Conservative Presbyterians launched a new denomination on Thursday (Jan. 19), saying that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is too consumed by internal conflicts and bureaucracy to nurture healthy congregations.

“This ‘new Reformed body’ is intended to foster a new way of being the church, just as traditional, mainline denominations rose to serve in their day,” wrote leaders of the new Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.

More than 2,000 people attended the ECO’s meeting in Orlando, Fla., this week, but a straw poll indicated that most have not yet decided whether to leave the PC(USA), according to the Presbyterian Outlook, an independent magazine.

The creation of the ECO follows the PC(USA)’s churchwide vote last year to lift its longtime ban on gay clergy. Though homosexuality is not mentioned in the ECO’s founding documents, its stated commitment to conservative theology and the inerrancy of the Bible indicates that gay clergy will not be tolerated.

The ECO also hopes to distinguish itself by creating peer review systems for churches, promoting leadership training, and instituting a less hierarchical form of government than the PC(USA), according to a statement.

Incoming congregations will be given the option of pursuing joint membership in both the PC(USA) and the ECO, or joining the ECO as full members, which would require dismissal from the PC(USA).

Several dozen congregations have already started to leave the PC(USA) to join another conservative denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Unlike that denomination, the ECO says it is “fully committed” to allowing female clergy.

Though still the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S., the PC(USA) lost more than 500,000 members between 1998 and 2009, according to church statistics, and now has about 2 million members.

In a joint statement, eight PC(USA) elders pleaded with conservatives not to leave the denomination, even as they acknowledged tensions over the gay clergy decision.

“Do not allow one-sided presentations to be all you consider as you seek to discern God’s call to you and your congregation,” the elders wrote.

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GRANDVILLE, Mich. — For years, Rob Bell closed his Sunday teachings at Mars Hill Bible Church with a simple statement: “Grace and peace be with you.” Thousands would respond in unison: “And also with you.”

On Sunday (Jan. 8), on Bell’s last day at the megachurch he founded 12 years ago, only one voice sounded out across the sanctuary housed in a renovated shopping center: Bell’s.

“And also with you,’ he replied, looking out over the congregation as he accepted their wish of peace.

With that, the man who has garnered national attention in recent months for his controversial book on hell, “Love Wins,’ left Mars Hill for the last time as lead pastor.

Sunday’s services wrapped months of transition for the church following Bell’s September resignation and subsequent move to the Los Angeles area to create an ABC television drama with “Lost” producer Carlton Cuse, loosely based on Bell’s life.

In November, he began touring the U.S. and Canada on an eight-date “Fit to Smash Ice” speaking tour. Bell also has said he has “at least three” more books he plans to write.

“I feel like I’m just getting started, like I’m a rookie, a freshman, a newb,” he told a gathering of several thousand in his final sermon on Dec. 18. “I feel like the world is big and wide and open.”

On Sunday, former Mars Hill Worship Leader Kent Dobson encouraged Bell to be bold as he steps into the future: “The spiritual life is not such a safe thing. Go for it — don’t be afraid to fail. Take a risk. Try something new.”

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Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny still maintains the Vatican interfered in a government investigation of clergy sexual abuse of children.

The Irish prime minister asserted the Vatican failed to fully cooperate in the government’s Murphy commission, which was tasked to investigate charges of sexual abuse of children by 19 priests in the diocese of Cloyne, that spanned over a decade.

“[My] claim in the Dail (Irish parliament) still stands. I made the point that this is a statutory commission of inquiry, and as such nothing less than full cooperation is required and anything less than full cooperation in my view is unwarranted interference,” Kenny told Irish Times.

Vatican statement

The Vatican responded last Saturday to the Cloyne report, which was submitted in July, via a statement handed by undersecretary for state relations, Ettore Balestrero, to Ireland’s deputy ambassador to the Vatican, Helena Keleher.

The official statement noted that the Holy See is “sorry and ashamed” by the findings of the report, which investigated over 10 years of child sexual abuse by 19 clergy in Cloyne.

The Vatican admitted that the Church handled the matter poorly, but rejected accusations that it covered up or tried to hinder the government investigation.

Lack of accountability, secrecy

“The document reveals the Vatican’s efforts to continue to absolve itself of any responsibility for the cover-up of the abuse,” victim Andrew Madden, who contributed evidence to the report, told Irish Times.

Advocate Maeve Lewis of One in Four told Irish Times the Vatican “[created] a culture where secrecy and cover-ups were routinely used to maintain the reputation of the church while placing children at continued risk of sexual abuse.”

Lewis further told Irish Central, “The Vatican is completely out of touch with public outrage regarding church management of child abuse.”

The Vatican furthermore denied that it undermined Irish civil law. In July, Ireland’s parliament rebuked the Holy See for undercutting child protection laws by referring, in a letter to Irish bishops, to government guidelines on reporting child sexual abuse as “study guidelines.”

The Cloyne report, which was published in July, slammed the Church for its poor response to the plentiful claims of child abuse in the Cloyne diocese, that were filed against 19 priests from 1996 to 2009.

The report also criticized former Cloyne bishop John Magee, who served as private secretary to popes Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II successively, for shying away from daily management of cases of child abuse. Magee resigned last year.

The Cloyne report is the most recent account among a string of clergy sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Irish Catholic Church for decades. Hundreds of claims of child sexual abuse by priests have been documented.

The report spurred Ireland’s prime minister, Kenny, to say in July that the Church had a culture of “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism.”

Kenny reiterated his sentiments to Belfast Telegraph, adding, “As a member of the Catholic Church I want to see that the church … is absolutely above reproach.”

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Catholic bishops from the Middle East demanded last Saturday at a special synod in Rome that Israel “put an end to the occupation” of Arab lands.

The AP reported that the bishops released the statement on the final day of its two-week Vatican conference that was convened by Pope Benedict XVI. (See  http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2010/10/pope-urges-christians-jews-and-muslims-to-work-for-peace-14015).

The bishops said Israel should agree to U.N. resolutions for them to leave Palestinian territory, and added that it is wrong of Israel to employ the Bible as defense of “injustices” that were committed against the Palestinians, the AP said.

The special synod was called to thresh out the mass departure of Christians from the Middle East, which is the place where Christianity originated. The bishops also condemned all forms of terrorism and anti-Semitism, the AP reported.

The statement said, “The Palestinian people will thus have an independent and sovereign homeland where they can live with dignity and security,” the Jerusalem Post said. Furthermore,

“The State of Israel will be able to enjoy peace and security within their internationally recognized borders,” CNN reported.

The statement added that this would give Jerusalem its proper status as a holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims saying, “We hope that the two-state solution might become a reality and not only a dream,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

The first time the pope publicly endorsed the two states coexisting was in May 2009 when he visited the region. The pope at that time expressed support for a sovereign Palestinian homeland, a suggestion that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed, CNN said.

Recently, peace talks had been revived between Palestinians and Israelis, but were scuttled because Israel embarked on the construction of 600 housing units in the West Bank. Palestine had said a freeze on Israeli settlements was a precondition for continuing with the talks, CNN reported.

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The Vatican’s most recent statement concerning the link between pedophilia and homosexuality, which was  designed to quell a fire caused by a previous statement, actually caused a new hullabaloo.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi tried to douse flames of controversy by releasing a statement intended to lend the Vatican distance from the uproar.

Lombardi said that Church leaders were not trying to make “general affirmations of a specific psychological nature” and offered Church statistics cited by the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna.

The stats said of the 3,000 abuse cases handled in the past decade by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 60 percent involved priests attracted to adolescent boys; 30 percent involved heterosexual relations; and 10 percent concerned pedophilia, or sexual attraction toward prepubescent children, according to The New York Times.

The Vatican’s most recent statement concerning the link between pedophilia and homosexuality, which was designed to quell a fire caused by a previous statement, actually caused a new hullabaloo.

This was in response to comments that were made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s second in command, that homosexuality is the ‘problem’ that causes Catholic priests to molest children.

In a news conference in Santiago, Chile Bertone said, “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia.  This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” according to Reuters.

This elicited a wave of response from many sectors, including Catholics.  The second statement did not quell the fire.

Public response to both the Vatican’s statements, and the Pope’s continued silence, include the following:

• Some pro-Vatican Catholic blogs said more controversy was the last thing the Vatican needed.

• Chile’s Christian Democratic Senator Patricio Walker said that ‘pedophilia is a mental disorder of a sexual nature that affects both homosexuals and heterosexuals.’

• French foreign minister Bernard Valero condemned Cardinal Bertone’s remarks at a news conference in Paris.

• Alessandra Mussolini, a right-wing parliamentarian, said “You can’t link sexual orientation to pedophilia … this link risks becoming dangerously misleading for the protection of children.”

• Rome’s left-leaning La Repubblica in their editorial said Bertone’s comments would end up causing the Church more “harm to itself, not homosexuals.”

• ArciLesbica, Italy’s main lesbian rights group, said the Vatican is using “violent and deceptive statements” to divert attention from its abuse scandal.

• Franco Grillini, a veteran gay activist in Italy, called the link “a huge lie.”

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