Category Archives: Diocese of Niagara

Diocese of Niagara has first sinless parish

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St. George’s church in Lowville is progressive. They don’t believe anything in particular, other than the sanctity of diversity: you can make the Bible say anything you want, so long as you don’t think it is actually true:

Unity in diversity
To write “What we believe” does not mean that every member of the parish must have the same beliefs.  That would be inconsistent with our position that Christians must interpret Scripture for themselves.

St. Paul was clear about this.  A Christian community, which he called the Body of Christ, is the sum of its members’ gifts and abilities. We may each interpret our faith in our own way.

Even better, you don’t have to be a Christian, since Jesus is merely a doorway to something more important: the sacred in our lives, an elevated state that can also be reached through other religions:

Our theology is broadly compatible with that of the organization Progressive Christianity.  We accept the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as a doorway to greater awareness of the sacred in our lives.  However, we accept that other faith traditions can offer insights into sacred wisdom.

I’ve saved the best until last: we aren’t sinners! There is no judgment. We don’t need saving. We don’t need a Saviour.

We don’t need a church. Oops.

Coming to church on Sundays should be a joy, not a duty. The modern Anglican perspective is that we are worthy to be in God’s presence, not ‘miserable sinners’.  That is why we make our Sunday worship joyful, not gloomy.

Like the followers of St. Francis of Assisi, we stress the goodness and joy of the natural world.  We celebrate our physicality as part of our sacredness, which mirrors the coming into the world of Jesus Christ as Son of God.

Like us, Franciscans follow whats (sic) called an alternative orthodoxy, and reject the doctrine of Original Sin.  That is the belief that we were all born sinful, awaiting and expecting punishment from a vengeful and judgemental God. The idea comes from a particular reading of the book of Genesis Chapter 3, which describes the disobedience of the mythical first people. Instead we believe that God’s Spirit of goodness and love is present within us from the moment of our creation.

Graffiti on Oakville church being investigated as a hate crime

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St. Aidan’s Anglican church in Oakville has been daubed with graffiti.

Pride month seems to have been the inspiration for the artwork and, since it includes homophobic slurs, it is being investigated as a hate crime.

Although I have little in common with the liberal version of Christianity promoted by St. Aidan’s, I doubt that this is a productive way of protesting it.

Still, if the graffiti had celebrated Pride Month and denounced the traditional view of marriage, while declaring St. Aidan’s a “False Church”, would it be investigated as a hate crime?

Here is the graffiti:


And here is the article:

Halton police are investigating a recent act of vandalism at an Oakville church as a hate crime.

Sometime between the afternoon of Saturday, Aug. 19 and the morning of Sunday, Aug. 20, two signs reading “We Stand In Unity With The Halton Community” were cut in half at St. Aidan’s Anglican Church, 318 Queen Mary Dr., police say.

The church had set up the signs during Pride Month and left them up afterwards.

The church and attached daycare were also vandalized with graffiti in five areas, according to police.

“They include homophobic slurs and are being investigated as a hate-motivated crime,” said Halton Police Media Officer Const. Ryan Anderson.

No arrests have been made and no suspect descriptions are available.

When reached for comment Reverend Fran Wallace said that as a community of faith St. Aidan’s wished to acknowledge the sadness of this act.

Diocese of Niagara church attendance down by 35-50%, revenue down 23%

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The reduction in church attendance was announced by Bishop Susan Bell at the recent Diocese of Niagara synod. She noted that she could “feel the anxiety in the room”.

Read it all here:

For instance: and let me clear—what follows is not to deny our recent experience, but it does put it in necessary context. We are all concerned about attendance: through the necessary closure period, we faced some attrition—through death, movement, and attenuation of relationship. All unfortunate; mostly all unavoidable. But fact, nonetheless. Anecdotally, where we stand mid-pandemic, is that our people have returned at a rate of 50-65% generally. I know there are places where the figure is lower or higher but this seems to be the average, if slow, trend.

Even worse:

We have experienced some worrying attrition in our stewardship as well. Our diocesan revenue is forecast to be down about 23% in 2023

Never fear, the diocese has a Mission Action Plan, the latest in a long line of meaningless cliché-ridden banalities designed to bore parishioners to the point where they open their wallets to make it stop.

June, the Anglican Church of Canada’s favourite month

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That’s because June is Pride Month, a time when ACoC clergy can abandon themselves to urges that must lurk suppressed the rest of the year beneath their black frocks and fossil-fuel derived plastic white collars: four glorious weeks of homoerotic public cavorting, a non-binary bacchanalia of barrenness.

To that end, the Diocese of Niagara is having a 2SLGBTQIA+ “worship experience” on June 12th in its cathedral:

Not to be outdone, the youth of St. Aidan’s in the Huron diocese have, under the tutelage of the rector, been painting rainbow doors:

Youth at a London, Ont., church are showing their support for the LGBTQ2+ community with a bright and colourful art installation.
St. Aidan’s Anglican Church unveiled its “God’s Doors are Open to All” project on Saturday.
“It’s an installation of multi-coloured doors in the colours of the rainbow as a reminder to all who are LGBTQ2+ that our church is a safe (and) welcoming space,” said Kevin George, the rector of St. Aidan’s.

Ironically, in the 2SLGBTQIA+ etc, etc, “community”, all is not rainbows and fairy dust. There is racism and discrimination:

People of colour say racism, exclusion, fetishization, rampant in LGBTQ+ communities
When Lia Mighty came out as lesbian, she thought she would find solace in the community of “rainbows, unicorns and love”; rather, she experienced “racial comments and discrimination.”

“I’ve been called n—-r at least eight times within the LGBTQ+ community,” said Mighty, a musician and model from Montreal.

The ACoC is constantly lamenting that it is riddled with systemic racism; no wonder it feels so at home revelling in this milieu.

Mangling the Gospel with Bishops Bell and Cottrell

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The Diocese of Niagara’s bishop Susan Bell recently had a chat with Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York. Cottrell, we are told, is “an engaging and sophisticated leader, theologian, speaker, and writer”. The best that the Church of England has to offer; in which case, at least we now know why the CofE is in drastic decline.

Naturally, Susan Bell asked Stephen Cottrell to give us the benefit of his learning on climate change. Cottrell, we can only assume, is a renowned climatologist in addition to being a sophisticated leader and theologian. Here is part of his reply (my emphasis):

What a good question. Is there a more important question facing the world?

I think I would start by…two things…on the big picture level I think we need to teach much more about this. This needs to be not a kind of add-on to the Gospel; this is the Gospel…how we inhabit the world in the way of Christ…this is the Gospel. So, I’d want to preach and teach about it much more… good to hear that Canada is ahead as usual…it’s even in your Baptismal liturgy. It’s those things that start to impress it into our consciousness. This is what it means to follow Christ.

So there you have it: the good news of Jesus Christ is fixing climate change. This is why Jesus died on the cross. This is the cause for which countless Christians have been martyred. This is what gives meaning and purpose to life. This is incoherent tripe.

And Canada is at the forefront in peddling it.

Diocese of Niagara shuts churches because of Omicron

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Just in time for Christmas.

From here:

Dear friends:

You will have heard by now that I have made the difficult decision to shutter our churches for public worship as a preventative measure against the unrestrained spread of the Omicron variant of concern which is circulating in our midst.

This is a hard time.  We are being asked to dig very deep to accede to this moment with strength and maturity.  The psalm quoted above, is one of assurance.  It’s about trust in the power of God to guide and fortify us in the face of fear.  God is called a fortress and a refuge – places of protection and shelter.  Well, we have need of both in this moment.

But we are not helpless.  Added to this deep trust is the use of the good judgement and common sense gifted to us as God’s beloved children.  So, equipped with these abilities and God’s steadfast presence and care, we move forward into this next chapter of the pandemic.

It seems amazing that a scant three weeks ago, the word Omicron was not in our lexicons.  Yet as I write to you, the number of cases in Ontario from this now predominant variant are doubling every two or three days, with case counts in our diocese rising to levels we haven’t seen since the third wave of the pandemic.

The extent of transmission in our communities has led many to urgently call for a set of new guidelines to act as a “circuit breaker” to slow infection and buy time to ramp up vaccination efforts. We are doing our part to contribute to this effort even as we place our trust in God.

It seems, the bishop has lost her faith – in the vaccines:

Diocese of Niagara church blesses a rainbow crosswalk

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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

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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:

Baptising my new pronouns

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The Diocese of Niagara has a new liturgy to celebrate the renaming of a person who decides to behave as if he is the opposite sex to the one imposed on him by such trivia as his chromosomes.

The diocese hastens to point out that this is not exactly a re-baptism – that would be most unAnglican – rather, it “sacralizes” the whole experience. Just speaking personally, I think I would need a little more incentive before agreeing to have my genitals chopped off. That’s just me.

According to Canon Penny Anderson, the mastermind behind this initiative, there are a “growing number of people in our diocese” who are not in the least bit deterred by the prospect of this barbaric practice. We live in strange times.

From here:

Bishop Susan Bell has authorized for use in the Diocese of Niagara an interim rite to enable clergy to better respond to the pastoral needs of transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive parishioners.

The rite is called ‘Affirming the Newly Named’ and celebrates and affirms those who are claiming a new name and set of pronouns as part of their journey to fullness of life in regard to their gender identity.

“I am so grateful to have this pastoral rite available for use in parishes as it names and sacralizes the experience of trans and non-binary people who are beloved of God,” says Bishop Bell about the new liturgy.

Canon Penny Anderson, who helped to craft this liturgy, says that “feeling free to live their authentic gender identity is central to the faith journey of a growing number of people in our diocese.