Trinity Anglican Church, St. Thomas is now an Islamic Centre

Trinity Anglican Church in St. Thomas was founded in 1877 to replace an older church which worshippers had outgrown.

Alas, the church’s website is no more, just like the church. The parish’s last gasp of life can be found in its Facebook page. Unlike their owners who dwell in a realm where moth and rust doth corrupt, Facebook pages are beneficiaries of cyberspace immortality. There the parish optimistically proclaims that it is a “vibrant, engaging, faith community with a fully accessible building.”

In a sense that is still true, it’s just not a Christian faith community. For all we know it never was, at least within living memory.

From this:

to this in one short year of the plague:

Anglican Church of Canada’s position on COVID-19 vaccines

The ACoC does not yet ban the unvaccinated from worship services, although all dioceses as far as I know do require vaccine passports from employees and volunteers and universally for non-worship events. Some are more flexible (Edmonton, for instance) than others.

Nevertheless, the dioceses of Toronto, New Westminster, British Columbia, Edmonton and Fredericton are all exerting pressure on their members to become vaccinated and even encourage those who are not to stay away with statements like this:

I strongly encourage all people who are eligible to receive the vaccine be vaccinated.  If you have not been vaccinated you may want to consider worshipping online.

Notably absent in any statement from any Anglican leader – including ACNA/ANiC – is any concern over the fact that all currently available vaccines are dependent, to varying degrees, on organs harvested from aborted babies. I have explained my views on this here and here. I don’t expect the church to agree with me – almost no one does – but I do expect the church, particularly ACNA/ANiC which boasts that it is pro-life, to say something about it.

Correction: As a reader points out below, the US branch of Anglicans for Life has made a statement about abortion derived vaccines. You can read it here.

Naturally, everyone who attends a worship service has to wear a mask. You can even buy an Anglican mask:

It is cotton so it is next to useless at preventing the COVID-19 virus spreading, but at least it offers an instructive metaphor for Anglican Church of Canada clergy: completely ineffective, unfit for its alleged purpose and an empty symbol of posturing theatrical holiness. So the masks are not all bad

Period poverty is now a thing

The church has an uncanny knack for tenaciously latching on to strange obsessions. We used to be able to content ourselves with the knowledge that clerics spent most of their time searching for ways to make sodomy holy.

But things have moved on since the simplicity of those halcyon times: today our clergy are more interested in how to turn men into women – an updating of turning water into wine, one presumes.

And now, in order to spread the good news of salvation through Jesus by faith, the church is distributing menstrual products. I am still struggling to see the connection, but I suppose there must be one.

From here:

A small-town Manitoba parish is making menstrual products available to women in need by means of a special mailbox affixed to the outside of the church—and at least two other churches are following its example.

Since last spring, staff at Christ Church The Pas have been placing tampons, pantiliners and pads in a red mailbox hanging from the church wall, and inviting community members who need them to help themselves. The Rev. Jann Brooks says the service is being used to the point where she has to refill the mailbox every second day.

Where was the Anglican Church of Canada when we all ran out of toilet paper I’d like to know.

Diocese of Toronto posts mandatory vaccine policy

As of this writing, the clergy, employees and volunteers have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to perform their duties in the Diocese of Toronto:

Effective September 30, 2021, any employee, member of the clergy or volunteer who attends at a workplace must show proof of being vaccinated with two doses of a vaccine or combination of vaccines approved by Health Canada, with the second dose having been administered at least two weeks prior to the in-person attendance.

Wardens will have the unenviable job of demanding that those hapless enough to still volunteer in the diocese show their papers. The wardens are also responsible for snitching on recalcitrant malcontents. Does anyone foresee an impending shortage of people willing to be a warden?

Employees, Volunteers, and Honorary Assistants are only to show their proof to the Churchwardens of the parish. This responsibility cannot be delegated to the Deputy Churchwardens, other Employees or Volunteers.

Churchwardens are to visibly verify the proof of vaccination or negative test in person or via video chat (i.e. Teams, FaceTime, or Zoom) and record on a confidential tracking sheet. Those with proof of exemption are to submit it in writing to the Churchwardens as outlined in section 1.C. COVID-19 Mandatory Vaccination Policy

The Churchwardens are also required to follow up with those who have not submitted proof and implement appropriate next steps for those not in compliance with this policy.

There are those in the diocese who believe that this does not go far enough. They would prefer the unclean to be kept out altogether:

After much discussion, the bishops and diocesan leadership have decided not to require proof of vaccination to attend worship in an Anglican church in this Diocese. I’ve heard that some of you aren’t comfortable returning to in-person worship alongside potentially unvaccinated people, and I know this may disappoint you.

As I was ruminating on all this, a novel I read many years ago came to mind: it is “Erewhon” by Samuel Butler.

In it, Butler tells of an imaginary country where crime is regarded as an illness and disease as a crime. It used to seem a little far-fetched, but less so now. The unvaccinated, the potentially diseased, are to be shunned – have they fallen into the “evil” category yet? – whereas the church now provides a safe injection facility for those taking hard drugs, an activity that used to be illegal.

And male clergy have sex with each other, another activity that used to be illegal. Not all of them, admittedly. Not yet.

Update: The Diocese of Huron has the same vaccine mandatory vaccine rules in place. I expect most if not all other Anglican dioceses do too – or soon will.

Diocese of Niagara church blesses a rainbow crosswalk

In the spirit of blessing everything that has nothing to do with Christianity, The Reverend Jody Balint, rector of St. James and St. Brendan’s Parish, Port Colborne has bestowed her ecclesiastical benediction upon the town’s new rainbow crosswalk; in the hope that all who step on it become a little gayer.

It shines brighter now.

From here:

On September 1, The Reverend Jody Balint had the honour and privilege of blessing Port Colborne’s new rainbow crosswalk, a symbol of diversity and inclusiveness for the area. The painting of the crosswalk was an initiative of the Downtown Port Colborne Business Improvement Association and supported by several partners, including St. James and St. Brendan’s Anglican Church.

Someone should have warned them that to fully consummate your theatrical posturing, you have to wear a mask.

Diocese of Niagara does have faith after all – in the vaccine

Here are two different church posters proclaiming the good news. See if you can spot the difference:

Church one, which will remain anonymous because of the outrageous claims of its message:

And church two, the Diocese of Niagara:

Dostoyevsky, vaccines and Ivan

A passage in the Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov explores the problem of evil. In the passage, Ivan, an atheist puts the problem to his brother Alyosha, a monk. It’s a long, harrowing passage where Ivan describes the death of an 8-year-old boy who has hurt the paw of one of his master’s dogs. The master, on discovering who the culprit is, locks the boy in the outhouse overnight. The boy cries out to God who, seemingly, doesn’t listen. In the morning, the boy is stripped naked, made to run and the hounds tear him to pieces in front of his mother.

Even if at end of history cosmic harmony is somehow achieved in spite of the prevalence of such abhorrent evil, Ivan wants no part of it. He says:

Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket.

My summary hardly does the section justice; if you haven’t read the book, you should do so. I first read it in my late teens when I was an atheist. I found Ivan’s point persuasive.

The passage ends this way:

Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.”

“No, I wouldn’t consent,” said Alyosha softly.

You can read the whole passage here.

My 19-year-old atheist self found this most convincing. Later on, once I came to grips with the idea that another innocent being was willing to die to set the universe to rights, I changed my mind, although there is still a part of me that resonates emotionally with Ivan’s protest.

What do vaccines have to do with this, you may be wondering. Read on.

Much of what I have to say applies to many vaccines but the vaccines that are on most people’s minds at the moment are the COVID-19 vaccines which are being injected into all and sundry.

The currently available vaccines in North America and Europe rely on either the HEK-293 or PER.C6 cell lines for their production or testing, both of which were grown from babies aborted in 1973 and 1985, respectively.

Both cell lines have been “immortalised” – a Frankensteinian tribute to the resurrection – so HEK-293’s use in vaccine production required only one murdered baby girl. And she was not murdered, we are told, specifically so her organs could be harvested. But we are not told how she was murdered.

Here is an excerpt from the Canadian Journal of Medical Science dated 1952 that describes ideal conditions for harvesting foetal organs (my emphasis):

Human embryos of two and one-half to five months gestation were obtained from the gynaecological department of the Toronto General Hospital. They were placed in a sterile container and promptly transported to the virus laboratory of the adjacent Hospital for Sick Children. No macerated specimens were used and in many of the embryos the heart was still beating at the time of receipt in the virus laboratory.

Yes, 1952. Many of the babies were vivisected. When lab animals are dissected alive, they are anaesthetised; not these babies.

This procedure is not an exception, it is routine, continues today and is mostly ignored by the secular press and, to our eternal shame, by the church and by Christians.

There are many documented examples: this recent one is from the University of Pittsburgh:

The University states the fetal organs do not undergo ischemia—lose their blood supply—until “after the tissue collection procedure”. This means the organs are still receiving blood supply from the fetal heartbeat during the “tissue collection”.

In 2015 in China, scientists on behalf of the vaccine industry aborted 9 babies “intact” so their organs were alive when removed:

WALVAX  2 is taken from the lung tissue of a 3 month gestation female who was ultimately selected from among 9 aborted babies.  The scientists noted how they followed specific guidelines to mimic WI-38 and MRC-5 in selecting the aborted babies, ranging from 2-4 months gestation.  They further noted how they induced labor using a “water bag” abortion to shorten the delivery time and prevent the death of the fetus to ensure live intact organs which were immediately sent to the labs for cell preparation.

I could go on. The point is, as I said, this process is routinely used by abortion mills and the vaccine industry.

No-one knows how the baby girl who gave us HEK-293 met her end. She most probably would have been removed “intact”. She could have been dissected while still living. What we do know is, for her kidneys to be useful for the vaccine industry, they had to be “fresh”.

For my part, then, I must borrow from Ivan:

To save mankind from a particularly nasty disease, imagine it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature, a baby girl. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.

No, I wouldn’t consent.

Too high a price is asked; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not the scientists that I don’t accept, only I most respectfully return them the ticket.

Calaveras Presbyterian Church stands against coerced acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines

Calaveras Presbyterian Church based in California is the only church that I know of to take a stand against vaccinations that rely on cells derived from aborted foetuses.

You may agree or disagree, but at least this church is making a clear statement on its view of the use of the HEK-293 and PER.C6 cell lines in the production of COVID-19 vaccines.

Read it all here:

STATEMENT OF CALAVERAS PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ITS MEMBERS AND ADHERENTS CONCERNING COERCED ACCEPTANCE OF COVID-19 VACCINES

Calaveras Presbyterian Church hereby sets forth its sincerely held beliefs and proscriptions against the following cited COVID-19 Vaccines:

Bases of the Position:

Calaveras Presbyterian Church holds to the sanctity of human life at all stages from conception and it holds to the absolute inadmissibility of medicines/pharmaceuticals  prepared using fetal therapy.

The Church believes it to be definitely inadmissible to use the methods of so-called fetal therapy, in which the human fetus at various stages of its development is aborted and used in attempts to treat various diseases and to “rejuvenate” an organism. Denouncing abortion as a sin, the Church cannot find any justification for it even if someone may possibly benefit from the destruction of a conceived human life. Contributing inevitably to ever-wider spread and commercialization of abortion, this practice presents an example of glaring immorality and is spiritually criminal as a violation of Divine Law.

Calaveras Presbyterian Church firmly holds that Scripture defines appropriate Christian behavior. Because of this, it would be a violation of our faith to receive the following coronavirus vaccines…… [go to the link to see the full list etc.]

Rev. Kate Bottley stripping for the Gospel

Rev. Kate Bottley is a Church of England vicar who felt called to take her clothes off and pose outdoors for a life-drawing masterclass. The event is to be televised and pumped into the parlours of those among the British public who happen turn on their TV’s at the wrong time.

I’m not sure why she is doing this. Perhaps it is to identify more fully with other average middle-aged ladies who also like to take their clothes off in public – and if we are honest, what respectable matron doesn’t like to expose herself in public once in a while – thereby assuring them that there is nothing strange, quirky or abnormal about the Christian Gospel.

The Rev. declared that after removing her attire, she felt “empowered” and “safe”, and that, after all, is what Christianity is all about.

But do the rest of us feel safe knowing that while innocently strolling in one of Britain’s serene, lush, verdant parks our eyes might be unexpectedly assaulted by a sizable expanse of pink, naked clerical buttock?

Read all about it, if you must, here.

The University of Western Ontario, the place where irony goes to die

Dr. Julie Ponesse, professor of ethics at the University of Western Ontario discusses why she believes compulsory vaccination is wrong.

She is now an ex-professor since the University of Western Ontario fired her for taking, you guessed it, an ethical stand.