Category Archives: Diocese of Niagara

Diocese of Niagara closes churches for Christmas

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That’s one way to celebrate Christmas.

From here:

Bishop issues new lockdown ministry guidelines for the city’s parishes
POSTED DECEMBER 15, 2020

Effective December 15, Bishop Susan Bell has suspended all permissions to re-open for in-person worship previously granted to parishes within the City of Hamilton in accordance with the Amber Stage of the ecclesiastical province’s re-opening framework.

“While we have continued confidence in our pandemic protocols, this decision is being made as a sacrificial witness to the wider community that now is a time to stay at home for the love of our neighbours and in order to protect the most vulnerable in our communities,” wrote Archdeacon Bill Mous, diocesan executive officer, in an email message to clergy and lay leaders.

Considering that most Diocese of Niagara churches are half empty at the best of times, I doubt that the “wider community” will even notice this “sacrificial witness”.

Bishop Susan Bell has made another sacrifice: she sacrificed common sense, freedom of choice and freedom of religion on the altar of the god of the age by signing a petition to end gay conversion therapy. At least the diocese is consistent: it opposes converting anyone to anything, including Christianity.

Greening Niagara becomes Climate Justice Niagara

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This is a sensible move: the church I attended before the diocese bulldozed it was becoming increasingly green, mainly because there was mold growing in the carpet. The epithet “Climate Justice” is sufficiently stern to discourage unwanted verdant foliage in the dampest of church carpets.

As the document below tells us, sin and separation from God are not the most important issues facing us today, climate change is. The good news is that the mere renaming of “Greening Niagara” to “Climate Justice Niagara” is going to change all that. In fact, as I type this, I feel the cool winds of Justice blowing from the diocesan cathedral in Hamilton. Or maybe winter is coming.

I admit, I did learn one useful thing from the article below: God, on the advice of the Anglican Church of Canada, has abandoned transcendence, left heaven, and now lives on earth with us – “Sadly and tragically our common home with God is in poor health and in steep decline”. A bit like Laben’s household gods Rachel stole and hid in  her camel’s saddle.

From here:

Our common home is also God’s own house, permeated by the Spirit of God from the dawn of creation, where the Son of God pitched his tent in the supreme event of the incarnation. (Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam)

Introducing Climate Justice Niagara (CJN), formerly known as Greening Niagara, with a new and broader focus and mandate about the most important issue facing us  today — climate change! Sadly and tragically our common home with God is in poor health and in steep decline. But God made us stewards and protectors of the earth. The Gospel calls us to challenge and change the unjust structures in society that oppress and marginalize people, including the injustices that contribute to the climate crisis. In that call we find a building block of Niagara’s Mission Action Plan: “Prioritize social justice action with an emphasis on environmental justice.”

Liberals experience epiphany: suddenly decide to take Bible seriously.

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Theological liberals try not to take the bible too seriously, so they don’t particularly care when, as an art project, someone rips it up and plasters satanic images over an image of Christ. No Anglican bishops denounced this; after all, it’s only a book and there is nothing you can do to it that rises to the level of blasphemy.

Except when Donald Trump uses it as a political prop. Then, suddenly, blasphemy!

This was blasphemy. In the most authentic and repugnant sense, it was blasphemy.

If only Susan Bell and Michael Coren would pay attention to what it says instead of who is holding it.

Diocese of Niagara: a decade of lies and hypocrisy

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Like most other dioceses, the Diocese of Niagara is fervently declaring that “the church isn’t the building, it’s the people”. Mainly because everyone is shut out of church buildings and the clergy are terrified that their congregations will never return. More importantly, neither will their money.

Hence, we have Rev Martha Tartanic writing articles like this, to convince us that the diocese cares nothing for buildings; all it cares about is people. Really.

The church is most definitely not closed! The church isn’t our building, and it’s not dependent on our ability to gather in our building. Our church is us. Wherever we are, and no matter what measures are put in place, our identity as church continues. We may just need to find other ways of showing up for each other and connecting as a community to God’s love.

Those of us who were part of the Diocese of Niagara in 2008 when ANiC was formed know that this is hypocritical nonsense. When the diocese liberated St. Hilda’s church building from the people who paid for it, all they cared about was the building; the people were an embarrassing inconvenience who had to be ejected so the place could be bulldozed and the land sold for $2million.

Before that could happen, the diocese had to convince the courts that they had a use for the building. In order to do that, it parachuted in a bogus congregation from neighbouring churches led by, among others, Rev Martha Tartanic.

So we have lies, hypocrisy and, now in 2020, more lies. It’s the buildings that are important to the ACoC, not the people.

The same edition of the diocesan paper has this:

Where my church was. It still stands empty:

Bishop of Niagara has the solution to church decline

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In an open letter to her flock, Susan Bell, bishop of the Diocese of Niagara has set a record for the most italicised words ever to appear in a diocesan epistle. She used those italics to emphasis that the prediction that her denomination will cease to exist by 2040 is a call, not to hand-wringing, but to fighting a “climate crisis”. In doing so we will be “working to establish the kingdom of God”.

The message was delivered to the bishop by a beatific vision of St. Greta of Thunberg, patron saint of the church of the immaculate imminent extinction.

From here:

I want to talk to you about the future; and about some intimations about what we might be being called to – and maybe what we’re being called away from.  All of that is much more interesting than the hand-wringing of recent weeks.

Is this a crisis?  Yes.  A holy one, I believe.  The question is, how do we respond?  Well we are Christ-followers and so I’d humbly suggest that we need to do just that:  follow Jesus and listen for God’s voice to guide us.

I am firmly of the belief that God has gifted us with this time.  I am not being Pollyanna.  I mean this.  We have come to the end of a time in which the Church was a dominant force in our culture.  That is an undisputed fact.  And yet not one that should make us despair.  We’ve had a good run.

But I also believe that we are being called to deep engagement with our faith and simultaneously, and our behavior as a culture.  As an example, take the climate crisis.  What does the mission of God look like in the light of that?  If, as N.T. Wright has recently written, New Testament Christians believed that in Jesus the Christ, God was bringing earth and heaven together, “making creation new, restoring the world from all its pathologies,” then working to establish the kingdom of God is rightly the work of all believers.  This sounds to me like a robust mandate for a theology which will support bold and sustained Christian action to address the climate crisis.

This is a recovery of a strong Christology, which leads to a renewed sense of both Christ’s work among humanity and a template for our own Christian vocations.

Diocese of Niagara sings a new song

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The theme of the 2019 diocesan synod was “Sing A New Song”. Most of the items in the bishop’s charge fell rather short of being either new or worth singing about. For example, ever eager to jump on the latest thinly disguised vacuous Gaia worship bandwagon, the diocese has declared:

a climate emergency and [is] urging advocacy and action to address it

If that doesn’t stimulate your vocal cords, perhaps this will:

expressing a steadfast solidarity with the local and global LGBTQ2S+ community, affirming the prophetic witness of Bishop Michael Bird and Bishop Susan Bell, and receiving the affirmations contained with the “Word to the Church”

Susan Bell doesn’t have much of a prophetic witness act to follow, since Michael Bird’s prophetic abilities didn’t manage rise to the level of dismal failure represented by CNN’s attempt to predict the outcome of the 2016 US election.

I expect what the article meant to say was: “affirming the woke witness of Bishop Michael Bird and Bishop Susan Bell”.

The Diocese of Niagara is keeping Gaia in Christmas

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The Diocese of Niagara is promoting The Order of the Sacred Earth this Christmas. The idea is to take a vow to become “the best lover and defender of Mother Earth that I can be”.

We are assured that this is not a new religion and, since whole exercise exudes the aroma of pagan fertility rites, it’s hard to disagree: it’s an old one that has been regurgitated, then puréed and seasoned by sprinkling it with enough 21st century banalities to make it appealing to the modern palate. Another thing we can agree on is that it has nothing to do with Christianity. Just like the Diocese of Niagara.

From the diocesan web site:

ORDER OF THE SACRED EARTH
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, Jennifer Berit Listug (Monkfish Book Publishing Company 2018)
Fox writes that the world does not need another religion or even a reshuffling of our old religions. He says, “What it needs is a new Order.” He describes this Order as a community and movement of people [no matter what their background] to share a sacred vow to preserve Mother Earth and become the best lovers and defenders they can be on behalf of Mother Earth. A post-denominational Order and a post-religious Order – therefore a Spiritual order!

Diocese of Niagara interfaith service attracts more Muslims than Christians

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A short update on the interfaith service held at All Saints Anglican Church in Erin.

Here is a photo of the service which attracted 30 Muslims and two imams. As far as I can tell, they outnumber the regular parishioners. Finally an answer to the disastrous numerical decline in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Here is the Chrislam version of the Lord’s Prayer which was used:

Priest: And lead us not into temptation

Imam: Show us the straight path. The path of those whom Thou has favoured
Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger. Nor of those who go astray.

Priest: For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

There was one potentially embarrassing moment when someone brought up the awkward topic of “jihad”. The impertinent question was deftly diverted away from the imputation that it might involve lopping off the heads of infidels:

When All Saints parishioner Lynne Dole asked about the word “jihad”, the Imam said that for many in the West this word means war or aggression against “infidels” (those not of the Muslim faith). He explained that the word itself means effort, striving, struggling to become a good Muslim and informing others about their faith.

Anglican priest wants to keep Christ out of Christmas

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Brian Pearson, a retired Anglican priest from the Diocese of Niagara – where else – has chosen this Christmas to expose the fundamental tenets of Christianity for the myths they really are.

Forget the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, angels from the realms of glory, Magi and a miraculous star. All much too literal: Jungian mythical thinking is what we need.

Keep Jung in Christmas!

From here:

Consider this. The Christmas story is not just about Jesus. Yes, it’s a theological construct designed to bolster the Christian claim that Jesus is the Son of God. But it’s also a mythic tale that has something to say about all of us. Or why would we still be telling it, lo, these many years later? It’s not supposed to be just about him!

The hardest sermons I had to preach in my 38 years of ministry as a parish priest were at Christmas and Easter. People wanted to hear the old, old stories, and they didn’t want you messing around with them. It was hard because, as literal stories, they not only beggar our ability to believe, they have almost nothing to say to us. Jesus was born of a virgin. Okay, interesting! Jesus rose from the grave. Well, how nice for him!

These stories only speak to us if we see them as the myths that they truly are, that is, as stories that may not be literally true, but that tell a certain kind of universal truth. Or, as a First Nations saying goes, “It may not have happened just like that, but every word of it is true.”

As to Christmas, what could a virgin birth, an angelic visitation, and a guiding star possibly have to do with us? Unless, that birth is viewed mythically — as hope in a dark world, as each new birth is; as attended to by the angels, as all births are; as changing the world, as every birth does.

Then the story shifts to become a lens through which we see our own miraculous arrival, both literally, as babies, and spiritually, as we become the people God made us to be. I was a sign of hope, when I was born; the angels watched over me, and celebrated; my presence has changed the world, forever. Now that’s something to chew on over Christmas dinner.

The Jungian writer James Hillman says literal thinking is the enemy of mythical thinking. You make a story literal — like, insisting that the virgin birth was historical fact — and you squeeze all the life out of it. But mythical thinking — well, there we are, right in the middle of that story, right down to our soul.

Brian Pearson is a retired Anglican priest (formerly from Niagara).