Kudos for the Archbishop of Canterbury...

According to the news he has defied Mugabe's despotic forces and held a very well received Communion in a sports stadium. Even if it could have been held in the national cathedral, there would have been far to many people for the space. The cathedral is, unfortunately, in the hands of Mugabe's crony, the self-styled "Archbishop of Harare" who was excommunicated by his brother Bishops in the Central African Convocation of Bishops for his extremist views, support of Mugabe and frankly un-Christian behaviour.

Mugabe has sent in his troops and police, seized all Anglican Churches and his crony is now attempting to do the same in neighbouring countries, claiming that the "church" has abandoned the Bible. I doubt he can even read it quite frankly and it is certainly a long time since he or his mentor followed any part of it. This clown turned up at the GAFCON meeting chaired by the Sydney Archbishop and Mugabe, a Roman Catholic in name at least, turned up in the Vatican for the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Neither of them should have been allowed to get of the aircraft - unless it was in handcuffs for trial. Mugabe for mass murder (In his first 5 years in power 40,000 Ndebele men aged 16 - 50 vanished. Their bodies have been located - in a disused mineshaft.) and genocide and the his pal, the unChristian 'Bishop', for Grand Larceny, accessory to murder and inciting murder.

It is reported that +Rowan will meet the despot and attempt to persuade him to stop the persecutions. The Archbishop will be under no illusions as to the response and knows the response will be bluster, accusations and more lies and falsehoods, but the attempt has to be made. I have equally no doubt that +Rowan, a most Christian man of deep conviction and very profound faith will find the confrontation deeply unpleasant and a severe trial of his Christian ethics. I pray that he will be strengthened and that his detractors will take note that he has done far more than the spineless occupants of the House across the river from Lambeth Palace...

The Archbishop deserves the accolade of the nation, but I have no doubt it will be met with the usual sneers of the self-righteous and godless media.

An evening concert.

Last night we went to a concert in the Lutherkirch in Wiesbaden. The concert was to celebrate the completion of the restoration of the 100 year old Walcker Organ and for the occasion it was joined by the Weisbaden Bachorchester. We were treated to a programme that included two concertos for Organ and Orchestra, the first being one by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839 - 1901) (Concerto no. 2 in G) and the second to end the programme Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra and kettle drums. In between we had the organ strut its stuff with Lizt's Prelude and Fuge on B-A-C-H, Widor's Allegro from the Organ Symphony No 5 in F and Durufle's Choral Variations on a theme from Veni Creator.

It was grand, to say the least.

The church itself is an interesting building, being built in the early 20th Century to a very grand design and decorated in the Art Nouveau ideas of Medieval painted walls. The Walcker organ sits above the choir gallery at the East end of the church with the console located behind the sounding board for the central pulpit. Galleries run around both sides of the church and a larger one spans the rear of the nave and part of the narthax or entrance. It was not until we stood to leave that we realised there is a second large organ, a modern one, sat on the rear gallery!

I guess one day we'll have to go and find out what that can do!

Day of Prayer

Today all Christian's are asked to pray for the deliverance of Pastor Nadarkhani in Iran. The original charges of "Converting to Christianity" have now been changed to "rape, extortion and Zionism." It is clearly a case of having realised that they were infringing the UN's Human Rights Charter - which they claim to follow - they are now trying a different route to make sure they can publicly murder this Christian.

We are asked to pray for all Christians living in countries where they are persecuted for their faith. Among these are -

Pakistan: The Blasphemy Law (The Christian Creeds are blasphemous according to Islamic teaching) is regularly used to dispossess Christians and redistribute their land and property,
Turkey: Where the law requires that the Orthodox Patriarch must be (a) Turkish, and (b) trained in a Turkish Theological school - but ignores the fact that the only Christian Theological College in Turkey was closed by the government in 1934,
Iran: Where Christians are routinely restricted, subject to discrimination and their churches closed or raided.

I will add -

Christians in Palestine and Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.

In the last named I have personally experienced the sort of difficulty Christians experience daily. An "authorised" service for Christians was scheduled to be held in a school hall (Churches are severely restricted!) but the key holder decided to "go and visit relatives" 200 miles away on the afternoon of the service, taking the keys with him. It was illegal to hold the service anywhere else and it could not, for the same reason, be held in the open - as that would be deemed to be attempting to convert "the faithful" to Christianity. It took several phone calls and a number of appeals to people higher up the management tree to finally get an order to another key holder to open the building for the service.

I am aware of similar difficulties for many others in Palestine (Let's not forget the Hamas terrorists who occupied the Church of the Nativity in complete disregard for the desecration they would have not hesitated to raise murder and mayhem over if it had been a mosque!) and elsewhere in these Middle Eastern countries.

I will be praying too for the "enlightenment" of our politicians in the West ...

Though that may be a miracle too far.

Murderous career ...

In the news this weekend is a case which must surely raise questions about the current practice of releasing murderers into "supervised freedom" after serving half their sentences. I refer to the case of Robert Black, currently appearing before a court in Armagh for a murder he committed 30 years ago. In order to protect his "right to a fair trial" the jury were not aware of the fact that he has been convicted of three other murders - all of them children whom he had sexually assaulted - and one attempted abduction.

He is now 64 and given the fact that he will be likely to survive to at least 80, can expect to be released into "community care" well before the end of any so-called "life sentence" - which he is still presumably serving for the other murders. Though I would suspect that as he was first convicted in 1996 he may well have been elligible for release now, had the Northern Irish Police not managed to bring the new charges against him.

Repeatedly we see cases like this where someone with a long record of violence, abuse or murder gets the benefit of legal protection in order to avoid "prejudicing the jury" and in some cases they actually get away with it. One high profile rape case saw a jury bring in a verdict of "not guilty" because some of its members didn't trust the police - only to have the jury foreman declare publicly afterward - once the man's full criminal record had been revealed in the press - that had they known about it the verdict would have definitely gone the other way. Not surprisingly, the same man appeared a year or so later in court, charged with rape and attempted murder and almost got away with it again.

My own feeling is it is time to call time on juries. Most people called to jury duty are not competent to weigh up the facts or the evidence they hear. A panel of Judges with Lay Assistants drawn, perhaps, from a qualified pool, should replace them and the emphasis must also shift away from the "rights" to concealing such matters as a criminal record where it is pertinent to the case and the evidence. Far too many criminals walk free because some members of a jury cannot assess evidence or are simply unable to lay aside their own prejudices against the police, the law or society.

The second part is that there needs to be a reappraisal of the practice of routinely releasing convicted killers and other violent criminals onc half a jail term has been served. Most are not fully supervised and many reoffend within a very short space of time, often with tragic consequences.

Time for a complete overhaul I think.

Roman traces ...

Visited Trier last Saturday. It is a fascinating place and was, for about 200 years, the Imperial City of the Western Roman Empire. A number of major Roman buildings have survived the centuries, the wars and the various invasions (Not least the French!) and the pictures below show - 

The Amphitheater ...

 The Basilica built by Constantine in 330AD

 A drain beneath the Amphitheater

 The Trier DOM, a triple cathedral building started in the early 400s AD ...

 The Porta Nigra (Black Gate) and the original North Gate in the City Wall in Roman times. The wall measured almost 7 km in total and had five gates like this one. Trier was a very important city by any standards at that time ...

Freedom of Religion ...

Christianity has a new martyr, the Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani is sentenced to die by public hanging for "apostacy." His "crime" is that he has "converted" to Christianity, even though he was not a Muslim. The court apparently decided that he has a "Muslim background."

What is most interesting is the total silence from any politician in the west and the absolute silence from the UN, whose conventions on human rights, freedom of religion and freedom from persecution are being blatantly flouted by a state whose President regularly is invited to lecture the assembly on the evils of the west. This is the same regime that recently announced it was setting up a Human Rights Commission to "investigate" the UKs "breaches of Human Rights" in the recent rioting, and now seeks to build a nuclear arsenal.

I note with interest that this hanging is not mentioned by the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent or any of the rest of the UK Media. Not one Liebor Party MP has raised a murmur about it and neither has anyone from the LibDem or Conservative Parties. OK, so Parliament is on its annual extended holiday, but you'd think the Foreign Office would at least mutter a protest.

Prayers for the soul of this new martyr for his faith are asked for.

A sharply worded note to your MP wouldn't go amiss either!

Milliband playing to the Party ...

The news reports that the Liebor Party "Leader" has made a wonderful speech to his faithful drones. In it he promises to "smash" the "something for nothing culture" of modern Britain. What you can bet on is that he wasn't aiming at the freeloaders his Party have encouraged to milk the system, no, his sights, and those of his Party, are set on the "rich" - everyone who earns more than the "UK average" income.

Big deal, he also claims that his Party have to admit they made mistakes while in power.

Mistakes? They sold off the national Gold Reserve at the bottom of the market for the metal, then they went on a spending spree. It now emerges that in the first four years of Blair's 'reign' they spent every penny the previous administration had carefully built up in reserve, then started borrowing. When the country should have been building upits reserves as the money literally rolled in - they spent everything and more. Mistakes? Sounds more like a deliberate attempt to bankrupt the nation to me.

Frankly, this Party and their supporters should be sequestrated to pay for their excesses. They took over a thriving and strong economy and bust it. Deliberately.

We should be warned. Socialism has never, and will never, work. It is founded on envy and cultivates it. Every "socialist" county in the world is now bankrupt - Greece, Portugal and Italy are wonderful examples of how to bankrupt a nation, all more or less socialist. Liebor must never be allowed to rule again. Ever.