and the National Public Health Institute, Helsinki. Researchers recruited 29,133 Finnish men aged 50 to 69 in 1985 and followed them for several years. Those who consumed eight or more cups of coffee per day, the results indicated, had a 23 percent lower risk of cerebral infarction - the most common kind of stroke.

"Beneficial effects of consumption . . . are biologically plausible because coffee and tea contain phenolic compounds with antioxidant properties that may prevent atherosclerosis," the study asserts.

Coffee has a long history of ups and downs. It has been credited with enabling awesome intellectual feats, but it also has been blamed for anything from sparking riots to inspiring Satanic worship. [. . .]

The new Finnish study notwithstanding, how could you overcome your coffee addiction if you chose to? Some doctors will advise you to switch to tea, or a few cups of hot water a day. I tried to stop my five-a-day coffee habit recently and ended up with a range of dreary side effects--three weeks of jitters and a sluggish brain. Eventually, my natural stimulus system came back to life after years of suppression by caffeine, and I functioned just about normally again. Like all addicts, though, I craved my demon and was gradually re-addicted. Thus, I was as delighted as everyone else to learn from Stroke that I could--and perhaps should--be drinking even more coffee.

The coffee marketers must be celebrating--perhaps this time with Irish coffee.

In Australia, they will also celebrate the demise of Starbucks.

[The authors of the study say that their results "suggest that high consumption of coffee and tea may reduce the risk of cerebral infarction among men, independent of known cardiovascular risk factors." The study related to male smokers and showed that Finnish smokers who consumed 8 or more cups of coffee per day had a 23% lowered risk for cerebral infarction, whereas those who drank 2 or more cups of black tea daily had a 21% lowered risk for this type of stroke vs those who drank little or none of these beverages. The associations were independent of risk factors such as a history of coronary heart disease. Source: SC Larsson, Satu Männistö, MJ Virtanen, J Kontto, D Albanes, & J Virtamo. Coffee and tea consumption and risk of stroke subtypes in male smokers. Stroke 39:1681-1687, 2008.]

Anglicans Online offers wise advice, which I intend to follow.

The 2008 Lambeth Conference has begun. We do not recommend trying to follow it hour-by-hour, but if you must, let us recommend the bland and regulated official news coverage in the Lambeth Daily or the British-Museum-esque coverage in Thinking Anglicans. That will surely put you to sleep, which you need. [. . .] The Church Times reports that 'The Lambeth Conference opened this week in Canterbury on a rising tide of support for the Archbishop of Canterbury.' Most of the Church Times' detailed coverage of Lambeth is restricted to subscribers until the conference is over, which is actually just fine. Waiting softens the urgency of the moment.

And,

I will not comment on the Olympics;
I will not comment on the Olympics;
I will not comment on the Olympics;
I will not comment on the Olympics;
I will not comment on the Olympics.

North's Korea's huge army has absolute priority over civilians in its call on resources. Yet, Chloe Jane Simons, semi-finalist in The Guardian's International Development Journalism Competition shows in her piece "Utopia's lost boys: the reality of childhood in the DPRK" that conscripted boys and young men often suffer great deprivation.

The "crucial problem with this reclusive nation", Simons says, is "a vital difference between the bright, Utopian image displayed to the outside world and the dark reality within."

Whether the Korean peninsula is at war or peace depends on one's point of view, but the DPRK has the world's highest number of troops per person, 259 per 1000 of its population. Although its enemies worry about the North's nuclear capabilities, "Less of a priority for discussion is the North's appalling human rights record, and still less, the treatment of the young men who make up its army."

Despite the international community's preoccupation with North Korean nukes, Pyongyang is nevertheless keen to maintain its 5,995,000-strong army, taking on troops as young as 16 years old in order to do so. The UN Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict outlaws the involvement of children under 18 in hostilities, and stipulates that states are to avoid involving minors in conflict situations. However North Korea's military-first constitution asserts that, "national defense is the supreme duty and honour of citizens" (Article 58). To this end, schoolchildren between 14 and 16 regularly undergo basic military training as part of the Red Guard Youth, a government organisation established to prepare the nation's youth for military service, and to recruit early "volunteers" with the promise of provision and security away from the hardships faced by their families.

Yet conditions in the army are often little better than outside. A former captain in the North Korean forces tells the story of a commander who found himself unable to feed his troops. In desperation, he ordered the soldiers to take three days leave to find food for themselves and then return to base. Most did not return. In fact a decade ago the problem of runaway soldiers became so serious that a new class of "education centres" was established. Known as the "606" and "607 batch", these camps are equipped with torture instruments like the ipjakki ["mouth wrench"] to strike fear into the hearts of would-be runaways. The labour and conditions here are even worse than at regular prison camps, and most soldiers die before completing their one-year term. According to the captain, the second ultimate human rights vacuum after the political prison camps is the army.

However, these boy-soldiers are not the only victims of conflict in the DPRK. North Korea's military-first campaign means that feeding the forces takes priority over feeding civilians, including children. A recent investigation by two UN agencies found 37% of children to be malnourished. Although this figure gives some cause for relief, being significantly lower that the 60% of the 1990s, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation recently predicted further trials for the North Korean people following the floods of August last year, which destroyed 11% of the nation's crops.

. . . Like everything with the Hermit Kingdom, however, the deep suffering of North Korea's children is a reality hidden from the outside world. Inside the last Stalinist state these children are powerless victims, cut off from aid and hope. Clearly pouring in endless amounts of unconditional aid is not the solution if it only feeds an unjust and inhumane system. Monitoring of aid distribution and open, realistic dialogue are absolutely essential. Yet the first stage in any program of change is awareness: for the international community to be aware of the nameless millions who suffer in the name of 'duty and honour', and for the North to be aware that the world will not stand by and watch innocent lives be destroyed.

From Wall Street Journal Asia 15 Jul 08

So the Bush Administration wants to do a nuclear deal with North Korea. For a reminder of the nature of the regime it's doing business with, look no further than the latest spat between Pyongyang and Seoul over the death of a South Korean tourist, who was gunned down Friday by North Korean soldiers.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Park Wang-ja, a housewife vacationing at the North Korean resort of Mount Kumgang, are unclear. The 53-year-old was reportedly walking on a beach when a soldier shot her twice: in the chest and in the buttocks. Pyongyang says Ms. Park had wandered into a restricted military zone. It is refusing to allow South Korean officials to verify this claim or investigate the matter.

The murder of its citizen by the military of a foreign power creates a diplomatic challenge for any government. No less so in Seoul, where President Lee Myung-bak assumed office in February on a pledge to take a tougher stance with Pyongyang.

His immediate reaction upon hearing of the killing Friday was to go ahead with a parliamentary speech calling for the resumption of "full dialogue between the two Koreas." Yesterday his Grand National Party called for direct talks with the North to smooth things over.

Pyongyang responded to the Lee government's low-key reaction with its usual subtlety. The President's proposal was "deceitful," it said, and the GNP's call for talks was "an intolerable insult."

As for an apology . . . forget about it. Rather, the North is demanding an apology from the South for suspending tourist traffic to Mount Kumgang in the wake of the killing.

If the Bush administration wishes to sup with Kim Jong-Il, it should use a long spoon.

I have been sceptical that the New South Wales regulations restricting protesters at World Youth Day events could be overturned. So I am glad that the Federal Court has ruled today that a regulation against 'annoyance' has been ruled invalid. It may well have prevented people wearing protest tee-shirts and handing out leaflets and condoms during World Youth Day events. The Court found that in passing the World Youth Day Act 2006, the NSW Parliament did not intend to give the minister power to make such regulations.

In its judgement in Evans v State of New South Wales [2008] FCAFC 130 (15 July 2008), the Court said that,

Clause 7(1)(b) of the World Youth Day Regulation 2008 is invalid, as beyond the regulation making power conferred by s 58 of the World Youth Day Act 2006 (NSW), to the extent that it purports to empower an authorised person to direct a person within a World Youth Day declared area to cease engaging in conduct that causes annoyance to participants in a World Youth Day event.

The Court upheld laws relating the distribution and sale of various items, but said that

The position is different in relation to that part of the Regulation which would empower an authorised person to direct people to cease engaging in conduct that causes annoyance to participants in a World Youth Day event. In so concluding, we have interpreted the WYD Act on the presumption that it was not the intention of Parliament that regulations would be made under the Act preventing or interfering with the exercise of the fundamental freedom of free speech. We have applied a principle of interpretation in favour of that freedom which has been accepted by the Courts of this country since federation and which has its roots deep in the common law inherited from the United Kingdom at the time of colonisation. Clause 7 is invalid to the extent that it seeks to prevent merely annoying conduct

Yet the court upheld other aspects of the regulation seek to prevent risks to public safety, inconvenience to World Youth Day participants and disruption of World Youth Day events. Such provisions

do not infringe the implied freedom of political communication because they are directed not to communication, but to public safety and interference with the rights and freedoms of others.

As Greens MP, Sylvia Hale, said, "The striking down of the regulation demonstrates that the [NSW] Government is both incompetent and obsessed with expanding police powers at the expense of the rights of its citizens. It is fortunate that the Federal Court has acted to uphold the basic rights of the citizens of NSW against the incompetence and excess of this State Government."

World Youth Day is a day for rejoicing and gladness. But the Pope's presence in Australia not only invites praise for his church's many acts of godliness and compassion but also criticism of its policies that are death-dealing and un-Christian. Thus, in his piece today (15 Jul 08) in The Australian, Phillip Adams says that he understands the attention paid to "those irreverent T-shirts welcoming the holy father."

"But," he says, "they've distracted the media from covering my campaign. Which involves a small item of apparel worn below the belt. . . . The item of apparel is so small you have to look twice. It's a condom." Mr Adams jokes about the idea of a protest parade of people wearing little but colored condoms. "And," he says, "we'll be making a very serious point"

Chairing a debate on God and morality, hosted by Notre Dame University, Adams was,

puzzled that the most indecent and unethical of issues wasn't raised: the quasi-genocidal impact of the Vatican's policy on condoms in Africa. Vast numbers have died, are dying and will die because of this insane and utterly reprehensible prohibition.

Aided and abetted by the Bush administration's faith-based approach to social, medical and scientific issues, the Vatican's condemnation of the condom is on the short list of the cruellest, most appalling pieces of public policy in human history. It is a death sentence passed on millions, including millions as yet unborn.

The two greatest crises on earth are both condom related: AIDS and overpopulation. Climate change will continue to accelerate while we crowd the planet with ever-more climate changers. Six billion and counting. The church doesn't want a cap on that figure, hence no caps for the penis.

As that famous hymn from the Book of Python reminds us, every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good. And to hell with the consequences.

With Catholicism fast losing ground to the fast-faith franchises, the future of the Catholic religion lies in Africa. There, at least, market share is booming. Of course the Vatican is not alone in its hostility to birth control: in Africa both US evangelicals and local Muslims join the chorus. But the world's biggest religious organisation, alone in having an all-powerful head office, let alone an infallible chief executive officer, bears the greatest responsibility and the greatest guilt.

The condemnation of the condom guarantees life to millions of surplus human beings while condemning millions to death. The fact that this cheap, simple and ancient device can prevent HIV as well as pregnancy will not be taken into account.

Suffer the little children? Any God worth worshiping would be appalled. As would his compassionate son. . . .

For almost 2000 years the Vatican has been obsessed with sexuality, hetero even more than homo. This is evidenced by the church's dogged dogmatising about virgin births, immaculate conception and celibacy for its priesthood, while opposing (shudder!) women priests and gay marriage. Because of this ancient brew of taboo and guilt too many innocent people suffer. But the biggest problem for visiting Pope Benedict XVI isn't scandals about pedophile priests and their victims.

It is the fate of Africa, and beyond.

The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, has told the Sunday Telegraph that partnered homosexuals should not be barred from becoming bishops. He said that conservative Anglicans are being "exclusive" and narrow-minded in their opposition to gay clerics.

Dr Morgan said that he was in agreement with the decision of the American church five years ago to consecrate Gene Robinson as a bishop and that if his fellow bishops in the church in Wales voted for a partnered homosexual priest to be consecrated, he would back their decision and approve it.

"If there was a candidate who was in a homosexual relationship that would be discussed," he said. "It would be my job to say 'you have to vote according to your conscience, but I'm duty bound to tell you that it will have repercussions as far as the wider Anglican communion is concerned'. If they said they want to do that well so be it. If a priest had a partner and someone nominated them that wouldn't be a bar to them becoming a bishop."

The Archbishop said that the Church should select people on their ability rather than discriminating against them because of their sexuality and that rigid dogmatism was damaging the Church. "There used to be a generosity of spirit and diversity in the Anglican communion. There should be a backlash against this fundamentalism that has been thrust upon us. It is contrary to the ministry of Jesus and damaging that in the Church, we're still fighting battles that have already been won in society."

Al Hsu writes about his collection of autographed books and the many differing inscriptions the authors use. His favourite was inscribed by Michael Card, who used the apostle Paul's expression: "Grace and peace.", found in some form in all Paul's epistles.

What many don't realize is that Paul coined a new phrase. "Grace" or "Grace to you" sounded like the standard Greek greeting, but was infused with theological meaning. On the other hand, "Peace" was a Jewish blessing that sounds weightier in the Hebrew: "Shalom."

Paul knew that many of his congregations were torn by factional strife. But he didn't say, "Grace to you Gentiles, and shalom to you Jews." Grace is not just for Greeks, and peace is not just for Jews. God's desire was for the whole community to receive his grace and experience his shalom—not merely the absence of conflict, but the fullness of well being, harmony, wholeness, and life.

So Paul said, "Grace and peace to you." Paul addressed Gentile and Jewish believers together, as members of one body. He wrote in continuity with their cultural and ethnic backgrounds, yet pointed to a new, countercultural reality. He combined a Greek greeting and a Hebrew greeting to create a distinctively Christian greeting.

Paul did not neuter the cultural particulars of the church's constituents. Nor did he emphasize identity politics or pit categories against each other. Instead, he affirmed the communities' distinct identities, then transcended them to forge a new identity in which the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. He modeled unity amid cultural diversity, as experienced in the church's birth at Pentecost. . . .

The church embodies a radically peculiar social order that incorporates vastly dissimilar people. In Paul's day, the world was divided between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. But he dared to imagine a Christian community that not only included all of these, but also enjoyed interdependent relationships. The power of the church's witness was due, at least in part, to the compelling alternative this new society offered to the world around it. . . .

Paul would argue that our common identity transcends our differences. He would plead with us to treat one another charitably, to extend grace, and to make peace with one another. . . .

When signing books, letters, and e-mails, "Grace and peace" has become my customary benediction. It has also become my prayer for the church, that we would truly bestow grace and peace on one another and, in so doing, offer a prophetic witness to our world. May it be so.

Seems like an excellent suggestion. But I wonder whether I would seem pompous or condescending if I bestowed 'grace'? Isn't that, perhaps, something for God to do? I'm not an apostle. Yet, if Paul could offer grace, surely I can too?

"At the Lambeth conference, which meets once a decade, bishops from the 38 provinces of the worldwide Anglican communion gather to think, pray and talk about sex."
-- Christopher Caldwell. Financial Times 11 July 2008
------------------------------
Let's talk about sex, baby
Let's talk about you and me
Let's talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be

Let's talk about sex for now to the people at home or in the crowd
It keeps coming up anyhow
Don't decoy, avoid, or make void the topic
Cuz that ain't gonna stop it
. . . Let's tell it how it is, and how it could be
How it was, and of course, how it should be
-- Salt n' Pepa. "Let's talk about sex". Blacks' Magic, 1990.
------------------------------
"There is something hypocritical in Christians holding up their hands in pious horror at the excesses of what is called the permissive society, when they themselves down the ages have tried so hard and so persistently to keep God out of sex. It is a harvest of their own sowing that they are now reaping, and the hell they abhor is in large part a hell of their own lighting up."
-- H.A. Williams. The Joy of God. London: Mitchell Beazley, 1979, p. 40
------------------------------
Any time you're Lambeth way,
Any evening, any day,
You'll find us all
Doin' the Lambeth Walk. . . .

Everything free and easy,
Do as you darn well pleasy,
Why don't you make your way there
Go there, stay there.

Once you get down Lambeth way
Ev'ry ev'ning, ev'ry day,
You'll find yourself
Doin' the Lambeth Walk.
-- "Lambeth Walk" from the musical Me and My Girl (Lyrics LA Rose and D Furber, music by N Gay, 1937)

The Federal Court is about to begin hearing a challenge to the New South Wales Government's World Youth Day regulations. The powers mean authorities can arrest and fine people who annoy or inconvenience pilgrims. Two student activists are challenging the laws on the grounds they are unconstitutional. I doubt that they will succeed.

Meanwhile, the WYD chaos is not escaping attention from elsewhere in the world. These are extracts from a "Letter from Sydney" published in the Irish Times:

Preparations for next week's World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney are proving chaotic in advance of Pope Benedict XVI's arrival. Road closures, a threatened train strike and a large shortfall in promised visitor numbers might be more tolerable if World Youth Day was really only a day, but it goes from Tuesday to Sunday.

Most controversial of all is a temporary law brought in by the New South Wales state government which allows for fines of up to $5,500 for anyone causing "annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event". Though this clause has been used previously in 15 other acts and regulations in New South Wales, the powers were mostly limited to single venues such as Sydney Football Stadium and did not have the scope of the World Youth Day regulations, which cover more than 600 sites including parks, roads, train stations and schools.

The clause is widely seen as a sweeping new police power to protect World Youth Day participants from protesters such as the NoToPope Coalition. Drawing members from Sydney's atheist, gay and environmental communities, the NoToPope Coalition intends to hand out condoms. "We will . . . hand out condoms to the pilgrims, the Catholic youth, and say to them, ‘take up the campaign within the Catholic Church . . . to promote condoms'," said NoToPope spokeswoman Rachel Evans. T-shirt manufacturers in Sydney are doing a brisk trade in apparel likely to cause offence to at least some participants. A shirt saying "The Pope touched me down under" is one of the milder slogans in circulation.

The church has been at pains to distance itself from the regulations. The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald to say that "neither I nor any member of the World Youth Day church leadership requested regulations to prevent protests . . . I endorse the right to peaceful protest." . . .

Fr Peter Confeggi, a parish priest at Mount Druitt, one of Sydney's poorest suburbs, is more concerned with the money being spent on World Youth Day, which some estimate will cost the church $150 million and New South Wales taxpayers another $86 million. Fr Confeggi said the money could be better used to help homeless people or to educate the disadvantaged.

"To keep the church doors open here in Mount Druitt we scratch week after week after week," he said."The bottom line is this is a gross embarrassment to the church that I serve." Fr Confeggi also believes the spirituality that will be taught during the event will be a right-wing form of Catholicism. He expressed "a great dissatisfaction with the Restorationist spirituality, which is also devoid of any commitment to social justice".

The numbers predicted for the evening vigil Mass on July 19th at Sydney's Randwick race course vary from 180,000 to 500,000. Whatever the eventual figure, the number of visitors from overseas will be way down on original expectations. [. . .] Pope Benedict will still see hundreds of thousands from the popemobile next week. How many of them will be "annoyed or inconvenienced" by protesters remains to be seen.

I would seem that the ACT Government would like to build a light rail system in Canberra. Transit corridors are being planned to increasing journey-to-work trips utilising walking, cycling and public transport from about 13 per cent of total trips in 2001 to 30 per cent in 2026.

The light rail is an excellent proposal, but $1billion for a system just between Civic, the Parliamentary Triangle, and the airport seems steep--and not very useful unless it is extended well beyond this into Belconnen, Woden, Tuggeranong and Gunghalin. Busway proposals have previously floundered because of cost.

The proposal is at the top of Canberra's wish list for federal funding from Commonwealth's $20 billion Building Australia fund. The ACT Government's wish list also includes a major solar power station, and water security projects. All very pricey, but essential.

The World Youth Day has strong emphasis on restoration of traditional pre-Vatican II Roman practices, with attempts to revive a the veneration of saintly relics, individual confession, the Latin Mass, eucharistic adoration and the stations of the cross. In Sydney the Pope will stay at a centre run by Opus Dei. When he leaves, there's talk that he'll offer World Youth Day pilgrims a plenary indulgence, and the city has is now being visited by the relics of four young Italian saints.

The Passionist order has brought a coffin-like reliquary containing the bones of three Italians, Maria Goretti (died 1902), Gemma Galgani (died 1903) and Gabriel Possenti (died 1862) which is at St Brigid's church Marrickville, the headquarters of the Passionist order in Australia.

As well the remains of Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925) who was beatified by John Paul II in 1990--normally kept in the cathedral of Turin--are in Australia. Frassati is one of the ten official 'patrons' of WYD and apparently is widely venerated in Australia. For some, the presence of his relics is a central feature of World Youth Day. On arriving in Sydney, Frassati's casket was placed in the church of St. Benedict where, on 4 July, the saint's feast day, Cardinal George Pell, archbishop of Sydney celebrated the Eucharist. From 11 to 22 July the casket will be on display in Sydney cathedral.

I find it all very, very, odd indeed. One would think that these poor folks could have a decent burial or (heaven forfend!) a cremation.

If any confirmation were needed of the traditionalist emphasis, the ABC's Religion Report informs us that the World Youth Day organisers have excludes young gay and lesbian Catholics by overruling a Jesuit Ignatian group, MAGiS on its inclusiveness policy.

The Jesuits have been ordered to withdraw their plan to host a forum with the gay Catholic group Acceptance and PFlag, the organisation for parents and friends of young gays and lesbians. One of the presenters of that forum was to have been Father Donald Godfrey, SJ, who runs a youth ministry at the University of San Francisco. Stephen Crittenden asked him why the church would cancel such an event.

Donald Godfrey: It's either a mistake that they misunderstand what this was about, because many dioceses, at least in the United States where I live, sponsor just such a conversation. Los Angeles diocese for example has designated certain parishes for gay and lesbian Catholics, explicitly to provide a safe space for Catholics who are gay, to have a conversation, to feel part and included in the church's ministry. As the Catholic bishops of the United States have said again and again, gay and lesbian Catholics must be included and it has to mean an explicit outreach, such as this one, that MAGiS is willing to sponsor. I hope it was a mistake because if it wasn't a mistake, it's just homophobic, and that would be unfortunate if the organisers of World Youth Day are homophobic, that's a great pity.

Stephen Crittenden: At an event like this drawing on people from all over the world, you would presumably be expecting all sorts of different cultural attitudes towards sexuality.

Donald Godfrey: There are huge differences, culturally and within the church just as there are in society. . . . [A]t least at the University of San Francisco, which is a Jesuit Catholic University where I live and work, the issue of sexual orientation is one of acceptance. People are just accepted for who they are, and that's the culture we live in. There's a policy of non-discrimination and many openly gay and lesbian people are hired, some are Catholics, some aren't.

Stephen Crittenden: I guess it must be very difficult, Donald, to hold any kind of conversation about sexuality with young Catholics when the church knows that by and large, certainly in a country like Australia, they don't share he basic principles on which official Catholic teaching is based, namely that all sex should take place inside marriage and it should always be open to procreation. I guess it must even be more difficult for someone like you who's trying to mount a more nuanced conversation.

Donald Godfrey: I think it's a bigger issue, even on this issue, I think there are issues of power and issues of sexuality that we need to explore and sometimes are frightened of exploring, because I think the fear might be if we explore this, where does it end?

WYD would better encourage precious spirituality in young people if it were not burdened by archaic superstitions surrounding the exhumed relics of long dead, though saintly, young Italians. It would better help young people to live generously if it it did not arbitrarily exclude people of faith who happen to be same-sex attracted.

If the Roman church hopes to help young people grow in God, it must look to their future, not its past. If the whole thing were more liberal, politically and ecclesiastically, if would win the hearts of Australians, instead of their resentment. And what sort of testimony to the Gospel is that?

---

Meanwhile, on Sunday 13, at 2.30pm at Pitt Street Uniting Church, Sydney GLBTQ people of faith, and their friends will gather for Claiming our Place - Celebrating our Diversity to "celebrate their lives and offer witness and challenge to the Church and to our society". The session will be moderated by David Marr, with speakers including Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon, Michael Bernard Kelly, Anthony Venn Brown and David Reeder, plus a panel of young LGBTQ people from various Christian churches. Spokesperson for the event, Michael B Kelly, has said that it differs from the NoToPope Coalition’s protests by celebrating gay and lesbian spirituality. "The person who wrote the most negative documents about gay people over the last 40 years was Joseph Ratzinger," Kelly said. "We ought to have something to say about that."

In an interview with the Church Times, published on 2 May, Bishop Gene Robinson said "It would be arrogant of me to judge the Archbishop of Canterbury and his actions. I have a hard enough time keeping track of my own actions", but he permitted himself one comment:

I would like him to have insisted that everyone stay at the table. If there were one thing that I could change about what he has done: two or three years ago [in Dromantine, in Ireland] when there were a number of Primates--I believe there were 16--who refused to take communion from Rowan because our Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, was there, just as a part of the service, he should have sent them home.

I think to absent oneself from the communion table because of the presence of other perceived sinners is blasphemy against the sacrament. And I think if the Archbishop of Canterbury had named that for what it was, and had called it not just inappropriate but sacrilege, we would be in a better place.

We can't choose our own brothers and sisters; we can’t choose our brothers and sisters in Christ. We might not get along, but we cannot declare one another not members of the family any more. I think that's a very unfaithful thing to do.

Yet is that not what GAFCON is doing?

And then there's this Letter to the Editor, from one of Melbourne's regional Bishops, commenting on a piece by Archbishop Jensen in The Age

It is easy to be deluded into thinking the world is defined by conference resolutions, when you have just had an "invigorating" time. This reflection is reinforced by Archbishop Jensen's article. Our colleague has yet to communicate directly with us other Anglican bishops, so we cannot help him see the down-side of his post-conference rhetoric; the effect on Anglicans who have to explain this negative publicity to friends and colleagues; the unintentional devaluing of how faithful souls seek to love God and neighbour in our parishes and agencies; the diminishing of faithful Anglicans in committed relationships across the spectrum; the potential danger to vulnerable young people, conflicted about their sexuality, threatened by homophobia; and the fact that people looking for "good news" hope the church might help to prevent violence, look after casualties in a deteriorating economy and provide God's grace and peace in communities of the faithful.

I have spent much of the week trying to comfort and encourage people in my region. By comparison with some of the Sydney Archbishop's examples, at least I am not trying to simultaneously care for folk on another continent.

--Bishop Philip Huggins, northern and western region, Anglican Diocese of Melbourne

Bishop Huggins is too generous. I'm not sure that all the "devaluing" is unintentional.

Giles Fraser in The Church Times is always interesting:

The charge made by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity is that it is a religion of "ressentiment": that is, it represents the revengeful hatred of the downtrodden. According to Nietzsche, in Christianity we find the clearest example of the bullied becoming the bullies.

His argument runs as follows. All was well until the people of Israel became slaves. Then the experience of slavery dramatically changed the very notion of God. Those in captivity inevitably came to hate their captors. But, because they were weak, they were unable to take their revenge physically. Instead, their hatred was incubated and intensified, until it came to be sublimated in the notion of the divine.

In their imaginations, slaves conceived of a God who would take revenge on their captors. Psalm 137 begins with the weeping of slaves, and ends up with a blessing on those who would murder their oppressors' children. God came to be defined more and more by the slaves' hatred. Nietzsche points to the glee with which early Christians described their enemies as burning in hell. I would add to that the retributive instincts that exist at the heart of penal-substitutionary atonement.

As far as I know, no one has applied Nietzsche’s argument to the African experience of slavery, or to the hatreds that will have been created by the despotic rule of the British Empire. But I find it perfectly plausible that that is the sort of theology that has been emanating from GAFCON.

The denunciation of heretical liberals and gays, even the insistence on hell, is not unconnected with what Nietzsche came to call slave morality, the hatred that is amplified by oppression. The denouncers might not see it that way, but some of those who are being denounced do. The question is: can the Anglican Communion cope with the amount of hatred that is now swirling around it?

I do not know the answer to this. But there is a glimmer of hope. Despite the hatred that I believe exists in the theology of conservative Evangelical Christianity, ressentiment is a weakened form of vengeance, not at all comparable with the real physical violence.

As the philosopher René Girard notes of Nietzsche: "He did not see that the evil he was fighting was a relatively minor evil compared to the more violent forms of vengeance." Archbishop Akinola is clearly not President Mugabe.

Perhaps it is the job of the Church to soak up all this resentment, as Christ soaked up the hatred of his accusers. But for those liberals, homosexuals, women, and any others who are on the receiving end of any Christian hate-speech, the Church feels a nasty place to be.

The New South Wales government has shot itself in the foot (again), this time by heavy-handed restriction of protesters on World Youth Day. As the explanatory notes state, the World Youth Day Amendment Regulation 2008, among other things,

(f) empowers police officers and authorised members of the State Emergency Service and the Rural Fire Service to direct a person within a World Youth Day declared area to cease engaging in conduct that is a risk to the safety of the person or others, causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event or obstructs a World Youth Day event, and
(g) makes it an offence (carrying a maximum penalty of 50 penalty units, currently $5,500) to fail, without reasonable excuse, to comply with such a direction.

These slogans are from a World Youth Day T-shirt design competition by the Remo store.

Priest and lawyer, Frank Brennan writes (3 Jul 08) that this "is a dreadful interference with civil liberties, and contrary to the spirit of Catholic social teaching on human rights."

As an Australian Catholic lawyer, I am saddened that the state has seen fit to curtail civil liberties further in this instance than they have for other significant international events hosted in Sydney.

Brennan quotes Pope John XXIII’s teaching in on human rights in Pacem in Terris (1963) Pacem In Terris, the 1963 encyclical of Pope John XXIII, and says that "No fair application of these principles would permit an extension of police powers simply to preclude protesters from causing annoyance to pilgrims attending World Youth Day.

. . . The rights of law abiding, peaceful protesters at WYD need to be 'recognised, respected, coordinated, defended and promoted', just as surely as the rights of the pilgrims. The rights of free speech and assembly should not be curtailed only because visiting pilgrims might be annoyed or inconvenienced in public places.

John XXIII said:

It is generally accepted today that the common good is best safeguarded when personal rights and duties are guaranteed. The chief concern of civil authorities must therefore be to ensure that these rights are recognised, respected, coordinated, defended and promoted, and that each individual is enabled to perform his duties more easily. For to safeguard the inviolable rights of the human person, and to facilitate the performance of his duties, is the principal duty of every public authority.

Thus any government which refused to recognise human rights or acted in violation of them, would not only fail in its duty; its decrees would be wholly lacking in binding force.

One of the principal duties of any government, moreover, is the suitable and adequate superintendence and coordination of men's respective rights in society.

This must be done in such a way that the exercise of their rights by certain citizens does not obstruct other citizens in the exercise of theirs; that the individual, standing upon his own rights, does not impede others in the performance of their duties; and that the rights of all be effectively safeguarded, and completely restored if they have been violated.

The Canberra Times reports that Greens member of the A.C.T. Legislative Assembly, Dr Deb Foskey, has tabled a bill to allow same-sex couples to formalise their unions with a legal ceremony. Such an option was part of the ACT Government's same-sex partnership proposals but was cut when the ALP federal government forced the territory to water down its legislation.

The ACT allows gay and lesbian couples to formally register their relationships but does not provide them with a legal ceremony. Territory Attorney-General Simon Corbell said the Government was considering Foskey's bill and would announce its position on the legislation before it was debated. He told ABC radio that if the bill was passed it could jeopardise the Government's existing laws on same-sex couples. But Dr Foskey said Mr Corbell had not done his legal homework. "'All our investigation indicates that if the Federal Government wants to repeal our new addition then it can do that and without harming at all the existing regulation," she said.

John Bolton of the American Enterprise Institute, laments "The tragic end of Bush's North Korea policy." "Nothing", he says, "can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse." (Wall Street Journal 30 Jun 08). I extract here, his observations on the reality of North Korea's actions. Cartoon: Korea Times.

Maskirovka -- the Soviet dark art of denial, deception and disguise -- is alive and well in Pyongyang, years after the Soviet Union disappeared. Unfortunately, the Bush administration appears not to have gotten the word.

With much fanfare and choreography, but little substance, the [U.S] administration has accepted a North Korean "declaration" about its nuclear program that is narrowly limited, incomplete and almost certainly dishonest in material respects. In exchange, President Bush personally declared that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism or an enemy of the United States. In a final flourish, North Korea has undertaken a reverse Potemkin Village act, destroying the antiquated cooling tower of the antiquated Yongbyon reactor. In the waning days of American presidencies, this theater is the stuff of legacy.

North Korea has consecutively broken every major agreement with the U.S. since the North's creation. The Bush administration provides no reason why this one will not be added to that long list except the audacity of hope. . . .

The extent to which Yongbyon's aggregate plutonium production has been weaponized and concealed is one critical unresolved issue. Moreover, analysis of the much-touted 18,000 pages of Yongbyon documentation previously turned over has uncovered significant gaps in information, especially concerning the reactor's early years of operation, that preclude making a truly accurate calculation. This is essentially the same problem that the International Atomic Energy Agency faced during its years of monitoring Yongbyon under the failed 1994 Agreed Framework, showing that the North is nothing if not consistent in its cover-up strategy.

Ironically, the documents themselves are contaminated with particles of highly enriched uranium, probably from that enrichment program North Korea still denies. This program's extent is crucial, because if it is production scope, the North will still have a route to fissile material no matter what Yongbyon's ultimate fate, proving yet again that leveling those aged facilities was a nonconcession. . . . The North's proliferation, such as the now-flattened Yongbyon twin in Syria, are important not only for what they prove about the North's ongoing duplicity, but for their potentially central place in the North's continuing nuclear weapons program. . . . North Korea alone benefits by phasing, by stretching out a process that enables Kim Jong Il to stay in power and to maximize the political and economic benefits he can extract through each excruciatingly lengthy and painful phase.