The Diocese of Niagara still busy deconsecrating and demolishing

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The Diocese of Niagara deconsecrated St. Paul’s in Thorold in June of 2014. Plans to demolish it were thwarted by members of the community who wish to preserve it as an historic building. Representatives from the diocese, holding back the tears, let the community buy it for a nominal fee.

St. Paul'sRead it all here:

On Monday, the Anglican Church of Canada announced that the Synod of the Diocese of Niagara — the governing body of the diocese — has voted to enter into an agreement to sell historic former St. Paul’s Anglican Church and the adjoining cemetery to the new Friends of St. Paul Port Robinson group, which McDonald heads, for a nominal fee.

The announcement means the stately white building no longer faces the wrecking ball and could stand for future generations to enjoy.

McDonald,  who can see the church from her front yard, was convinced by a friend to join a couple of other Port Robinson residents in an impromptu visit to Thorold city council last  September.

The stunned residents had just learned the 170-year-old church, which had been deconsecrated last June, was slated for demolition.

Justin Welby wants businesses to pay more tax

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He is upset that businesses are using foreign countries with more attractive tax laws as a haven for tax saving.

From here:

The Archbishop kept his strongest comments for the role taxes play in ensuring that companies contribute to the societies in which they operate.

“There has always been the principle that you pay the tax where you earn the money,” he told me.

“If you earn the money in a country, the revenue service of that country needs to get a fair share of what you have earned.”

Welby’s point about contributing to the society in which a business operates by paying tax in that country would be more convincing if the Church of England didn’t receive extravagant tax breaks. The church collects £1 billion a year in donations, spends £189 million in salaries, has an investment portfolio worth £5.5 billion and receives £84 million in Gift Aid tax rebates.

The church, of course, is a charity and does not operate for profit – although the £5.5 billion looks suspiciously like profit to me. In spite of its spiritual aspirations – none of which seem particularly in evidence these days – as an organisation, the CofE runs as a business.

It doesn’t help that in 2012 when the government threatened to impose VAT tax on church building renovations, the church pleaded to be exempt from that tax, too.

To be clear: I don’t think churches should have to pay tax. However, since churches are in that privileged position in our society, a church leader who whines about businesses minimising their taxes deserves all the ridicule we can muster: his organisation is a consummate tax dodger.

The Diocese of Niagara sells another church

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The ever shrinking Diocese of Niagara is busy selling properties to keep itself afloat. One of the latest is St. Matthias in Guelph.

Having no building, St. Matthias is a Community on the Move – not necessarily a move towards the Gospel, though. It is non-doctrinal, so if you decide to attend, it’s best not to believe anything in particular. All are welcome, especially those who define themselves through their sexual orientation – as long they don’t believe in anything much other than their sexual orientation.

The residents of the surrounding area are not particularly happy with the six story apartment building that will replace the church. They have even written to the bishop, imploring him to reconsider. I’m sure the $2M that is at stake will not be a factor in the final decision.

From here:

A group of Guelph residents is appealing to the Anglican bishop for the region to reconsider selling a south-side church property for redevelopment into a six-storey, 81-unit mid-rise apartment complex for post-secondary students.

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” vocal opponent Stephen Runge said Monday, noting the proposal by Waterloo-based HIP Developments Inc. requires a conversion zoning bylaw amendment. That’s currently under review by municipal staff, ultimately for recommendation to city council.

Runge is with a neighbourhood organization called The McElderry Group objecting to the proposal, which he said wouldn’t fit well with a neighbourhood of family residences near retail and parkland components close to Kortright and Edinburgh roads, nor meet the provincial goal of infilling.

“It doesn’t help the neighbourhood,” Runge said, adding it’s also such an infilling “intensification corridor.” The province’s Places To Grow goal is to slow urban sprawl with developments within cities.

There’s an opportunity for the Anglican diocese to reconsider the project it has embarked on with Hip since the church closed its doors two years ago, the Guelph group emphasized. It’s asking the diocese not to renew the deal’s terms of sale when they expire in June.

In an open weekend email to Bishop Michael Bird, the group expressed deep disappointment at the decision by the synod of the diocese to negotiate a sale agreement with HIP for 171 Kortright Rd. W., citing viable alternatives that include two offers, though less lucrative, from other local church communities. Runge said the group hasn’t received a response yet, but expects to.

The Anglican Church of Canada: we are the Borg

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I recently received this email to which I think it might be interesting to respond publicly:

You know, the ACoC isn’t some monolithic body, right? There are many evangelicals, conservatives, and traditionalists who’ve stayed within the ACoC. Hell, there’s even folks like myself still being ordained there (by “like myself” I mean, young, straight, married, evangelical). How does that fit within your universe?

Contrary to what my correspondent suspects, I don’t have the luxury of inhabiting my own universe; after all, if this were my universe there would be no ACoC.

I dispute that there are “many evangelicals, conservatives, and traditionalists who’ve stayed within the ACoC”. There are some, obviously, but most have already left; the few that remain tend to protest too much and form small, quivering, impotent huddles like the Anglican Communion Alliance; their stated aim may be to staunch the liberal tide but no-one, least of all the ACoC, takes them seriously. There are even some orthodox bishops for whom I have some sympathy: Bishop Bill Anderson, for example; I interviewed him here and here.

No matter how much conservative holdouts might try to convince themselves otherwise, the ACoC is a monolithic body: it is an organization that forces assimilation into the dominant culture. It pretends to be inclusive but clergy who resist the liberal drift in any serious way are isolated, ostracised and generally not hired in the first place. The main purpose of any who stubbornly remain is to bolster the illusion of the ACoC’s tolerance and inclusion when they are conveniently paraded as tame conservatives at ecclesiastical photo ops.

For many years my own parish maintained a dignified isolation from its home diocese, the Diocese of Niagara. We ignored them and they ignored us – unless they needed more money, of course. Eventually, though, it becomes apparent that this is a dishonest relationship; how can you remain a subsidiary of an organisation with whom you fundamentally disagree? If you wish to retain any integrity, you can’t.

So, to my correspondent: my dear boy, if you, as you say, are “young, straight, married, evangelical”, get out now before you are assimilated.

Diocese of Quebec facing extinction

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According to a Quebec priest, if the diocese does not change it will die; he doesn’t elaborate on whether this will be a good or a bad thing, relying, presumably, on the affable temperament of his readers to lead them to think the latter. I am not affable.

His solutions are to become more ecumenical, bilingual and accepting of all the gay people longing to attend Anglican churches. Rev. Yves Samson is himself gay and seems at a loss to explain why he is already not attracting more sexually like-minded individuals. Surely it can’t be because gay men and women have no more interest in an ecumenical Anglican eco-cult than heterosexuals.

From here:

As Rev. Yves Samson speaks to his congregation in the Quebec town of Trois-Rivières, two things stand out: the bilingualism of the sermon and the dearth of parishioners.

Samson holds nothing back when he says that, without radical change, the Anglican Diocese of Quebec could soon be extinct.

“If we want to keep going on (the old) track we will all die,” Samson says in an interview after his French and English sermon to a room full of near-empty pews in the St. James Anglican Church.

The numbers are interesting:

Some numbers about the Anglican Diocese of Quebec, which serves a large part of the province, including Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières:

  • Priests: 25.

  • Parishes: 52, with 45 per cent running a deficit in 2012.

  • Congregations: 87, with 64 per cent saying they would close or be amalgamated by 2019.

  • Annual income: Below $20,000 for roughly 70 per cent of congregations.

  • Regular services: Forty-two per cent of congregations have fewer than 10 a year.

The Anglican Church of Canada does Interfaith Dialogue

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From here:

Interfaith dialogue
Canada is an increasingly pluralistic country, and more and more Canadians are living, working, and socializing side by side with people of other religious traditions. For Christians, there is a growing need not just for dialogue with people of other faiths, but for genuine relationships with them. Increased awareness of religious plurality, the potential role of religion in conflict, and the growing place of religion in public life all present urgent challenges that require greater understanding and cooperation among people of diverse faiths.

The Anglican Church of Canada pursues formal dialogue with people of other faiths together with the other member churches of the Canadian Council of Churches.

I would like to commend the ACoC on this initiative. In fact, Interfaith Dialogue is so important, I feel compelled to make a contribution. So here goes:

Islam is wrong.

In defence of selfies

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When taking photographs on my travels, I am inevitably confronted with people obscuring famous landmarks by standing in front of them taking selfies. They appear to suffer from the conceit that a grinning visage is of more interest than a 1000 year old cathedral. Consequently, I have developed an intense dislike of selfies. Until now, that is; a Muslim cleric wants to ban selfies. What more incentive do we need to start taking them?

From here:

A Muslim cleric has drawn ire after saying “stop, let me ban selfies.”

Indonesian cleric Felix Siauw took to Twitter to call selfies “shameless” and “unpure”.

“These days many Muslim women take selfies without shame. There are usually nine frames in one photo with facial poses that are just – My Goodness – where’s the purity in women?” he said.

Justin Welby the socialist

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From here:

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby opened the discussion, which was part of the Trinity’s Institute’s conference on Creating Common Good: A Practical Conference on Economic Inequality, Jan. 22 to 25. Examining scriptures from both the New and Old Testaments, he said, “There is an ambivalence, an acceptance of wealth as blessing and yet a hesitation, a doubt, a fear about its consequences.”

Of course, examples of people who have created great wealth and used it for the common good, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, spring to mind and are reason to give thanks, he acknowledged. There is no biblical injunction against all personal wealth but, he said, there is an injunction against “the systematic and indefinite accumulation of grossly unequal [wealth in] societies.”  That, he said, “always leads to abuse, even if every wealthy person is generous, because the asymmetries of power means that wealth allocation becomes a matter of paternalism not a basic issue of justice.”

There has never been – nor, I contend will there ever be – a society in which there is not an allocation of grossly unequal wealth. The difference between capitalist inequality, an inequality from which, as a salaried archbishop Welby derives considerable benefit, and socialist inequality is that the poor in capitalist countries tend to be far better off than the poor in socialist countries.

As Winston Churchill observed, the only equality that socialism manages to spread is equal misery – apart from the ruling elite, of course, who appropriate grossly unequal wealth.

I can’t help wondering if Welby believes his own Gospel – the one where the poor are blessed and a camel going through the eye of a needle is easier than a rich person going to heaven. In Welby’s red Christianity, the rich young ruler would not be invited to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor: his wealth would have already been confiscated by the state, depriving him of the choice. But that’s what socialism is all about: removing choice.

Woman wants to marry her father

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From here:

Yes. I want it to represent our uniqueness, so we aren’t doing a white wedding. The color scheme is black and purple, and we are both going to wear Converse tennis shoes. He’s wearing jeans and a nice dress shirt. He says he’s not wearing a bow tie, but it’s my wedding and I am saying that he is. My best friend will be my maid of honor and she’ll be dressed in purple. My grandmother and grandfather — my fiancé’s parents — are going to attend and my grandpa will give me away. The tables will have bouquets of trees without leaves to represent our marriage, which will be like a growing tree. My dress will be black.

Having already redefined marriage to mean almost anything – and consequently, almost nothing – how could the Anglican church turn this father daughter couple down? Gene Robinson could come out of retirement and preside at the ceremony. His purple shirt would match the bridesmaid’s: what could be more apt?

Freedom of speech according to Bishop Michael Ingham

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From here:

If religious criticism is intended deliberately to offend, to vilify or to slander, it is not acceptable and I would be outraged. And not just for my own religious faith, but also for others’. I am not against satire. I am against hatred. If satire is intended respectfully to challenge or question a fundamental belief, or to expose the hypocrisy of the institution or its leaders, it is perfectly okay.

There is no unlimited right to freedom of speech and no absolute right to freedom. To exist, freedom needs self-imposed restraints, and democracy requires a consensus based on mutual respect. What we have in the Paris cartoons is a misuse of freedom…it is secular fundamentalism that insists on the right to cause offence in the name of freedom. Religious satire is not off-limits when it serves the public good by exposing hypocrisy and causing us to live up to our ideals in a better way, but when its purpose is deliberately to offend, how is that different from hatred?

Michael Ingham is in favour of satire and freedom of expression provided it is respectful and not offensive, thereby rendering it not free and not satirical. Additionally, satire has to serve the public good. Who decides this? In the absence of an ecclesiarchy, the state; welcome back to the Soviet Union.

In a similar vein, the imam pundit notes:

In a free society, people have the right to offend, but people do not have the right to incite hatred or to stereotype an entire community. When you depict Mohamed as a terrorist, 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide are considered terrorists, when 99.9 per cent of them are peaceful. We must use freedom of speech with responsibility. That is the price of keeping a civil society.

If the imam is correct and 99.9% of Muslims are peaceful (I have a suspicion that figure is too high), we are left with 1.6 million who are not only not peaceful but, since the context is terrorism, are terrorists; I don’t find that particularly reassuring.