Author Archives: David

Ontario terrorism arrests

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From the CBC:

The RCMP’s national security team has arrested and charged an Ontario youth with a terrorism-related offence, the police force said Friday following an investigation in Kingston, Ont.

Police have laid two charges against the young person, who is accused of knowingly facilitating a terrorist activity and counselling another person to “deliver, place, discharge or detonate an explosive or other lethal device … against a place of public use with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury.”

[…..]

A second individual, an adult male CBC News has identified as Hussam Eddin Alzahabi, was also arrested Thursday but has not been charged. Alzahabi’s father told CBC News that police have now released his son.

Interestingly, St Thomas Anglican Church in Kingston sponsored the Alzahabi family in 2016:

We have undertaken to sponsor the Alzahabi family: Amin and Samah as well as their children Firouz (19), Hussam Eddin (18) and Layth(10). They are Sunni Muslim, a persecuted minority in Syria.

Naturally no one is talking about ideology or motive, although it’s safe to assume the would-be perpetrators are not radical Anglicans.

Anglicans tying the Gordian Wedding Knot

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The Anglican Church of Canada is trying to decide how those who worship the gods of inclusion and diversity can get along with those who prefer to worship God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Since it’s impossible, the church is industriously tangling itself into dense knots of confusion in the hope that the resulting impenetrable obfuscation will lull everyone into a passive torpor, unable to think straight, let alone act coherently.

In the latest Council of General Synod meeting, members suggested that there should be a “variety of understandings of marriage”. No one seemed interested in defining the limits of the variety: should it end before or after polyamorous gender-fluid ménages?

It doesn’t help that someone proposed making marriage value-free in a similar vein to the church being doctrine-free. There is nothing more lasting than a valueless marriage:

“any acknowledgement should not include any explicit or implicit value judgment, namely that one form of marriage is somehow better or more virtuous than the other.”

In order to cut through the chaos, Fred Hiltz is proposing an amendment to an amendment – a bit like growing a pimple on a boil – in order to protect the losers in the 2019 Marriage Canon vote. All meaningless twaddle, of course, since, as Bishop William Love discovered, when Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (the excitable “All you Need is Love” wedding preacher – unless it’s a bishop called Love who doesn’t toe the LGBT line) restricted his ministry, nothing stops the Anglican homoerotic rainbow steamroller.

Read about the whole sorry mess here:

A desire to stay together as a church, despite a diverse range of understandings of what marriage is and should be.

That theme arose consistently during discussions across three sessions at the November meeting of Council of General Synod (CoGS) regarding the proposed amendment to the marriage canon.

But exactly how this “theme,” or aim, may be fulfilled is more complicated.

In a session titled “Marriage Canon: Way Forward, Next Steps” on November 25, CoGS members began to consider the potential for an acknowledgement of a variety of understandings of marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada.

At the meeting, CoGS members broke into table groups to discuss the questions, “Do you think it would be helpful if in considering the change to the canon, it would include an expression of acknowledgement of and respect for a continuing variety of understanding of marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada?” and “What might such an acknowledgement include?” All of the table groups reported back on their discussions to say that, yes, it would be helpful to name that there are different understandings and teachings of marriage.

Details of how this acknowledgement might look were more nuanced.

One group suggested that “accommodation should be made for our Indigenous brothers and sisters,” and that Indigenous communities should have the right to make their own decision on the matter.

Another group noted that as soon as accommodations are made for one point of view, questions arise about other viewpoints. “Each of us is perceived as being marginalized depending on where you stand in the story…[if] we’re saying we’re bracketing one particular group, what happens if the motion goes in a completely different direction…maybe we need to create a bracket for someone else. If we’re walking together, how are we really going to do that?” Another group said that whatever is proposed must be clearly laid out, to avoid legal challenges.

“We have to admit that we are different, we have different views…if we’re going to do this, both views have to be clear in saying this is part of the doctrine of our church… and we walk together in love.”

Another table pointed out that careful attention must be paid to language: “any acknowledgement should not include any explicit or implicit value judgment, namely that one form of marriage is somehow better or more virtuous than the other.”

An Anglican suicide study guide.

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The Anglican Church of Canada has published a study guide for its pamphlet “In Sure and Certain Hope”, or, how to commit suicide inclusively with diverse missionality, while listening with a generous pastoral response as we journey together incarnationally.

In keeping with its floundering response to same-sex marriage, the church isn’t particularly interested in whether suicide is right or wrong: instead, it prefers to indulge in conversations about it, long and boring enough to drive all but the most resilient to….. suicide.

The ACoC is an expert in suicide, of course, since it has been committing it institutionally for years.

From here:

Created as a companion piece to In Sure and Certain Hope, the Anglican resource on physician-assisted dying, the study guide encourages groups to consider the topic in terms of pastoral response, rather than ethical debate.

“What does it mean to ‘be present’ to someone who is dying, and to ‘provide care’? What care do I want to experience when I am dying? Can I provide care for somebody who has very different values from mine?”

These are some of the questions posed in a new study guide aimed at helping Anglicans reflect on and respond to Canadian legislation regarding medical assistance in dying.

The Rev. Eileen Scully, director of faith, worship and ministry for the Anglican Church of Canada, who provided staff support to the team who created the guide, says changes in legislation have helped to open conversations about “how do I envision how I want to be cared for in my death, in my dying?”

Toronto Bishop Kevin Robertson marries his same-sex partner

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Robertson was married at St. James Cathedral. The Diocese of Niagara’s Bishop Susan Bell presided, extinguishing any glimmer of hope that Bell would depart from the radically liberal agenda of her predecessor, Michael Bird.

The Anglican Church of Canada will not officially perform same-sex marriages until the final vote to change the marriage canon takes place at the 2019 general synod. The fact that Robertson has ignored that detail confirms that, whichever way it goes, the 2019 vote will be as far removed from meaning anything as the ACoC is from Christianity.

From here:

The Diocese of Toronto congratulates Bishop Kevin Robertson and Mr. Mohan Sharma, who were married today at St. James Cathedral in the presence of their two children, their families and many friends, including Archbishop Colin Johnson and Bishop Andrew Asbil.

(Bishop Kevin and Mohan, who have been a couple since 2009, had their relationship blessed in 2016 according to the Pastoral Guidelines of the Diocese of Toronto and are now married under the marriage provision of the same guidelines.)

We wish them much joy in their marriage.

Suicide Eucharists

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Just as the burgeoning euthanasia industry dons the grim reaper’s cowl before swinging its scythe through an increasing number of Canada’s ageing infirm, so Anglican clerics, eager to keep abreast of the latest in do-it-yourself death, robe up to administer a Suicide Eucharist. A Canadian Anglican variation on the Last Rites: Last Wrongs.

Niagara’s (ex-Niagara now) Michael Bird does it:

Last September, Niagara Anglican,
 the newspaper of the diocese of Niagara, reported that Bishop Michael Bird had released a set of revised guidelines “to ensure pastoral care is available to those who inquire about or qualify for and claim the legal right to medical assistance in dying.”

So does the Diocese of Huron’s Keith Nethery:

“My role, what God has called me to do, is to go and be present…so that people have someone to journey with,” says Canon Keith Nethery.

At last the Anglican Church of Canada has found a way to attract new customers.

And now for something completely different: Jesus was a transgender clone of the Virgin Mary

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The painfully anfractuous contortions undertaken by those who are determined to believe anything but Christianity never cease to amaze me. We have, for example, this from Swedish state TV:

The birth of Jesus, which is celebrated on Christmas Day, occurred without his having a biological father. State owned SVT, however, has solved the mystery of the virgin birth.

Jesus or Virgin Mary may have been transsexual, they reason. Was Jesus born as a girl? SVT asks and believes they have found support for that theory in science.

SVT’s claim is not the Biblical account of the virgin birth, but that Mary became pregnant with Joseph or someone else. But the highly biased, left-wing channel has launched a more gender-modern theory:

A phenomenon known as parthenogenesis. It occurs among algae, fish and frogs and means that an embryo develops without fertilisation. The offspring then becomes genetically identical to the mother – which means that it must have the same gender.

As both the name and pronoun of Jesus are described as male in the scriptures, it can also be concluded that Jesus was a transvestite / transsexual according to the channel.

SVT also theorises about another possibility – that Mary was a man who lived as a woman and with parthenogenesis gave birth to Jesus, who was thus also a man.

How the man Mary got her female genitals and her uterus to breed, carry and give birth to the little boy child Jesus or his brothers, SVT does not explain.

On this bright and beautiful day, a child is born

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Puer natus, sum laetatus, in hac die gaudiosa,
dies splendens et formosa.
Veni nunc ad redimendum, e rosarum rosa natus,
in presepio beatus. O caelorum imperator, sol justitiae vocaris,
natus es e stella maris.
Clavis David qui aperis, veni nunc desideratus,
miserorum memoratus.
Nostre vitae fons et aqua, dulcis infans et creator,
nobis lumen et salvator.

On this bright and beautiful day,
A child is born, and I rejoice on this joyful day,
a bright and beautiful day.
Come now to redeem, O child born of the rose of roses,
blessed in the manger.
O ruler of the heavens, called the sun of justice,
you were born of the star of the sea.
Key of David to open, come now O long-desired,
mindful of the wretched.
Fountain and water of our life, sweet child and creator,
our light and saviour.

Diocese of Niagara recites Litany of Reconciliation

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Every Friday at noon, the diocese is reciting a Litany of Reconciliation in the Cathedral forecourt. As you can see, it is a real crowd-puller:

 

The Litany of Reconciliation is prayed at Coventry Cathedral and the Diocese of Niagara has followed suit.

Since the diocese shows no intention of reconciling with those it has most recently injured and actually hates, ANiC churches which left the diocese, the whole charade of reciting this litany is no more than an obscenely hypocritical public display of dishonest, fraudulent virtue, revolting enough to make a rodent vomit.

Church in Wales’ newest vicar is transgender

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I grew up in Cardiff where, in the city centre, you can find St. John The Baptist Anglican church. As a child I was much more interested in what was opposite the church: Cardiff Market wherein was all the excitement of competing vendors manning their stalls and shouting their wares to passers-by. There was a lot of fish as I recall; the whole place stank of fish. I bought goldfish in a plastic bag for threepence.

Coincidentally, this Sunday’s Gospel reading is about John the Baptist and it includes this verse:

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

The path of St. John’s new vicar has not been entirely straight. Rev. Sarah Jones, started life as a boy, married at the age 20, decided she was supposed to be a girl, had a sex change, renamed herself “Sarah” and became an Anglican vicar.

I have no reason to doubt her sincerity. What seems odd is that up until now so many new Anglican vicars have been gay; now the transgender phase is beginning. Rather like Cardiff Market, the odour of something fishy is wafting through Western Anglicanism.

From here:

The new vicar of Cardiff’s city centre parish St John The Baptist has ambitious plans to make it more open to the whole community.

[….]

She had an unusual route into ministry. Leaving school at 16 after her parents’ marriage broke up she had to change her original plans:

“I wanted to go to university but that disappeared overnight. I got a job in a music shop and I realised that I really enjoyed interacting with people”. Over the years she had a variety of jobs in sales and training in the music business and in industry.

However this is not the most unusual part of her background. Sarah was brought up as a boy and is the first Anglican priest to have undergone a gender change before being ordained into the church.

“I looked like a boy and there was no reason to doubt it when I was born. However I knew from the age of six or seven that I was more one of the girls than one of the boys.

“I was slightly different. I did fit in and I wasn’t bullied but by secondary school I knew deep down inside that I should have been one of the girls.

“However I thought that I just had this feminine side to me but that I could carry on with a normal life.”

Fred Hiltz calls for apology for ‘spiritual abuse’ of Indigenous people

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From here:

The Anglican Church of Canada should apologize to the country’s Indigenous people for having “demonized” their traditional spirituality, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, told Council of General Synod (CoGS) November 24.

“There’s a need to do something by way of an apology, and we need to do it carefully and prayerfully, and we need to do it well so that it’s meaningful,” Hiltz said. “There is a need to do this.”

[….]

An apology for spiritual abuse, he said, would likely also include an expression of gratitude to Indigenous elders for keeping traditional spirituality alive, despite the risk to themselves from European and Canadian authorities.

“The elders need to be thanked…notwithstanding a position they often had to take, to say: ‘We don’t talk about that,’ or ‘We can’t talk about it,’ they have still carried the spirituality,” he said. “It’s not dead, not extinct—it’s still very much alive in their hearts.”

The apology would likely include some way of encouraging young Indigenous people to learn more about their traditional spirituality, he said.

Here is a description of Cree spirituality:

Cree people believe in Spirits visions and dreams. These visions are mediums through which we attempt to enlighten our understanding of the world in which we exist. Each of the Creator’s gifts, particularly animals and humans, possess a Spirit. Because the Spirit is eternal we know that when we die, it is only a physical death and our journey continues on. Traditional Cree spirituality also strongly reinforces the principle of a circle of life, the essence of which is found in Spirit. Spirits have the power to manifest themselves to the human eye and mind as well as to communicate with us. For example Cree people believe that the Northern Lights occur when the Spirits are dancing. Various Spirits such as the Old Woman, the bear or the buffalo often enter the Sweat Lodge during prayer. At other times, depending upon our need, particular Spirits are called upon to provide us with assistance. A variety of Spirits also come to us during dreams or in visions.

As you can see, the basis of Indigenous spirituality is Animism, a form of idolatry which is not only more primitive and less plausible than Christianity, but one that is expressly forbidden in the ten commandments.

If Christianity is true, Animism is false. If our Anglican Primate thinks imparting this information to anyone, including Indigenous people, is an act worthy of apology, then it’s tempting to conclude that he does not believe that Christianity is true.