Category Archives: Diocese of Toronto

Toronto bishop reckons Christianity and Islam share “core values”

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From here (page 4):

Many readers of this paper are familiar with the core values of Judaism and Christianity. It is important to know that Islam shares many of those core values as well.

Let’s see, the “core values” of Christianity would include the divinity of Jesus, his resurrection, his virgin birth, his atoning for man’s sin though dying on a cross, his being the only way to God Father, his coming again; not to mention the Trinity, the Eucharist and the Church as the Bride of Christ. How many of these core values does Islam share? None.

A core value that provoked Bishop Peter Fenty into making the above silly statement was:

Adherents to Judaism, Christianity and Islam believe in the sacredness of life.

Regrettably, not even that is  a core value for North American Anglicanism: neither the ACoC nor TEC will unequivocally condemn abortion so, clearly, life is not sacred to them at all.

To explain ISIS and what is happening in Iraq, the bishop goes on to quote Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the fellow who, to promote harmony, wanted to build a mosque in the ashes of the World Trade Centre:

We may be decades away from achieving a true Islamic state in Iraq and Syria. The region must heal from more than a century of colonial domination, Cold War conflict, despotic regimes, and economic stagnation that has left so much of the population grasping for anything to assert their power and address political grievances.

As you can see, the problem lies anywhere but with Islam.

Order of the Diocese of Toronto begins as it probably means to go on

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QueenChrisAmong the first recipients of the Order of the Diocese of Toronto is Chris Ambidge, a leader in Integrity and a self-described lesbigay Anglican.

The award is supposed to honour “laypeople who make outstanding contributions to the diocese” and, in Ambidge’s case, the outstanding contribution has been to encourage the Anglican Church of Canada in its decision to allow any diocese that cares to to bless same-sex civil marriages. And to wear a fetching tiara.

From here:

The Order of the Diocese of Toronto, created to honour laypeople who make outstanding contributions to the diocese, was awarded for the first time on New Years’ Day at St. James’ Cathedral in Toronto.

A list of 48 recipients-nominated by their parishes or Archbishop Johnson-was published on the Diocese of Toronto website just before Christmas. Those named to the Order were honoured before a full house at the cathedral during the New Year’s choral evensong, receiving a medallion and a pin from the archbishop.

Among the first recipients of the Order were Chris Ambidge (involved in leadership of Integrity Canada),  members of General Synod Libby Salter and Peter Tavell, Elizabeth Loweth (active in leadership of the International Anglican Women’s Network), Dorothy Peers, and General Synod’s coordinator of Together in Mission Suzanne Lawson.

Diocese of Toronto forbids Anglican services in a non-denominational church

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The reason given by Bishop Colin Johnson is that the building is “no longer under Anglican authority”. When unfettered by Anglican authority who knows what antics priests might get up to? If things got really out of hand one of them might inadvertently preach the gospel.

If Colin Johnson really wants to keep people out, he should take a tip from the Diocese of Niagara’s Bishop Michael Bird and block the entrance with concrete. Like this:

From here:

The Anglican Diocese of Toronto has forbidden its ministers and even laypersons from conducting services in a quaint non-denominational church in the historic hamlet of Irondale in the Haliburton Highlands.

The building used to belong to the diocese. After a two-year legal challenge, the Bark Lake Aboriginal Tribe this past summer purchased the church from the Anglican diocese for $70,000. The frame church, built by pioneer Charles Pusey in 1887, was sold to the diocese in 1901 for $50.

When the building reopened a month ago as the Irondale Community Church, the first service was Anglican, the second Lutheran. But when retired Anglican minister Arnold Hancock wanted to conduct the Thanksgiving Day weekend service, Archbishop Colin Johnson of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto sent out a cease-and-desist order far and wide.

The folks in Irondale, about 100 kilometres north of Peterborough, are now preparing for a fight. Even devout Anglicans are accusing the church of being unchristian.

“This has set everybody back,” George Simmons, whose family’s involvement in the church goes back generations, told the Toronto Star.

“I think the majority of Anglicans would be disgraced that they wouldn’t allow an Anglican minister (to conduct a service) for people who have attended that church for 50 years,” he said.

“He covered the whole area here. He notified every Anglican layperson and minister that they weren’t allowed to lead a service in the church,” Simmons added.

Johnson could not be reached directly by the Toronto Star but the Diocese of Toronto issued a statement.

“Due to dwindling numbers, the former Anglican church of St. John’s, Irondale, was closed and deconsecrated in 2010 and sold to private citizens for community use in 2012,” stated Stuart Mann, its director of communications. “The purchasers continue to hold services in the church, which is entirely appropriate. However, Anglican clergy are not permitted to conduct services at St. John’s as it is no longer under Anglican authority. Anglican clergy are only permitted to function in Anglican ministries.”

h/t AEC blog

Diocese of Toronto in Gay Pride Parade

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Here is Rev. Andrea Budgey sprinkling onlookers from her aspergillum. As Chris Ambidge (the one in the tiara) declared: “Who woulda thought evangelism could be this much fun?”

 

What continues to puzzle me is why a church thinks its participation in an exhibition of debauchery makes it anything other than a preposterous laughing stock.

You can see the whole sorry spectacle here.

Anglicans in the bar

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Sorry, I meant indaba. Rowan Williams introduced indaba groups into Lambeth 2008. Indaba purports to be “a gathering for purposeful discussion”. What it is when practised by Anglicans is a gathering aimed at building relationships, particularly with those with whom one disagrees. In order to do this, you have, at all costs, to avoid “purposeful discussion” for fear of damaging the relationship.

Consequently, at Lambeth 2008, no-one really argued, nothing was decided and nothing was achieved. Moreover, the relationships that emerged were the emasculated affectations that you would expect from a gathering of people who lack the conviction that if a proposition is true, its negation must be false.

The Diocese of Toronto, undeterred by the fact that they don’t work, is still using indaba groups:

Anglicans from the Diocese of Toronto who participated in the Anglican Communion’s one-year indaba process believe it can have a transforming effect upon the church if it is used more broadly.

[….]

The Diocese of Toronto participated with Jamaica and Hong Kong in three eight-day meetings that took place in Toronto in May, 2011, Hong Kong last September and Jamaica this February. There were three topics for discussion: social justice and advocacy, youth alienation and homosexuality. An important part of the meetings was immersion in the life of the host diocese, so that participants could understand the context for decision-making.

[….]

Mr. Graves notes that it’s tempting when people think differently from the way we do to let them go their own way. When he has thoughts like that, he looks at a photograph in his office that was taken of all the indaba participants in Hong Kong.

“The easy answer is to have a divorce,” he says. “But when you’ve built relationships with people, that’s not so easy. I look at those people and ask, ‘Can I do without that person in my life?’ and I don’t believe I can.”

 

 

Yet more Prophetic Social Justice Making

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This time from the Diocese of Toronto which is busy “consolidating” churches and wants to turf a daycare out of one of them so it can be sold “tenant-free”.

It sounds like the action of a profiteering capitalist landlord to me. Where are those occupiers when you really need them.

From here:

In its eagerness to combine four south Scarborough churches into one, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto is inconveniencing another local institution, a daycare.

That, at least, is how employees and parents with children at St. Crispin’s in Cliffside see it.

Church services at the red brick building on Craiglee Drive ceased this fall, and in July a letter informed the non-profit, parent-run daycare it would have to leave by Dec. 31.

Its management found a new home for the children at Highway Gospel Church on Midland Avenue, but municipal permits are taking longer than expected.

Several times, board members have asked the diocese for another month.

“They adamantly said no,” daycare supervisor Debbie Humphreys said this week, “because they want to sell this place tenant-free.”

The parents are aware an offer has been made for the property of the former St. Crispin’s.

[….]

“I’m surprised they would rather have it vacant than help us out,” said Julie Leiper, a board member who added parents have been told the daycare, which has seven employees, will temporarily close Jan. 1 and be “kind of homeless for a while.”

Lesbian, pro-abortion ex-nun ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada

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From here:

For over three decades Joanna Manning, a former nun turned lesbian feminist pro-abortion activist, plagued faithful Catholics, causing scandal, embarrassment and much frustration.  On November 27 Manning was made a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, a Church which has openly accepted homosexuality and abortion.

This is a rare catch for the Diocese of Toronto which obviously searched high and low to find  someone with such fitting qualifications.

The Ten Commandments: please attempt five

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The editor of the Diocese of Toronto’s paper, Stuart Mann, thinks that the Ten Commandments are too judgemental: they are not there to keep us on the “straight and narrow” but are there to make us “free.’

The problem is, if God is not “judgemental”, if he doesn’t pass judgement on evil and sin, then there was no reason for Jesus to take our punishment by dying a horrible death on the cross. There is no reason to believe that we need Jesus in order to be saved, no reason to call ourselves Christians and no reason to attend a Christian church.

If a church teaches this, then people will stop attending and the church will die. And that is what is happening to the Anglican Church of Canada.

From here (page 5):

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Honour your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness.

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, your neighbour’s wife or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

When I was younger, I would have recoiled at such a passage. It seems so harsh and judgemental, like a parent scolding a child. But I’m beginning to look at it in a different way. Rather than keeping his people on the straight and narrow, perhaps God is telling them how to be free.

When you add up all the complications that arise from some of the things God is warning us about—greed, envy, false gods, lust, lying— is it any wonder people are stressed out these days? Even if we kept half of God’s commandments, we would lead simpler—and happier— lives. It would free us up to think and dream and enjoy each other’s company—in short, to be closer to God.

The 10 commandments have been much maligned and ridiculed over the years, but there is great wisdom in them. Can we keep some of those commandments?

I think we can. You could probably cross a few off the list right now.

The Diocese of Toronto is not just about composting

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I thought it was, but apparently, it isn’t. As Bishop Colin Johnson tells us in this address to synod, it’s also about things like Occupy Toronto slogans and living simply.

This is not just about recycling or composting, although that might be a good start for some people. Most of us need to learn to live simply, so that others can simply live. The Occupy movement’s slogan, I think, might be more useful: “A few might be guilty, but all of us are responsible.” And so we spend time at this synod considering our environment, our place in it, our responsibility, how it is part of God’s mission.

Now he has inspired us with his address, I would like to encourage Bishop Colin to simplify his life by moving into a one room tent in St. James’ park where he will be able to continue his “long-standing work of advocacy and direct service regarding poverty, [and] homelessness” unfettered by the constraints of ecclesiastical bureaucracy.

Bishop Colin astutely notes that Occupy Toronto has managed to achieve something that has eluded the Diocese of Toronto for decades. It has:

touched something real and deep in the psyche of our world today, an anxiety and a disenfranchisement and a sense of huge loss, but what they also touched was really an active hope. That the world as it is, is not the world as it should be. One of the slogans that I saw at one of the tents really struck me. It said: “As you look around the world, does it feel right?”

The slogan was quite true, of course, although it would have been less so had the occupiers made more use of the toilets instead of the grass.

Diocese of Toronto: guess what the editor of its newspaper hasn’t read

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Those who guessed James Joyce’s Ulysses are probably correct, but the more relevant answer is…… The Bible.

I was delighted to discover that, since it explains much of what appears in the rag.

But, fear not! This summer, Stuart Mann decided to read all the New Testament; the newspaper is in danger of becoming unrecognisable.

From here (page 5):

This summer I decided to read the New Testament. I’ve read the gospels and Acts before but never Paul’s letters and the other epistles. This time would be different, I told myself. I would read it all the way through.

I read and pondered the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Then I decided to take a break. I knew Paul’s letters were coming up and I just couldn’t face them. Something about his letter to the Romans had always stopped me from reading further.