A Bit More Detail

• 3 Quarks Daily writes about the ways in which Cuba, and Havana, have been seen in the American imagination.


• Antipope Charlie Stross solicits suggestions as to what he should print with a 3-D printer.


• Crooked Timber is alarmist about the United States, making comparisons to Pakistan and to Weimar Germany.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the simulated atmospheres of warm Neptunes.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Russians are leaving France without their Mistral carriers and that Russia is talking about building its own space station.


• Joe. My. God. notes that an Argentine court has given an orangutan limited rights.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that transgendered workers now have legal protection in the United States.


• Marginal Revolution reflects on the new Nicaragua Canal and is skeptical about Cuba's economic potential.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw links to an essay examining how New Zealand set the global 2% inflation target.


• The Search looks at one effort in digitizing and making searchable centuries of book images.


• Towleroad looks at Taiwan's progress towards marriage equality and notes the refusal of the archbishop of Canterbury to explain the reasons for his opposition to equal marriage.


• Window on Eurasia notes the different effects of the collapse in oil prices on Russia's different reasons, looks at language conflicts in the Russian republics, and observes the revival of Belarusian nationalism.

Tucked beside the Eaton Centre and surrounded by high-rises stands a small church. Since its founding in 1847, the Church of the Holy Trinity’s focus on ministering to an ever-changing urban flock has regularly put it at the forefront of emerging social issues. The church reached out to the homeless and unemployed in the thirties, welcomed Vietnam War resisters and community activists in the 1960s, incubated sentiment for urban reform in the in the 1960s and 1970s, and encouraged the city’s nascent gay community to raise its voice in the 1970s and 1980s. Such stances have, over its century-and-a-half history, regularly created friction between Holy Trinity and the Anglican establishment, municipal officials, and real estate developers.

In the summer of 1845, Bishop John Strachan, head of the Anglican Church in Toronto, received a letter offering 5,000 pound sterling from an anonymous benefactress for the purpose of establishing a church. Among the stipulations attached was that it be named the Church of the Holy Trinity and that its pews be “free and unappropriated forever.” The latter was a radical suggestion at a time when Toronto’s three other Anglican churches, including St. James’ Cathedral, relied upon pew rentals as a major source of revenue. Although the anonymous donor’s intentions had never been to place limitations on the congregation’s composition, Strachan came to refer to Holy Trinity as the “Parochial Church of the Poor of Toronto.”

When asked last week about admission into the Catholic Church of married Anglican priests under the new rules, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, replied that requests would be judged "on a case by case basis".

The row has been exacerbated by the decision to disclose Pope Benedict's approach to Anglican traditionalists before the final text was ready, thus risking another of the "diplomatic gaffes" that have occasionally marked his pontificate so far.

The Pope is understood to have wanted the announcement to be made only when the text was finalised, in order to avoid a public relations disaster like that which followed his rehabilitation in January of Richard Williamson, an excommunicated arch-conservative bishop, before he became aware that Bishop Williamson was a Holocaust denier.

However Cardinal Levada announced the Anglican move prematurely because he had just briefed Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Catholic Bishops of England of Wales — neither of whom were consulted — and was concerned that the news might leak out unofficially, Mr Tornielli wrote in Il Giornale.

A number of Catholic commentators have pointed out that allowing Anglicans to bring their "traditions and practices" with them could end up altering the traditions and practices of the Catholic Church — including celibacy — as much as undermining the Anglican communion.