Category Archives: Diocese of Niagara

How churches are surviving in the Diocese of Niagara

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They are becoming community centres.

St. Peter’s in Hamilton, having been given to the diocese by the ANiC parishioners, is now no longer used for Christian worship, but is a community centre used by HARRRP.

St. Aidan’s in Oakville is still used part time as a church but seems to be placing most of its emphasis on becoming a community centre too; sharing its building with many service agencies is, apparently, now an act of outreach. Coincidentally, it also happens to bring in a lot of cash.

From here:

The ‘little church on the corner’ — St. Aidan’s — that serves Oakville’s West River and Kerr Village neighbourhood recently celebrated a new look…..

The first phase of the changes are now complete and Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn,  Angelo Di Cintio of the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Rev. Bishop Michael Bird of the Niagara Diocese were on hand to participate in the ribbon cutting at the open house.

A $130,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation grant in 2009 provided a springboard to get the project underway. More fundraising is underway and phase two plans are in the works.

To date, a new ramp and electric door at the church’s north entrance have been added to make the building more accessible.

The first floor of the building has been reconfigured to make the space more usable and comfortable for groups that meet there throughout the week.

As well, two new washrooms, a kitchenette and servery area, lighting and sound systems were completed this fall as part of phase one.

Through its local outreach, St. Aidan’s shares its space with many service agencies and partners who are able to offer innovative educational and support services for those in need.

St. Aidan’s has again become a hub in the community and a much needed gathering place for the neighbourhood, according to Fricker.

In partnership with organizations like T.E.A.C.H., the Halton Multicultural Council, Art House, Ace, Hopedale Nursery School and Kindermusik, to name just a few, quality programs that directly serve the needs of children, youths, seniors, and new immigrants are offered

The Diocese of Niagara wants to be recognised internationally for well trained and highly effective clergy

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From here:

By 2012, the Diocese of Niagara is recognized across Canada and internationally for its well trained and highly effective clergy and lay leadership whose life changing collaborative ministry is grounded in covenants between clergy, Bishop and parish.

If there is anything that the Diocese of Niagara has become known for internationally, it is the materialistic, rapacious greed it exhibits in trying to cling on to buildings for which it has little use other than to sell  in order to replenish its dwindling coffers. Nevertheless, there’s nothing quite as pretentious as church pretension, so the diocese is putting on a bold face – a lying bold face.

A priest – who really is an effective leader – regaled me with the tale of how he has been threatened by Bishop Michael Bird with cancellation of his license since he has left the diocese for another denomination because of theological differences with the diocese. Bird, unable to hold on to a priest with integrity and talent, is vindictively attempting to punish him because he has violated the most significant diocesan principle mentioned above: subservience – in newspeak, covenant – to the bishop.

The Diocese of Niagara, its bishop, his benighted vision and all diocesan hangers-on will be recognised by history an example of why fervent purging of the transcendent from Christianity is a bad idea.

Diocese of Niagara: Jesus was only a caricature of God

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From here: (page 3)

Jesus certainly had the character of God; his relationship with God was so close that his contemporaries called him the Son of God; but, without being irreverent, he was only a caricature of God. The author of the letter to the Hebrews chose his words most carefully to distinguish between God and Jesus Christ.

Michael Burslem, the author of this article in the Niagara Anglican, has laboured tirelessly over the years to diminish Christ’s divinity. He probably wouldn’t claim to speak for the whole diocese, but his articles are repeatedly published in the diocesan paper: I suspect he does.

He goes on to venture the following insight:

But is this to mean He is God of God or Light of light? Was God really born of Mary? Before we speak to anyone else about Jesus, I think we ourselves need to do some rethinking.

I’ve done my rethinking and left the diocese.

Diocese of Niagara litigation costs

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For the first time that I’m aware of, the Diocese of Niagara has included the cost of suing ANiC parishes in a financial statement.

You can find the statement here and the relevant line shows that in 2009 the diocese, while not preoccupied with distributing free hugs, spent $395,895 on lawsuits:

Where did this money come from? It wasn’t budgeted – and it still isn’t. It presumably came from the diocese’s primary source of income: the diocesan assessment. That means that with a total assessment in 2009 of $3,044,139, 13 cents out of every dollar contributed by Diocese of Niagara parishioners was used to sue fellow Christians.

The financial statement goes on to declare that the diocese was the defendant in the 2009 legal action; it was actually the plaintiff – the instigator of the suit – as can be seen here. In addition, even if the diocese does finally win all the litigation, it will not recover its legal costs; of the $395,895, only around $80,000 of  was recovered.

Diocese of Niagara publishes its religion of works

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And they are green works. The list is here and includes the 10 pieces of dogma to which a person must adhere to be fit for green heaven.

Just as in real Christianity, some of the articles of faith are harder to comprehend than others: a notable example is the difficulty in deciding whether to use a garbage bin, green box or blue box to chuck your Niagara Anglican in before reading it. The diocese suggests the pious family will ensure that “[e]veryone in the home has been “trained” in the correct use of the blue, green and regular garbage bins.”

It goes without saying that:

Low flow shower heads are installed
Single use plastic bottles are not used in the home
Fair trade coffee and other products are used in the home
At least two days a week are designated as meat free
Organic Ontario food is bought when possible
One day a week the car stays in the garage

And so on. As you can see, the Diocese of Niagara is keen to inflict  its 21st C version of self flagellation on parishioners and is encouraging family members to inform on one other when a miscreant is caught sneaking a bite of non-organic Texas beef by the light of an incandescent bulb in between swigs of water from a plastic bottle. With non-fair-trade coffee to follow. Violators will be incarcerated in the nearest Justice Camp for re-education.

Diocese of Niagara seminar: Ten Simple Things to Improve Your Parish Income

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The Diocese of Niagara is holding a seminar entitled: Ten Simple Things to Improve Your Parish Income. It includes the following, but notably absent is preach the Gospel:

Rejuvenate your Stewardship Team
Simmer your Stewardship all year long
Frame your Narrative Budget [what on earth does that mean?]

Build on Strengths
De-mystify DMM
Advocacy – Our Biggest Need

Try Something Different
Challenge the Money Myths
Run a “Thirteenth Month” Campaign

Get Insights
Healthy Parish Checklist
Parish Giving Analysis

Encourage Clergy
Effective stewardship announcements
45 Scriptural Resources about Stewardship

Also absent is the number one strategy: sue churches that used to be part of the diocese so you can sell the buildings they paid for.

Diocese of Niagara: 22 tips on increasing parish revenue

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The Diocese of Niagara has published 22 preaching tips on how to extract more money from parishioners. The inane, clichéd and profoundly meaningless “We are a people of the story” predictably appears in number 4 and number 8 reveals the level of diocesan desperation in that it makes the unprecedented recommendation of using the Bible:

Use the Bible. From the very first book of the Bible, the image of God is one of an abundant, lavish giver. If we are created in God’s own image, then to deny that, we are not allowing ourselves to become what God has made us to be. Look for biblical stories about gratitude and abundance. Remind parishioners that Jesus talked more about money than he did about heaven or prayer.

Number 23 has been omitted for some reason; here it is:

23. If none of the above work, sue the congregation, take their building, sell it and tell everyone you were forced to sue them to preserve heritage diocesan assets for future generations.

Marriage in the Diocese of Niagara

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It’s not what it used to be. A comment from someone prompted me to take another look at the Niagara rite of blessing of civil marriage: it would be used for the blessing of same-sex partners (one of whom has to be baptised – why?), but, presumably could be used to bless heterosexual civil unions too. We are assured in the introduction that the “rite is innovative” – and indeed it is as an excercise in maudlin sentimentality:

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now, there is no more loneliness.
Now you are two persons, but there is one life ahead of you.
Go now to your dwelling to enter into the days of your life together
And may your days be good and long upon the earth

From there it lurches recklessly into the assertion that same-sex attraction and its fulfilment is a sacred God-given gift and a bodily expression of Christ’s perfect love:

In your mercy you befriend those who wander in loneliness and shame, those oppressed because of difference, those who do not know the value of their unique and sacred gift; and by your Holy Spirit you awaken in them the dignity of humankind and the responsibility of embodied love, as perfected in Jesus Christ, who loved and gave himself for us, showing us the way to intimacy with you and with one another.

None of which overshadows the Proclamation of the Word with its suggested secular readings. Here is one from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, “We two boys together clinging” – a poem about gay love:

WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

Or the couple could select “The Road Goes Ever On”. While it works pretty well in Lord of the Rings, I wonder if the happy couple look forward to wading through the festering marshes of Emyn Muil, only to end up in Mount Doom where the bride will have his finger bitten off and thrown into the molten lava, ring and all.  Although – maybe that’s an apt metaphor.

Apparently, the Diocese of Niagara is too theologically conservative for some

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From the Niagara Anglican (page 8):

Have the gays of the Diocese achieved their goals? Not really. Okay, let’s be honest, not at all. The Diocese of Niagara has agreed upon and published the Niagara Rite of Blessing of Civil marriage. Right? No, actually. This document is to be used at the discretion of individual priests to bless, for example, a gay couple already married in the civil courts. Priests have been able to bless most anything (such as furniture, hymn books, pets) and anyone (such as those going on a long trip) so why was all this effort necessary to enable them to bless same-sex unions? Furthermore, is anyone performing this rite?

But there now is a movement towards the development of a liberal breakaway group. More walking. This concept has matured enough to reach my generally un-political ears. Here is a paraphrase of a recent email:

“The leaders of the Diocese are doing their best but what’s happening is that many genuine seekers of God’s Spirit are being left on the side of the church’s road-way simply because they are homosexual. After years of unsuccessful struggle to make the Anglican Church of Canada inclusive, there is now a very serious call to begin an alternative (liberal) church that expresses no protest, politics, or need for property. They are people who simply want to worship God together by sharing the scriptures and breaking bread in justice and love.”

This tends to confirm my suspicion that General Synod, by neither approving nor condemning the blessing of same-sex unions, has stirred discontent in both conservative and liberal camps. While the stubbornly optimistic are prepared to soldier on under the guise of compromise, the more strident, hot-blooded – if I may be allowed such an oxymoron – Anglicans are still straining in opposite directions.

So while I find it difficult to image a more liberal diocese than Niagara, clearly for some, Niagara is simply too orthodox. For how many, I wonder? Between 3 and 5? More than 5? Surely not more than 10. Will they try to take their buildings with them? Will the diocese find itself in the peculiar position of suing liberals as well as conservatives while trying to persuade the apathetic centre to continue paying for lawyers?

The parish I attend has a potting shed that it might be willing to rent to a breakaway Anglican hyper-liberal cartel.