Ecclesiastes 10:2 (ESV)
A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right,
but a fool’s heart to the left.
Biblical advice for the Canadian election
6
Author Archives: David
Anglican Church of Canada makes Middle East peace an election issue
The Anglican Church of Canada wants to tell you how to vote. In a consummately tendentious article, the ACoC informs us that Israel is responsible for the lack of peace in the Middle East because: Israelis continue to settle in Palestinian territories; Israel’s response to being bombarded by rockets is “disproportionate”; Israel denies the Palestinians’ right of return.
Arabs who inconveniently persist in firing rockets into Israel, murdering Jews whenever they get the chance, calling for Israel’s destruction and teaching their children that Jews should be hated because they are the offspring of apes and pigs are not in the least bit guilty. They are just being mildly inconsiderate.
The party that most consistently supports Israel is Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. The Anglican Church of Canada doesn’t want you to vote for them. I was going to vote Conservative anyway, but I’d like to thank the ACoC for confirming my decision.
From here:
The General Synod’s Global Relations Director, Dr. Andrea Mann, pointed to three key issues that continue to animate the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The steady and increasing settlement of Palestinian territories by Israeli settlers with the support of the Israeli government is a major point of contention, Mann noted, pointing to ongoing claims on Palestinian villages as Israeli land through the continued bulldozing of Palestinian houses.
Counter-measures by Israel to Palestinian incursions such as rocket attacks, which Mann indicated are often disproportionate to the initial Palestinian actions, are another major issue.
“Where there is an initiative or a strike, say, from Gaza into Israeli territory, the response by Israel is in far greater measure, and has been shown to be without consideration for civilian life or hospitals or schools—the places where people gather for safety from those counter-strikes,” she said.
A third major issue is the Palestinians’ right of return, which relates to compensation to Palestinians for lands taken from them beginning in 1948 with the formation of the state of Israel, and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who left homes behind and were never invited to return or compensated for the loss of their homes, livelihoods and communities.
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Kathleen Wynne guest speaker at synod
Ontario’s premier, Kathleen Wynne was a guest speaker at the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario’s recent synod.
Other than the fact that the Anglican Church of Canada has reimagined itself into a political lobbying organisation – albeit an impotent and penniless specimen – I’m not sure why she was there. Perhaps it was to garner advice from the real experts on how further to spice up her controversial sex education propaganda.
She claimed to have a good time:
Bishop Michael Bird chatted with her about poverty. It’s understandable: the ACoC has fallen on hard times of late:
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Eugenia
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
There was no mist in Oakville this morning but there were some Autumn colours:
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Abortion, a Canadian disgrace
Canada is one of the few countries in the world that has no law to protect the unborn. A baby can be killed in its mother’s womb at any age for any reason, including sex selection, convenience and post-conception contraception.
100,000 Canadian babies are burned, dismembered, disembowelled, decapitated and flushed from their mother’s womb every year. People get upset about seeing photographs of this atrocity and they get upset about a Kurdish boy drowned on a beach; the one thing that doesn’t upset Canadians is the stench of industrial scale death that lurks just beneath our renowned veneer of civility, a veneer that, considering what it conceals, is as disgusting as it is hypocritical.
Wake up, Canada and force your politicians to act.
Read it all at the National Post:
Justin Trudeau’s attempt to play wedge politics with the abortion issue fell flat at last week’s French language debate. This must have been disappointing for him as his position has been clear for some time: he supports every form of abortion — including for the sole purpose of terminating the lives of girl babies simply because they are female — at every stage of pregnancy. He even issued an edict stating that anyone who questioned the status quo was not welcome in the Liberal party.
The de facto position of Thomas Mulcair and Stephen Harper is, in principle, no different. When questioned directly by Trudeau last Friday, Harper said the same as he has been saying for years, “My position for 10 years has been I don’t intend to re-open this debate.”
As yet, all three leaders have a realistic shot at making 24 Sussex their home after the Oct. 19 election. And all three continue to treat pre-born children as a political liability.
Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau are without excuse. If elected, it is their duty to enact laws for the benefit of all Canadians. Their complete disregard for the human rights of any children in the womb effectually means that they are complicit in the deaths of 100,000 members of the human family every year.
In effect Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau all support sex-selective abortion. They care less about the fact that girls are targeted for abortion much more frequently than boys. Their refusal to act is a sign that they endorse this misogynistic practice in Canada.
All three leaders also support late-term abortion. They show no regard for the reality that every year thousands of babies lose their lives by being aborted in the latter stages of pregnancy, after the stage when children of the same age are born, survive outside of the womb, and live productive lives as Canadian citizens.
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Anglican priest wears a hijab
Rev. Cheryl Toth from the Anglican Diocese of Qu’Appelle wore a hijab for a day to “see what it’s like” and because she is unhappy that hostility towards women who wear a hijab, niqab or burka is increasing. And, of course, “to contribute to the conversation” – it wouldn’t be Anglican without that.
She didn’t go for the full cover-up of a burka, presumably because in a burka, no one would have any idea that she was a lady Anglican priest declaring “look at me, aren’t I progressive”, rather than an actual Muslim. That wouldn’t have been much of a publicity stunt.
Here she is:
And here are thousands of women protesting against being forced to wear a hijab in Iran in March 1979. I know which spectacle find more convincing:
From here:
Anglican priest Cheryl Toth decided to wear a hijab for a day to see what the experience is like. (Submitted by Cheryl Toth)
Concerned with what she calls the “increasing rhetoric about the wearing of the niqab by Muslim women,” an Anglican priest in Regina decided to take matters into her own hands. She wore a hijab for a day to see what’s [sic] like.
In a post on Facebook, Cheryl Toth said she’s “uncomfortable with the way the debate focuses on what women wear (or decide not to wear). I am afraid that [the rhetoric] will increase hostility towards women who choose to wear a hijab, a niqab or a burka.”
She said she sees her trial run with the hijab as a way “to contribute to the conversation.”
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Discipline is on the agenda of the Primates’ meeting
David Virtue is reporting that both TEC and the ACoC are to be disciplined at the Primates’ meeting in January.
There are ACoC clergy that have a keen interest in discipline, but only if it is accompanied by bondage.
From VOL:
The discipline of The Episcopal Church (and presumably the Anglican Church of Canada) will be the first item on the agenda when the Primates of the Anglican Communion meet in Canterbury in January, VOL has learned.
If TEC and the ACoC are disciplined for their departure from the faith and do not leave the meeting, the Global South Primates will not be likely to stay, VOL was told.
If they are disciplined, repent and do the right thing and leave, the Global South archbishops will stay on, said the source.
A report by the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada Fred Hiltz that ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach had only been invited for one day before the formal meeting gets under way — “as an opportunity for some conversation, in the ultimate hope that we might be able to find a way forward towards reconciliation,” is simply inaccurate. Hiltz described this as “a good thing.”
But VOL was told that this interpretation by Hiltz about what he thinks will transpire in Canterbury is simply not true and avoids the facts. Archbishop Beach will only come if the Global South archbishops come and they will only appear if Beach is invited and the issue of the North American departure from Scripture is the centerpiece of the discussion.
“The central issue of this meeting will be the theological innovations of The Episcopal Church and not climate change,” VOL was told.
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Swedish bishop wants to remove the cross from her church
As St. Paul noted in Gal 5:11, If I were no longer preaching salvation through the cross of Christ, no one would be offended; the last thing the church wants to do is offend anyone, particularly Muslims. Bishop Eva Brunne has the solution: remove the cross along with other Christian symbols from the Seamen’s Church in Stockholm.
Presumably, her next move will be to remove Christianity itself from the church; perhaps she has already done that.
Eva Brunne is the bishop of Stockholm in the Church of Sweden. Before deciding to remove the cross from the church, her main claim to notoriety was to be the first openly lesbian bishop of a mainstream church. It’s significant that such things tend to go together.
From here:
Bishop Eva Brunne wants to remove Christian symbols from the Seamen’s Church in Stockholm, and instead create a prayer room for Muslims, SVT reports.
The bishop wants to temporarily make the Seamen’s Church available to all, for example by marking the direction of Mecca and remove Christian symbols, which is already done in common prayer rooms at airports and in some hospital chapels.
“Leasing a room to people of other faiths, does not mean that we are not defenders of our own faith. Priests are called to proclaim Christ. We do that every day and in every meeting with people. But that does not mean that we are hostile toward people of other faiths, “writes Bishop Eva Brune at Stockholm municipality’s website.
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Diocese of Niagara to have Justice Camp in Cuba
The Anglican equivalent of Saudi Arabia heading a UN human rights panel is locating a Justice Camp in one of the least just countries in the world outside of North Korea: Cuba. Perhaps the incentive was a promise of free cigars.
From here (page 10):
The first-ever international Justice Camp will bring together a diverse group of Anglicans in Cuba from May 1-6, 2016, to explore the concept of the common good with an eye towards furthering God’s justice and loving purposes.