Yesterday I overheard three pastors seated across from me at a pastoral care conference in Washington, D.C. One of the men remarked, "I'm trying to get my congregation involved in justice ministry. I just can't get them going." Another responded, "When I talk to my people about what they want, they say they want mercy, not justice." After a brief pause, he continued, "Because they know what they'll get if they ask God for justice."Pastor Fale is the Interim Co-Executive Director, Office of International Mission, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The above quote begins his message in the March/April 2012 LCMS World Relief and Human Care Sharing newsletter.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Justice and Mercy
The Rev. John A. Fale writes:
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Open Letter: Free Exercise of Religion
The following was issued Thursday by the leaders of several religious communities in the United States, including the Presidents/Bishops of four Lutheran church bodies. Written by the Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison, President of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, he also offers this video introduction. Pastor Zip
Hat tip to Fr. William Weedon at ALPB Forum Online.
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION:
An Open Letter from Religious Leaders
in the United States to All Americans
June 21, 2012
Dear Friends,
Religious institutions are established because of religious beliefs and convictions. Such institutions include not only churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship, but also schools and colleges, shelters and community kitchens, adoption agencies and hospitals, organizations that provide care and services during natural disasters, and countless other organizations that exist to put specific religious beliefs into practice. Many such organizations have provided services and care to both members and non-members of their religious communities since before the Revolutionary War, saving and improving the lives of count- less American citizens.
As religious leaders from a variety of perspectives and communities, we are compelled to make known our protest against the incursion of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into the realm of religious liberty. HHS has mandated that religious institutions, with only a narrow religious exception, must provide access to certain contraceptive benefits, even if the covered medications or procedures are contradictory to their beliefs. We who oppose the application of this mandate to religious institutions include not only the leaders of religious groups morally opposed to contraception, but also leaders of other religious groups that do not share that particular moral conviction.
That we share an opposition to the mandate to religious institutions while disagreeing about specific moral teachings is a crucial fact. Religious freedom is the principle on which we stand. Because of differing understandings of moral and religious authority, people of good will can and often do come to different conclusions about moral questions. Yet, even we who hold differing convictions on specific moral issues are united in the conviction that no religious institution should be penalized for refusing to go against its beliefs. The issue is the First Amendment, not specific moral teachings or specific products or services.
The HHS mandate implicitly acknowledged that an incursion into religion is involved in the mandate. However, the narrowness of the proposed exemption is revealing for it applies only to religious organizations that serve or support their own members. In so doing, the government is establishing favored and disfavored religious organizations: a privatized religious organization that serves only itself is exempted from regulation, while one that believes it should also serve the public beyond its membership is denied a religious exemption. The so-called accommodation and the subsequent Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) do little or nothing to alleviate the problem.
No government should tell religious organizations either what to believe or how to put their beliefs into practice. We indeed hold this to be an unalienable, constitutional right. If freedom of religion is a constitutional value to be protected, then institutions developed by religious groups to implement their core beliefs in education, in care for the sick or suffering, and in other tasks must also be protected. Only by doing so can the free exercise of religion have any meaning. The HHS mandate prevents this free exercise. For the well-being of our country, we oppose the application of the contraceptive mandate to religious institutions and plead for its retraction.
Sincerely yours,
The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), authored and issued “Free Exercise of Religion: Putting Beliefs into Practice,” an open letter to all Americans voicing opposition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) contraceptive mandate and pleading for its retraction. Twenty-four religious leaders joined President Harrison in signing the letter, which was issued June 21, 2012.
For more information about the LCMS response to the HHS contraceptive mandate, please visit www.lcms.org/hhsmandate or call 888-THE LCMS (843-5267).
Hat tip to Fr. William Weedon at ALPB Forum Online.
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION:
Putting Beliefs into Practice
An Open Letter from Religious Leaders in the United States to All Americans
June 21, 2012
Dear Friends,
Religious institutions are established because of religious beliefs and convictions. Such institutions include not only churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship, but also schools and colleges, shelters and community kitchens, adoption agencies and hospitals, organizations that provide care and services during natural disasters, and countless other organizations that exist to put specific religious beliefs into practice. Many such organizations have provided services and care to both members and non-members of their religious communities since before the Revolutionary War, saving and improving the lives of count- less American citizens.
As religious leaders from a variety of perspectives and communities, we are compelled to make known our protest against the incursion of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into the realm of religious liberty. HHS has mandated that religious institutions, with only a narrow religious exception, must provide access to certain contraceptive benefits, even if the covered medications or procedures are contradictory to their beliefs. We who oppose the application of this mandate to religious institutions include not only the leaders of religious groups morally opposed to contraception, but also leaders of other religious groups that do not share that particular moral conviction.
That we share an opposition to the mandate to religious institutions while disagreeing about specific moral teachings is a crucial fact. Religious freedom is the principle on which we stand. Because of differing understandings of moral and religious authority, people of good will can and often do come to different conclusions about moral questions. Yet, even we who hold differing convictions on specific moral issues are united in the conviction that no religious institution should be penalized for refusing to go against its beliefs. The issue is the First Amendment, not specific moral teachings or specific products or services.
The HHS mandate implicitly acknowledged that an incursion into religion is involved in the mandate. However, the narrowness of the proposed exemption is revealing for it applies only to religious organizations that serve or support their own members. In so doing, the government is establishing favored and disfavored religious organizations: a privatized religious organization that serves only itself is exempted from regulation, while one that believes it should also serve the public beyond its membership is denied a religious exemption. The so-called accommodation and the subsequent Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) do little or nothing to alleviate the problem.
No government should tell religious organizations either what to believe or how to put their beliefs into practice. We indeed hold this to be an unalienable, constitutional right. If freedom of religion is a constitutional value to be protected, then institutions developed by religious groups to implement their core beliefs in education, in care for the sick or suffering, and in other tasks must also be protected. Only by doing so can the free exercise of religion have any meaning. The HHS mandate prevents this free exercise. For the well-being of our country, we oppose the application of the contraceptive mandate to religious institutions and plead for its retraction.
Sincerely yours,
| Leith Anderson President National Association of Evangelicals Gary M. Benedict President The Christian and Missionary Alliance U.S. Bishop John F. Bradosky North American Lutheran Church The Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson Archbishop of St. Louis Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York President United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V. Superior General of the Sisters of Life Sister Barbara Anne Gooding, R.S.M. Director, Department of Religion Saint Francis Health System Sister Margaret Regina Halloran, l.s.p. Provincial Superior Brooklyn Province Little Sisters of the Poor The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison President The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr. Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church Bishop, Fellowship of International Churches The Very Rev. Dr. John A. Jillions Chancellor Orthodox Church in America The Most Blessed Jonah Archbishop of Washington Metropolitan of All American and Canada Orthodox Church in America | Imam Faizul R. Khan Founder and Leader Islamic Society of Washington Area The Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky Director of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations Orthodox Church in America Most Rev. William E. Lori Archbishop of Baltimore Chairman USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty Sister Maria Christine Lynch, l.s.p. Provincial Superior Chicago Province Little Sisters of the Poor Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, l.s.p. Provincial Superior Baltimore Province Little Sisters of the Poor The Rev. John A. Moldstad President Evangelical Lutheran Synod Deaconess Cheryl D. Naumann President Concordia Deaconess Conference The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez President NHCLC Hispanic Evangelical Association Sister Joseph Marie Ruessmann Generalate Secretary Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan The Rev. Mark Schroeder President Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod L. Roy Taylor Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America Sister Constance Carolyn Veit, l.s.p. Communications Director Little Sisters of the Poor Dr. George O. Wood General Superintendent The General Council of the Assemblies of God |
The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), authored and issued “Free Exercise of Religion: Putting Beliefs into Practice,” an open letter to all Americans voicing opposition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) contraceptive mandate and pleading for its retraction. Twenty-four religious leaders joined President Harrison in signing the letter, which was issued June 21, 2012.
For more information about the LCMS response to the HHS contraceptive mandate, please visit www.lcms.org/hhsmandate or call 888-THE LCMS (843-5267).
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Lands
Courtesy Space.com, here's official video of the US Air Force's unmanned X-37B landing early this morning at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Lompoc, California (about 100 miles or 177 kilometers from where I grew up). According to the report, the secret, experimental craft aka Orbital Test Vehicle-2 (OTV-2) had been in orbit since being launched March 5, 2011 (15 months), and was the second one flown by the Air Force. The X-37 project began in 1999 as a test bed for NASA until its funding ended. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) took over the project in 2004, with the Air Force taking charge in 2006.
The video released by Vandenberg AFB begins in infrared light, so the bright parts would represent heat from the X-37B's descent into the atmosphere. Then it switches to normal light, which is not very bright since it is ten minutes to six o'clock in the morning at the Pacific Coast base. Note that the plane is only 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) tall and 29 feet (8.9 m) long, with a wingspan of 15 feet (4.5 m). Its payload bay is about the size of a pickup truck's bed. Boeing has done some study for a larger X-37C, which could be configured to carry a crew of 6 astronauts in low earth orbit.
More photos and graphics of the X37-B can be found here.
The video released by Vandenberg AFB begins in infrared light, so the bright parts would represent heat from the X-37B's descent into the atmosphere. Then it switches to normal light, which is not very bright since it is ten minutes to six o'clock in the morning at the Pacific Coast base. Note that the plane is only 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) tall and 29 feet (8.9 m) long, with a wingspan of 15 feet (4.5 m). Its payload bay is about the size of a pickup truck's bed. Boeing has done some study for a larger X-37C, which could be configured to carry a crew of 6 astronauts in low earth orbit.
More photos and graphics of the X37-B can be found here.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Requiescat in pace: Ray Bradbury
What then shall we say about this? Ray Bradbury is dead.
The book is called The Martian Chronicles. Its introduction is the short-short story, "Rocket Summer," dated (for the book) January 1999. It's now June 2012, and I'm still waiting for Rocket Summer, though Elon Musk's SpaceX (on which I posted recently) offer us belated encouragement. But I digress.
I discovered Bradbury through The Martian Chronicles. It's not so much a story as it is a collection of short stories from the 1940s and published in both mainstream and sf magazines (with all due respect to Forrest J. Ackerman, "science fiction" ought not be shortened "sci-fi") that Bradbury wove together and published as a book in 1950. Old Time Radio would re-broadcast the 1950s NBC Radio programs Dimension X and X Minus One, which included adaptions of several of these stories. The stories were magic when I discovered them as a young teen, and they remain magic when I return to them in my "advanced youth." (In the 1979-80 TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson, the magic is excised -- so don't bother.)
There's much, much more, of course. I'll leave that to the obituary writers, pointing you to this page from the Los Angeles Times where you can see an important side of Bradbury that others may not notice, but with which I connect.
And from the front page today of raybradbury.com:
The book is called The Martian Chronicles. Its introduction is the short-short story, "Rocket Summer," dated (for the book) January 1999. It's now June 2012, and I'm still waiting for Rocket Summer, though Elon Musk's SpaceX (on which I posted recently) offer us belated encouragement. But I digress.
I discovered Bradbury through The Martian Chronicles. It's not so much a story as it is a collection of short stories from the 1940s and published in both mainstream and sf magazines (with all due respect to Forrest J. Ackerman, "science fiction" ought not be shortened "sci-fi") that Bradbury wove together and published as a book in 1950. Old Time Radio would re-broadcast the 1950s NBC Radio programs Dimension X and X Minus One, which included adaptions of several of these stories. The stories were magic when I discovered them as a young teen, and they remain magic when I return to them in my "advanced youth." (In the 1979-80 TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson, the magic is excised -- so don't bother.)
There's much, much more, of course. I'll leave that to the obituary writers, pointing you to this page from the Los Angeles Times where you can see an important side of Bradbury that others may not notice, but with which I connect.
And from the front page today of raybradbury.com:
...In 2005, Bradbury published a book of essays titled Bradbury Speaks, in which he wrote: In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior....And here are my other Ray Bradbury posts.
Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.
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