Author Archives: David

The Primates’ gathering: still intact after day 1

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It would seem that no one has walked out of the Primates’ gathering in Canterbury yet.

Also, according to this report, Foley Beach – and, presumably Charlie Masters – have not been ejected:

Fears the first day would see a walkout did not come to pass — to the chagrin of the crew of a BBC video truck parked outside the cathedral in the rain awaiting the capture on film of the departure of the conservatives. At the close of business the primates attended a public Evensong service in Canterbury Cathedral — with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church of the USA sitting four places down from Archbishop Foley Beach of the Anglican Church in North America.

British press speculation and informed sources opined before the meeting that Archbishop Beach would be sent home after the first day. Conservative commentators expected the GAFCON primates to demand the expulsion of Bishop Michael Curry and Archbishop Fred Hiltz as a condition of their continued participation at the opening bell. Neither appears to have occurred — so far.

Fred Hiltz must have been feeling lonely as he processed into Evensong:

only a minority of the Primates dressed in convocation robes and an even smaller minority (described to me by an attendee as “the arch-liberals”, including the Primates of TEC and Canada) processed. The effect was clear, if unintended, in demonstrating how few their number were. Most of the Primates simply sat and waited.

George Jonas, R.I.P.

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The last reason for continuing to read the National Post is no longer with us.

From here:

George Jonas, who has died aged 80, was a journalist, novelist and poet who fled the brutal Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution for a new life in the West, where he became one of Canada’s best loved and most controversial opinion makers on issues from criminal law, war and politics to Islamism and multiculturalism.

[…..]

the Toronto Reference Library’s copy of Politically Incorrect, a collection of Jonas’s columns, has been heavily annotated by an appreciative reader, highlighting the witty insights that, to a certain kind of reader, seemed to leap gleefully from the page, and to another kind, were infuriatingly entertaining.

Most of what he wrote leapt “gleefully from the page”, to me, at least.

Fred Hiltz asks for prayer and hopes for openness at the Primates’ gathering

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The gathering of Anglican Primates in Canterbury is due to begin on Monday. While the GAFCON primates have been clear that they expect TEC and the ACoC to repent of their blessing and marrying of same-sex couples, Canada’s Primate, Fred Hiltz, sees a need for “mutual openness” and a

need to confess any and all ‘uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbours and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,’” quoting from the Book of Alternative Services’ Litany of Penitence for Ash Wednesday.

We can only hope Hiltz takes his own advice since ACNA’s Foley Beach will be present, as will ANiC’s Moderator, Charlie Masters; the first day could easily be filled with nothing but Hiltz confessing uncharitable thoughts.

Let us, as Hiltz suggests, pray: that attempts to bamboozle or divide the GAFCON Primates would be thwarted; that truth will take precedence over phony unity; that loyalty to Jesus will be set above loyalty to an institution; that something will finally be settled, even if it’s merely a formal recognition that we now have two denominations with two gospels, worshipping two different gods.

Primate Fred Hiltz pledges to lower immortality rates in 2016

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C.S. Lewis, in his essay The Weight of Glory, pointed out:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

The Anglican Church of Canada has been uncomfortable with this and other transcendent aspects of Christianity for years, so it has been labouring tirelessly to divert attention away from troubling ideas such as miracles, the final destination of man’s immortal soul, substitutionary atonement and so on, preferring, instead, to concentrate on social work, left-wing political agitation and, of course, sex.

Now, in what must be a major theological breakthrough for 2016, the Anglican Church of Canada has announced that it has found a way to reduce immortality – perhaps, eventually to banish it completely. As Fred Hiltz points out in his New Year’s Day sermon, the plan is to start with eroding the immortality of pregnant women:

This major initiative reflects a commitment to several of the Sustainable Development Goals including a lowering of the immortality rates among pregnant women.

The Diocese of Niagara is in decline

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The Anglican Church of Canada is squeamishly shy about publicising how many people attend its churches. No complete statistics for membership and average Sunday attendance have been published since 2001, although the ACoC did claim a membership of 545,957 in 2007.

The Diocese of Niagara’s paper, however, has published some statistics for 2013 and 2014:

DoN NumbersYou can see that the average Sunday attendance fell 7.2 percent in one year. We cannot know, of course, whether this rate of decline will increase or decrease as the years pass but, if it remains the same, in 60 years there will be 91 people left in the diocese or, since there are 89 parishes, around one person per parish – presumably the priest.

On a less gloomy note, the number of green parishes increased by three, demonstrating, I suppose, that the diocese overestimated the drawing power of its Gaia god.

Merry Christmas!

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A Merry Christmas to all.

A few carols, arranged for guitar by John W Duarte, played by yours truly.

Silent Night:

The First Nowell:

Once in Royal David’s City:

Hark, the Herald Angels Sing:

Away in a Manger:

O Come, all Ye Faithful:

While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night:

See Amid the Winter’s Snow:

All Saints Anglican Church in Ottawa sold

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From here:

The historic All Saints Anglican Church in Sandy Hill has been sold, and will gradually be developed as a mixed-use building for meetings, weddings and neighbourhood-scale businesses.

The Gothic Revival church on Laurier Avenue between Chapel Street and Blackburn Avenue was listed for sale at $1.7 million. The purchase price hasn’t been disclosed.

What makes this interesting is that, in 2011, the Diocese of Ottawa moved the congregation of All Saints into St. Alban’s, a church which had been vacated by an ANiC congregation as part of a negotiated settlement with the Diocese of Ottawa. The diocese, having ejected the ANiC  congregation, were eager to create the impression that they had a use for St. Alban’s, so they announced:

This has left All Saints without a viable congregation, so it has been sold.

The faux-new St. Alban’s congregation takes pride in not defining doctrine in a single confession, in encompassing a diversity of views  –  other than the diverse view that Christians who set a high value on a diversity of views have lost the thread – and in – Pride.

Here are a few of them, along with their rector, in the Ottawa Pride March:

Hillsong demonstrates how not to sing Silent Night

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Large, successful churches often cannot resist replacing worship with entertainment; the more accomplished the performers, the stronger the temptation.

A number of years ago I attended an evensong in Salisbury Cathedral. The acoustics were sublime, the choir sang exquisitely and the bulletin had a note requesting that the congregation not ruin the experience by joining in. It was a performance, albeit a performance of high aesthetic – even spiritual some would say – refinement.

Hillsong’s version of Silent Night is also a performance, a crassly revolting performance, the aesthetic antithesis of the Salisbury Cathedral choir, a cacophony of anti-Christianity whose idolatrous shallowness is surely too transparently stupid to appeal to any but empty-headed celebrities.

There does seem to be a large audience, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUezIFAb3A

Fred Hiltz attempts a Primates’ Meeting pre-emptive deflection manoeuvre

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Will it work? I doubt it.

Fred Hiltz would like the main discussion items at the January Primates’ meeting to be poverty, refugees, and global warming; in other words, temporal items, woes which inspire church enthusiasm of a magnitude overshadowed only by its inability to remedy them.

As much as Hiltz would like to avoid any discussion of disciplining TEC and the ACoC over their same-sex marriage preoccupation, squirm as he might, I am sure that the GAFCON primates will not let him get away with it.

From here:

A number of primates within the Anglican Communion are pushing for a Primates’ Meeting agenda that “reflects not only concerns within the domestic life of the church, but around the urgent issues within our common humanity,” said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Returning from his December 9 meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, Hiltz said he was informed by Welby that this particular call “is not coming from just certain parts of the Communion—it’s coming from every part of the Communion.”

While Hiltz acknowledged that issues around same-sex marriages will be an important topic of conversation at the meeting, he said he has encouraged Welby to make sure that the meeting’s agenda tackles important issues affecting the church and the world.

Earlier, Hiltz identified poverty, the global refugee crisis and climate change as key concerns for churches.

In an interview with the Anglican Journal, Hiltz said he was pleased with how receptive Welby was to this message. “He’s very open to that, and he said that a lot of the primates are calling for an agenda that reflects both.”

Hiltz also said that after his meeting with Welby, he came away “encouraged by his [Welby’s] clarity in terms of what the Primates’ Meeting is and what it’s not.”

The Primates’ Meeting “is not a decision-making body—it’s a body for people that come together to pray and discuss and discern and offer some guidance. We don’t make resolutions,” Hiltz said.

Since it was announced that Archbishop Foley Beach, the leader of the breakaway Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), would be present for the first part of the meeting, Hiltz said there has been concern in some quarters over whether or not attempts will be made to confront The Episcopal Church (TEC) over its decision this year to allow same-sex marriages. But Hiltz said Welby was quite clear that the meeting would not exclude any of the primates of churches that are members of the Anglican Communion.

“His principle is one of full inclusion of all the primates. I think he will encourage, and if need be, challenge, the primates to uphold that principle,” Hiltz said.

The meeting—scheduled Jan. 11-16, 2016—will be the first to be hosted by Welby since he was enthroned in 2013. The primates last met in Dublin in 2011, a meeting attended by only 23 or the 38 primates.

Hiltz said he believes part of the difficulty in getting the primates to meet arose from different understandings of the role of the Primates’ Meeting among the other instruments of the Communion. What began as a way for primates to meet for “friendly conversation” has been pushed in a more disciplinary direction, Hiltz said, which has led to some distorted understandings of how much authority primates actually have over the wider Communion.

“Within the Communion, as the Primates’ Meeting, we are called to a servant role, in terms of how we speak of, support and model servant leadership in the spirit of God’s mission,” he noted. “We’re servants of the churches in which we minister…we are called to be servants, not rulers.”

Diocese of Niagara accused of caring only about money – again!

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The Diocese of Niagara, still smarting from being denounced as greedy, has decided to give Guelph residents upset with the sale of St. Matthias two months to come up with a plan more to their liking:

The Anglican Diocese of Niagara is giving community groups a two-month window to come up with a revised development proposal for the patch of land at 171 Kortright Rd. W.

The Diocese made the announcement in a news release on Wednesday.

Diocesan spokesman, Rev. Bill Mous, said that “the diocese cared deeply about Guelph”, a pious condescension which has not convinced at least one citizen, who announced in a letter to a local Guelph newspaper that the diocese “cares only about money”, that Mous’s words “ring hollow”, that the community “does not feel cared for“ and that the diocese has “cast a dark shadow on the reputation of the Anglican Church everywhere” – not an easy thing to do considering the completion.

Read it all here and –  Merry Christmas, Diocese of Niagara and staff:

Anglican Diocese only cares about money

Two contract extensions in spite of the fact that the City councillors unanimously said no to the rezoning application. Two extensions in spite of the feelings of the neighbours who want the church to remain a church and in spite of the hopes and prayers of local congregations who are longing for usable worship space. Preserve a church as a church? Why do that when you can reap an extra million dollars by selling to a developer who specializes in high-density construction?

The words of Bill Mous, spokesperson for the Diocese, ring hollow to anyone who has a stake in the neighbourhood surrounding the church property. The Diocese “cares deeply for Guelph”? This community does not feel cared for. It seems the Diocese cares deeply about turning a huge profit by rezoning institutional land to R-4 specialized. And the Diocese cares deeply about running the community out of money so that citizens lose their right to object at the board.

It’s a sad comment on Anglican officials who lack a social conscience and try to bafflegab their way out of any responsibility for the upcoming demolition of a church that other congregations would be thankful to be able to purchase at fair-market value for institutional land. Diocese decisions have cast a dark shadow on the reputation of the Anglican Church everywhere and the Synod clearly worships the almighty dollar rather than the Almighty.