From here:
Lord Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will say rebelling against the status quo is “triumphantly admirable”, in a speech for Lent to be broadcast on Radio 4 this week.
The practising Anglican emphasises conflict as an “essential part of natural and human progress”.
Anglicans are testing this theory so enthusiastically that, in the West, they have almost progressed to the state of non-existence.
Anglican priest, Rev. Neil Elliot is celebrating the completion of his PhD in snowboarding, from Kingston University in London.
He discusses the minutiae of the spirituality of snowboarding here, where he observes:
One thing that came out very clearly in my research is that people in contemporary society are talking about spirituality without God and they are looking for spiritual growth and development without necessarily including God. We need to understand why that’s the case.
Understanding why people prefer spirituality to God isn’t that difficult: God makes demands of us, spirituality, in its all you need is love mushiness doesn’t.
The church I attend has a bell which, when I started attending in the last millennium, was rung vigorously every Sunday morning – until the neighbours started complaining. St Columba Anglican Church in Durban, Southern Africa has found a different way to annoy the neighbours. As Canadian Anglican Churches devolve into community centres, perhaps this is a harbinger of something we can look forward to in Canada.
From here:
Homeowners in Greenwood Park have now started a petition to silence the church, which hires out a function room as a party venue.
The St Columba Anglican Church reverberates to the beat of pounding music and drunken revellers until the early hours of the morning, keeping frustrated neighbours awake.
The Rev James Wylie this week declined to comment on the complaints until he had an opportunity to discuss the matter with members of the church council.
But he said he hoped the matter would be settled ”amicably”.
Keith van Wyk, who lives next door to the church, said he was “sick and tired” of the blaring music and drunken partygoers.
”It’s every weekend. These parties go on until at least 4am. I have a family, and the loud music keeps my children and wife awake,” he said.
He said numerous complaints to the church authorities had fallen on deaf ears.
”They advertise for free in the local newspaper, promoting drunken parties indicating that people should bring their own booze. I feel this is deceptive and immoral. Nightclubs need to pay for advertising, why not them?”
Rev. Paul Turp is vicar of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, a church which was immortalised in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons: “When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch”.
It now has another claim to fame since Rev. Turp is supporting something that will undoubtedly start a trend in the Anglican Church: he wants to keep the local strip clubs and sex shops open – not for his own personal use, of course.
His argument is that closing them would drive the businesses underground where they would be controlled by criminals. By that standard, the borough might as well install some opium dens and brothels, too. Rev. Paul Turp could rent them space in his church making it rich – as the bells would say.
[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Strip_club.flv 740 450]
The most damning opinions of Western Anglicanism come, unsurprisingly, from those outside its liberal priestly clique, a malignant coterie whose wilful ignorance of the decadence of the institution in whose employ it finds itself has become a fitting illustration of the psalmist’s point when he said: “Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear”.
David Pryce-Jones does get one thing wrong: the Anglican Church is doing just fine in the third world – it’s in North America and the UK that it is undergoing its Kafkaesque transformation into a cockroach.
From NRO:
The split in the Anglican Church has been a long time in the coming, but it has now become irrevocable. The turning point was a decision this July to support the ordination of women bishops. The issue, like the acceptance of gay priests, has been too much for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to handle. Instinctively a fence-sitter, he always manages to upset everyone and get the worst of all things. Earlier in the year, his astonishing support of sharia law destroyed what little authority he had left. Five bishops are now leaving the Anglican Church to become Roman Catholics. They are taking with them an unknown number of congregants, probably so far only in the hundreds. But whole parishes are likely to convert, bringing into question ownership of property, including church buildings and vicarages. Pope Benedict XVI has set up a mechanism known as an Ordinariate to receive them, which for instance allows married men to be Catholic priests.
Enthusiasts are claiming that the Protestant Reformation is reversing, and Catholicism will undo the work of Henry VIII and reclaim its status as the church in England. Not at all, according to an angry roar from the professor of Church History at Oxford, the departure of the bishops and their followers is good riddance to bad rubbish. Besides, the Catholic Church is in feeble shape. One of the few Anglican priests with intelligence and character is Nicolas Stacey, and he has pointed out that in the predominantly Catholic city of Liverpool last year, there was just one ordination to the priesthood and currently there are only nine seminarians.
The old institutions exist in name but no longer function. Last week the British Navy and the Royal Air Force were left unable to defend the country, and this week the national church hollows out. The country is dispensing with its beliefs and its purposes — fast.
What peculiarly grotesque act does that phrase seek to describe? Well it seems fairly obvious to me: what could do more violence to gender than to corrupt its essence by surgically forcing it to conform to its opposite. To be transgender is to commit gender violence.
Too simple, I fear. Although having a sex change operation isn’t yet a sacrament, being transgendered is a preferred entry point into Anglicanism. Apparently, “gender violence” means “violence against women”.
From here:
For the first time in recent history, three Episcopal women’s groups have come together to ask the church to participate in 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. In 2010, the 16 days begin on November 25, International Day against Violence Against Women, and end on December 10.
A worthy cause, no doubt, but why does it have to be called “Gender Violence”? I’m thinking of forming an Anglican men’s group that will campaign against the Devil and her violence towards language.
From here:
The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba has joined the call for the City of Cape Town to release an internal report on the Makhaza toilet saga.
Last week, members of the Social Justice Coalition marched to the Civic Centre and demanded to see the report into the construction of the open air toilets.
“I believe that transparency is fundamental to building trust. Withholding information is guaranteed to undermine that information,” he added.
One can only hope that the Social Justice departments of Anglican Churches everywhere are inspired by this effort and mount their own campaigns for Waste-Justice.
I know you think I made that up, but I didn’t:
Beatles hits sung by Russian monks in Antarctica will echo round Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral as part of a festival dedicated to peace.
It has taken months to track down singers from every continent willing to take part in the Peace, Love And Understanding concert on Saturday.
It could only happen in an Anglican cathedral.
Unlike St. Francis of Assisi, Anglican priests don’t have to take a vow of poverty. In fact there is at least one Anglican priest who is struggling to make ends meet on a monthly pension of $25,637.08 and believes she is entitled to $33,644.21 a month. It’s understandable: Rev. Clitheroe has a standard of living to maintain – the one she became accustomed to while earning $2.2 million per year working for Hydro One.
I am not particularly averse to the idea that people should be paid at their market value – which means, in practice, for as much as they can get; but in this case, the reason given for needing the extra money bears all the authenticity of an airport stray begging for cash for a ticket to return to his pining wife and children: “Her mother is not well, and her husband has not been well. . . . She’s the sole breadwinner in the family and has been for years.’’
Any vestige of sympathy I may have felt for an Anglican priest living on a mere $25,637.08 per month – ok, I didn’t actually feel any – quickly evaporated on reading that.
From here:
Eleanor Clitheroe, the ousted CEO of Hydro One who is seeking an increase in her hefty government pension, is a sole breadwinner supporting ailing relatives, including her husband, her lawyer says.
Clitheroe, now an Anglican priest, is fighting the provincial government in Ontario’s Court of Appeal. The province believes her monthly pension should be $25,637.08 but Clitheroe, who made $2.2 million in 2001 in her final full year with Hydro One, is seeking $33,644.21 a month.
Clitheroe argues her Charter rights to liberty and security of the person were violated by Bill 80, passed by the Legislature in June 2002. The bill, brought in to curtail large compensation packages for senior management, imposed a maximum on amounts that Hydro One officers, including Clitheroe, could claim as a supplementary pension.
The legislation says Hydro pensions are not to exceed what would be paid to employees under a registered and supplementary pension plan.
Clitheroe has declined to speak publicly about her case, and wasn’t in court Tuesday.
But outside court her lawyer, Alan Lenczner, offered an explanation for why she wants to pad her pension.
“Her mother is not well, and her husband has not been well. . . . She’s the sole breadwinner in the family and has been for years,’’ Lenczner said.
