St. Aidan’s Windsor: Supreme Court denies Leave to Appeal

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St. Aidan’s Windsor has been in a dispute with the Diocese of Huron over the ownership of the church building and a bequeathment.  On 4 September 2013, the Court of Appeal, upheld the conclusions of the trial court judge, Justice Little. In addition, the Diocese of Huron was awarded partial costs of $100,000.

St. Aidan’s applied for Leave to Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada and, as I suspected would happen, it has been denied.

From the ANiC newsletter:

 St Aidan’s rector, Canon Tom Carman writes, “Yes, sadly the Supreme Court has decided not to grant us leave to appeal.  It’s not really surprising – not from a human standpoint – but we were hoping for a miracle.  Sometimes, though, God simply calls us to bear reproach for his name’s sake.  And we know that in the end our reward is with Him and in Him.  He will see us through this. Please do continue to keep us in your prayers.”

Welby and Hiltz discuss sexuality and reconciliation

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Read it all here:

When Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby met with the primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, he was “very interested” in the work of the Anglican Church of Canada’s commission on the marriage canon because of the reality that the Church of England will have to wrestle with the issue of same-sex marriage following its legislation in the U.K.

“Notwithstanding the declared position of the Church of England at this moment, he [Welby] is very conscious, of course, that there’s going to be a fair amount of pressure from within the Church of England to at least have some discussion around that [same-sex marriage],” said Hiltz in an interview with the Anglican Journal. “He hoped that we would stay in touch over the work of the commission, [because] inside the Church of England, they will need to have the same conversation.”

Here we have a rare example of a clear statement by an Archbishop of Canterbury. The Church of England will be following in the Anglican Church of Canada’s footsteps: conversations about same-sex blessings; decline in attendance; dioceses performing same-sex blessings; further decline in attendance; conversations about same-sex marriage; full steam ahead to extinction:

During their two-hour meeting April 8, Hiltz said Welby was interested in how the church has dealt with the conflict over human sexuality, in particular, how the 2010 General Synod in Halifax dealt with the issue in a non-parliamentary manner and how there has been “continuing conversation” about the matter. Hiltz quoted Welby as having said, “You’re actually on the frontline of where we’re going to be eventually. You’ve been on a journey; it hasn’t been an easy [one]— it has been conflicted at times, but you stuck with it.”

The Anglican Church of Canada has indeed been on the frontline of dealing with “the conflict over human sexuality”: it sues those who refuse to go along with it. I suppose this is “interesting”; the fact that Welby believes that that is where the CofE is “going to be eventually” should make orthodox CofE clergy very nervous.

Hiltz said he informed Welby about the Canadian church’s long history of “bending over backwards to hold people in dialogue, to create provisions for everybody to stay in the fold…”

Considering the number of defections from the ACoC to ANiC, these provisions have been spectacularly ineffective.

Overall, Hiltz described Welby’s visit as “good,” saying that he thought it provided the Archbishop of Canterbury “a sense of the commitment of the Canadian church to the Communion.”

Not sufficiently committed to pay any attention whatsoever to Provinces that are opposed to same-sex blessings.

Hiltz said that the dinner he hosted for Welby was an opportunity for him to meet “a host of people from Canada who are so deeply committed to the various works of the Anglican Communion…to get a sense [that they] have a broad, global view of the church.”

To invite ANiC church leaders would have been a diversity too far, of course.

 “One of the blessings of the visit is that he has heard things about all of us and says we’re very diverse, even within our church…,” said Hiltz. “He was leaving us knowing of our deep commitment to preserving the unity of the church as best we can, being prophetic as best we can, being committed to the life and witness of the Communion.”

To put it more plainly: the Anglican Church of Canada continues on a course of theological liberalism; it has no inclination to change direction but is willing to offer the  concession of a dense smoke screen designed to lure the unwary into believing that it cares about what those who disagree think.

Justin Welby interviewed by the Anglican Journal

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The whole interview is here. It is titled: ”Welby explains gays and violence in Africa remarks” because, as you can imagine, liberals have been wailing and gnashing their molars at Welby’s saying that gay marriage in the West will lead to more murders in Africa. Many are grasping at tenuous explanations to excuse such a calamitous lapse from diversity groupthink.

The Anglican Journal tries to come to the rescue:

Q: Were you in fact blaming the death of Christians in parts of Africa on the acceptance of gay marriage in America?

This encourages Welby into Rowanesque waffling:

A: What I was saying is that when we take actions in one part of the church, particularly actions that are controversial, that they are heard and felt not only in that part of the church but around the world…And, this is not mere consequentialism; I’m not saying that because there will be consequences to taking action, that we shouldn’t take action.

So even though there are “consequences” – like murder – to our actions, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take them. Or does it? I really have no idea:

What I’m saying is that love for our neighbour, love for one another, compels us to consider carefully how that love is expressed, both in our own context and globally. We never speak the essential point that, as a church, we never speak only in our local situation. Our voice carries around the world. Now that will be more true in some places than in others. It depends on your links. We need to learn to live as a global church in a local context and never to imagine that we’re just a local church. There is no such thing.

Now for the hard question:

Q: In 2016, the church’s General Synod will be presented with a resolution changing the marriage canon to allow same-sex marriage. Is this a cause for concern?

A: That’s a really tough question. Well, it’s got to be a cause for concern because this is a particularly tough issue to deal with…And, I hope that two or three things happen: I hope that the church, in its deliberations, is drawing on the wealth of its contribution to the Anglican Communion and the worldwide church, to recognize…the way it works and how it thinks, to recognize the importance of its links. And that, in its deliberations, it is consciously listening to the whole range of issues that are of concern in this issue. We need to be thinking; we need to be listening to the LGBT voices and to discern what they’re really saying because you can’t talk about a single voice anymore than you can with any other group. There needs to be listening to Christians from around the world; there needs to be listening to ecumenical partners, to interfaith partners. There needs to be a commitment to truth in love and there needs to be a commitment to being able to disagree in a way that demonstrates that those involved in the discussions love one another as Christ loves us. That’s the biggest challenge, that in what we do, we demonstrate that love for Christ in one another.

It’s easy to tell that the answer is prating twaddle: it contains “listening” four times. My favourite is: “consciously listening”; can we unconsciously listen? I suppose so: in institutional Indabas. Although we must listen to “LGBT voices”, when it comes to listening to anyone who lives trying to resist same-sex attraction it will, as usual, be a case of the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear.

Anglican Journal: Bishop settles lawsuit with blogger

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Read it all here:

The settlement also stipulated that Jenkins would pay “a majority of the legal costs involved, remove the Bishop from his posts, and agree not to publish any similar posts about the Bishop in the future,” according to a release issued by the diocese of Niagara. In a related post on Anglican Samizdat, Jenkins noted that he had agreed to pay $18,000 toward legal costs, which Bird’s lawyer had stated were $24,000. Jenkins did not pay damages, which were listed as $400,000 in the original claim filed in February 2013.

Jenkins’s statement of defence had denied that his postings were libelous or defamatory. It asserted that he was exercising his freedom of religion and expression and that his comments were “…intended to be humourous and make use of satire, sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, wit, ‘send up’ and other types of humour to make a point other than what one would take literally from the comments. In those cases, no reasonable viewer or reader of the blog postings would be expected to believe that the statements are true…”

Hamilton Spectator: Niagara Bishop to get public apology from blogger

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Read it all here:

B821577884Z.1_20140407132747_000_G4417DAR2.2_ContentThe legal squabble between Niagara Bishop Michael Bird and an Oakville blogger who criticized him is over.

The Diocese of Niagara issued a press release Monday saying the pair has reached a settlement.

The church said blogger David Jenkins offered an apology to Bird for “any suffering he has experienced as a result of blog postings” on Jenkins’ Anglican Samizdat blog.

Happy birthday, System 360

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From here:

The IBM mainframe is celebrating its 50th anniversary.IBM360-40-bw

The first System 360 mainframe was unveiled on 7 April 1964 and its arrival marked a break with all general purpose computers that came before.

The machines made it possible to upgrade the processors but still keep using the same code and peripherals from earlier models.

I started working on a 360 model 40 two years after its introduction in 1966; I probably would have retired by now if someone hadn’t sued me but, alas, I toil on. What is extraordinary is that the z series mainframes that I now work on have essentially the same instruction set – admittedly with embellishments – as the antique 360. Writing a mainframe assembler program today isn’t too different from when I started in 1966.

The illustration above is a 360 model 40. The one I programmed had, as I recall, 8k of core memory (the early version of RAM: little magnetic rings threaded on wires). The operating system was 8k BOS, a non-multitasking OS which was not even able to spool print output. It was not much later that we upgraded to a luxuriant 16k of core and DOS which could not only spool print but had foreground and background jobs: a very primitive form of multi-tasking.

Here is a front panel of a 360/40. The big red knob disconnected power from everything; we never touched that. The lights showed actual bit values in core and the switches allowed us to dynamically change bits if things were not running as they should.

IBM 360-40The 2311disk drives we used held 7.25 megabytes; they were big boxes that shook when in use and, when broken, would occasionally leak hydraulic oil onto the floor. I miss those days.

IBM_2311disk

Then there were the punched cards whose inconvenience was only slightly mitigated by the pool of girls operating the card punches.

punch_card_do_1

Anglican Church of Canada marriage canon commission commences “listening”

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Not necessarily hearing, though.

From here:

marriagecanoncommissionIn a few weeks, the Anglican Church of Canada’s commission on the marriage canon will invite Anglicans in Canada and across the Communion, as well church ecumenical partners, to offer their views about changing the marriage canon (church law) to allow same-sex marriage.

“…One of the things the commission wants to make clear is that everyone [in the commission] has an open mind,” said its chair, Canon Robert Falby, in an interview.

What this really means, of course, is that the commission will be working hard – very hard; it is their main task – to present the illusion of having open minds. After all the talking, alleged listening, indabas and theological papers that we have already been subjected to, any member of the clergy who has not yet made up and closed his mind on the issue has been living in a cave in Afghanistan.

Asked whether the commission reflects the “theological diversity” that the primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, had promised, Nicholls said, “I think the group reflects the ability to hear the theological diversity of the church.” She added that each member has demonstrated “an ability to hear, to listen, to reflect from all perspectives.”

To confirm my suspicion that the outcome is a forgone conclusion, Bishop William Anderson had this to say in a comment:

How reassuring that the promise of theological diversity has been replaced by the “ability to hear the theological diversity of the Church”. What this really means is that they will go through the motions of listening, and then present their own already expressed beliefs as representing a ‘fair’ outcome.
The Primate and the members of this panel should be ashamed for having so blatantly perverted a process that was intended to be balanced. All should be ashamed for being involved in this travesty.

Justin Welby wobbles on homosexuality question

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Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe questions the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Q: “is homosexuality wrong.”

A: “I am not going to answer that straightforwardly because it’s a complex question.”

He goes on to say: “my position is that the the historic position of the church is that sexual relations should be within marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman”. Of course, it’s an unarguable fact that the historic position of the church is that  sexual relations should be within marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman; Welby could scarcely say his position is that that is not the church’s historic position. What Welby does not say is: “my position is the same as the the historic position of the church.” Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but I suspect not.

Admittedly, Wobbling Welby isn’t as incoherent as Rambling Rowan but he still falls very short of the kind of clarity we see from other parts of the Anglican Communion.