Theism in the Church of England

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A “theic” is someone who is addicted to the immoderate use of tea; a tea-drunkard.

Thus, as this guide to tea drinkers’ disease warns:

The predominance of nervous symptoms is a characteristic of theism; general excitation of the functions of the nervous system may be observed; or the weakness may be noted more especially in the brain as distinguished form the spinal cord.

This, of course, explains the present plight of the Church of England: all the vicars are drowning in tea and, with their weakened brains, have abandoned one theism for another.

Mommy for Pope

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I’ve watched this three times. The first time I was 3/4 of the way through before I realised that it isn’t a parody.

Then I doubted myself and watched again while telling myself: it has to be a parody. Until the 1/2 way mark this time – when the gnawing realisation gripped me once more: these people are serious.

So after a stiff drink, I cleaned my glasses, girded my loins, recalibrated my NEC Multisync 3090WQXi monitor with an X-Rite MDSVSensor wide-gamut display calibrator and – it still looks like a parody.

See what you think about this definitive argument in favour of lady priests in the Roman Catholic Church:

Impeccable timing from the Anglican Church of Canada

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Fred Hiltz is busy trying to organise a prayer vigil for Theresa Spence’s meeting with Stephen Harper. It includes the inevitable attempt to cajole God with native voodoo: there are prayers “based on the colours of the medicine wheel”.

Unfortunately, Theresa Spence has decided not to attend. Apparently it’s because the Governor General, David Johnston, won’t be there – not just spite to make Fred Hiltz look foolish.

Spence has already written to Buckingham Palace and I imagine that, if David Johnston does buckle to pressure, Spence will want the Queen there too – I’m sure the Anglican Church of Canada can supply one if ER can’t make it.

Fred will, no doubt, be offering fervent thanks to Grandmother Moon if the meeting actually happens and Spence’s imminent starvation is averted.

From here:

Ali Symons, Anglican Church of Canada January 09, 2013.
Archbishop Fred Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald are calling for a prayer vigil in support of the meeting of national Indigenous leaders with Prime Minister Stephen Harper Jan. 11.

[….]

Prayer resources for a vigil are also available online, including Honouring the Four Directions, the Great Thanksgiving of the Haudenosaunee, and the Athabascan Litany.

 

Anglicans and Lutherans join forces to produce a report

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From here:

For this purpose, the report identifies a number of recommendations for concrete diaconal action at local, regional or global level. These include ways in which the churches could do more together at all levels for disaster relief, in advocating on issues relating to climate change, illegitimate debt, HIV and AIDS and other pressing social concerns.

The articles fails to make any mention of God, Jesus, evangelism or the Christian hope in the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

Although I’m sure the actual report is full of profound insights into things transcendent, the ACNS prefers to concentrate on the temporal: disaster relief – a noble campaign to resuscitate Western Anglicanism; illegitimate debt – the Anglican Church of Canada’s 2013 budget; climate change – the fear that the terrestrial dwelling of North American clerics could become as hot as their eternal resting place; and HIV/AIDS, – an attempt to protract the earthly sojourn of Canadian Anglican clergy, who are now almost all gay.

KAIROS is promoting a “solidarity fast” with Theresa Spence

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KAIROS, the hard-left communist wing of the Anglican Church of Canada, is suggesting a “solidarity fast” with Theresa Spence on January 11th.

KAIROS warns that only those whose health is up to it should follow Spence’s dietary regimen: those who tend towards corpulence should stick to their regular calorific intake to avoid weight gain.

From here:

On Friday, January 4, the Prime Minister announced that he would meet with First Nations leaders on January 11, the one month anniversary of Chief Theresa Spence’s fast to bring attention to the treaty relationship between First Nations and Canada. KAIROS welcomes this meeting as a response to the Chief’s call, and as she prepares for the meeting, we call on our network to join in a Solidarity Fast with Chief Spence on Friday, January 11.

Homosexual priests advised to lie about their celibacy

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It hasn’t taken long for liberal Anglican cleric, Giles Fraser to point out the inevitable result of the Church of England’s ruling that it will appoint celibate homosexual bishops even if they are in civil partnerships. The candidates will lie about their sex lives. Fraser takes it one step further: homosexual candidates have a moral obligation to lie about their sex lives – to lie for Jesus.

From here:

Sometimes we lie for self-advancement. Morally, it’s a no-brainer that this is wrong. But at other times, we lie because we don’t trust another with the truth. Because we have good reason to believe that they will use it to hurt us or others. In the case of sexually active gay priests and bishops, this fear is wholly justified. It is perfectly proper that ordinarily people should maintain a strong presumption in favour of truth telling. But the situation in which gay people in the church find themselves is far from ordinary. Physical intimacy is a moral good, the very incarnation of love. Those who enforce celibacy on the basis of sexuality are maintaining a system of oppression that brings misery and loneliness to many.

I believe all Christians have a moral duty to resist this cruelty. Lying to the church authorities, in these conditions, is a bit like disobeying an unjust order. It’s a form of non-violent resistance.

There is little doubt that the Church of England is following the path forged by North American Anglicanism: it is attracting an increasing number of homosexual clergy, clergy who have no intention of being celibate. As Fraser goes on to note:

Years ago, a gay priest friend of mine, just coming out, asked me if I’d go along with him to a gay club in Birmingham. He didn’t want to go on his own. But he needn’t have worried. There were loads of priests in the club.

One of the very worst aspects of the Anglican homosexual clergy debacle is the rabid reaction they experience when their self-inflated eligibility for career advancement is thwarted.

Here, the former bishop of Oxford wails about the “terrible terrible trauma” of not making bishop, the anguish of which makes the martyrdom, torture and persecution of myriads of Christians living in hostile lands pale to insignificance.

Speaking about nominating his friend Dr John for bishop, he said: “After initially accepting that nomination, the archbishop was put under from huge pressure from around the Anglican communion and eventually Jeffrey John felt, for the good of the church as a whole, he ought to step down and not accept the position, which was a terrible, terrible trauma for him and for all of us involved.”

Homosexual Western clergy should stop behaving like teenage girls whose feelings have been hurt, grow up, muster a smidgen of humility and do the job they claim God has called them to do. Or they should quit and find a job where they don’t have to lie about their sex lives.

Another Canadian Anglican diocese starts same sex blessings

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The Diocese of B.C.:

In 2010 I was asked by Synod to implement the blessing of same sex unions in the Diocese at
a time that I thought to be appropriate. I was asked to issue guidelines and a rite to be used.

Attached below are the Guidelines for the Blessing of Same Sex Unions in the Diocese
of British Columbia.  I am authorizing the blessing rite of the Diocese of New Westminster for
use in this Diocese, not a specific British Columbia rite.

As every other Canadian Anglican bishop who has authorised same-sex blessing rites, Bishop James Cowan is careful to call it a blessing rite, not a marriage.

Similarly, here, on page 2, the Diocese of Huron’s Keith Nethery bemoans the fact that journalists are unable to make the distinction between blessing a married homosexual couple and actually marrying them:

As an aside I can be all but 100 per cent certain that there isn’t a main stream reporter any where capable of understanding the difference between a Blessing and a Marriage – trust me I have tried to explain it to them.

Nethery doesn’t give journalists the credit they deserve for seeing through the mincing sophistry in which the Anglican Church Canada conceals its true motives, the better to befuddle the unwary. After all, homosexual marriage is legal in Canada and the ACoC clearly believes such “marriages” are a legitimate expression of marriage; if they didn’t, they could hardly bless them. So why doesn’t the Anglican Church of Canada stop the hypocritical harping on the fragile distinction between blessing something that has already been done and actually doing it?

Because that’s how pusillanimous Anglican clergy operate. When a rector wants to move a piano from one side of the church to the other, he moves it one inch per week; it takes a year to reach the other side but no-one notices.

Church of England to allow homosexual bishops

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Clergy in celibate same-sex civil partnerships can become bishops under the new rules. I’m not sure what the point of a celibate civil partnership is or whether the sustained maintaining of such a thing is believable – but that is the latest naive or surreptitiously scheming, depending on one’s perspective, CofE edict on how to accommodate homosexual bishops. The Dean of St Albans, Dr Jeffrey John, falls into this category and was denied his appointment as bishop last year; I suppose he will have another go this year.

It’s hard not to see this as a next step to the position reached in North America: clergy at every level vigorously engaged in homosexual activity. Including bishops.

From the BBC:

The announcement, from the Church’s House of Bishops, would allow clergy in civil partnerships to become bishops if they promised to be celibate.

Conservative evangelical Anglicans say they will fiercely resist the development in the synod.

The issue has split the church since 2003 amid a row over gay cleric Jeffrey John becoming Bishop of Reading.

Mr John, now Dean of St Albans, was forced to step down from the role after protests from traditionalists.

He was also a candidate for Bishop of Southwark in 2010 but was rejected. Evidence emerged that this was because of his sexual orientation.

Evangelicals have warned they would be willing to bring in bishops from overseas to avoid serving under a gay bishop.

The Church has already agreed to allow people in civil partnerships to become clergy, provided they promised they would remain celibate, and repent for active homosexuality in the past.

Those conditions are now to be extended to clergy becoming bishops.

Baby in utero parties now in vogue

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article-2256755-16BD8752000005DC-588_634x499From here:

Improved ultrasound technology, which gives parents mobile 3D and even 4D views of their unborn child, means parents-to-be are now throwing ‘baby in utero’ parties in the comfort of their homes.

For $350, companies like Baby Face and More, Peek a View, and Miracles Imaging, send licensed ultrasound technicians on house-calls, enabling couples to share an intimate glimpse of the baby, or reveal its gender in real time, with friends and family.

Kimberly Enderle, 29, told Today.com: ‘It’s our opportunity to see those little fingers and toes again,’ of her decision to host an ultrasound party ‘just for fun’.

I really don’t know what the matter is with these people: don’t they know that babies only exist outside the uterus? What they are looking at are foetuses, blobs of tissue, disposable growths that attached themselves uninvited to a woman’s body.

University of Toronto distances itself from courage

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From here:

The University of Toronto has distanced itself from a controversial program dubbed “Courage” that is described as an anonymous support group to help young adults struggling to resist homosexual urges recently launched at the Catholic parish based on the school’s main campus.

[…..]

“The Newman Courage group is a spiritual support group for young adults who experience same-sex attractions and who desire to live chastely, in accordance with Catholic teaching,” reads the centre’s website. A pamphlet lists the five goals of Courage, including fostering a spirit of fellowship to help “ensure that no one will have to face problems of homosexuality alone.”

Note that the support group is not compelling anyone to do anything. In contrast, in a spirit of openness, tolerance and free enquiry, Toronto’s bastion of higher learning has concluded, for no particular reason other than liberal bigotry, that a homosexual who does not wish to act on his urges should be denied any assistance in living in his freely chosen manner: compulsory homosexuality.