Anglican Church of Canada: Justice Camp

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The Anglican Church of Canada’s Justice Camp is a place where Anglican priests are sent for decontamination and re-education after they have had a close encounter with the Gospel. This Church Gulag is also a place of incarceration for particularly troublesome laity; it was only through the most extreme subterfuge that I managed to avoid it during my sojourn in the Diocese of Niagara.

One of the tortures employed is being forced to sing songs like this one. Some victims have been known to bite off their own tongues during the refrain:

(Tune: My Favorite Things)

Meeting with Linda, with movers & shakers,
Activists, greenies, and health-and peace-makers,
MP’s and editors, right on the ball,
Help us respond to our fai-aithful call.

Postcards and letters and online petitions,
Rallies and sit-ins with local musicians,
Scripture reminds us to take care of all-
Working for justice can be such a ball!

Refrain:
When our greed strikes,
When our fears roar,
When we’re feeling proud,
We simply remember our fai-aithful call –
And then we can speak out loud!

Ruth & Amanda said, “MPs will hear ya,
But missing deadlines and dates won’t endear ya,
Start with small steps and do homework, you-all,
If you’d be faithful to Jesus Christ’s call.

Issues of justice and tools to affect them,
Singular voices connect good intentions,
Sacrifice, courage, the zeal of St. Paul,
Help us respond to our God’s faithful call

Refrain
Coming from churches both rural and urban,
We’ve heard of problems both dark & disturbin’,
But with the expertise here in this hall,
We’ll start the healing that answers God’s call.

h/t LSP

Toronto’s Anglican Book Centre to close

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From here:

It is with sadness that the Anglican Church of Canada and Augsburg Fortress Canada announce that the Anglican Book Centre at 80 Hayden Street will close on Jan. 18, 2013. Canadian Anglicans will still be able to order resources online and by phone through Augsburg Fortress Canada.

“Religious book and gift stores across Canada have faced significant challenges resulting in the closure of over 120 stores in the past 10 years,” said Andy Seal, Director of Augsburg Fortress Canada/Anglican Book Centre.

“Sales at our Hayden St. store have decreased each year since 2009. By 2011 Toronto sales were 28% below the break-even level. In spite of hard work and innovation, the trend has continued in 2012.”

I am rather sorry to see this since I have spent many hours browsing its shelves – although, not recently – and met a very congenial chap hawking ABC wares at the ACoC synod in 2010. He let me recharge my laptop battery at his stall even after I told him I belonged to an ANiC church.

Although I find myself somewhat dolorous at the prospect of entering an era of paperless books – almost all my books I now buy are for my Kindle – I don’t miss the overweight charges when I fly with too many books in my suitcase.

As this headline has it, “Modern technology catches up with Toronto’s Anglican Book Centre causing it to close”. I would have been happier with keeping the bookstore and seeing: “Modern technology catches up with the Anglican Church of Canada causing it to close.”

Two respectable middle-aged men are shocked and embarrassed

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What does it take to shock respectable middle-aged men these days? Acts of public lewdness? Teenagers with rings in their noses? 50 Shades of Grey? The price of a haircut?

When the self-styled respectable men are ageing homosexuals – homosexuality being the new yardstick by which we are expected to judge “respectability” – all it takes is to be told they can’t share a bed in someone else’s house.

Michael Black and John Morgan are sensitive souls – you can tell from John’s tattoos – so to soothe their ruffled sensibilities, they sued the Christian B&B owners where they were refused – not rooms, but a double bed – to prevent others from suffering the same emotionally devastating discrimination.

In actual fact, it is quite apparent from this video that the pair has derived considerable satisfaction from the whole episode of being supposedly wronged, vindicated and financially rewarded, not to mention the profound enjoyment of imposing their belief system on a couple of hapless Christians.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, before Christian B&B owners are driven irretrievably out of business, characters like Black and Morgan and Preddy and Hall spend future vacations scouring England for B&Bs owned by Christians in order to demand a room in the hope of being refused. All in the name of banishing any vestigial remnants of what used to be called decency – now renamed inequality – from England’s green and increasingly unpleasant land.

Bad News about Fidel Castro

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He is alive and very well according to this:

Former Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua said Sunday that he met with aging revolutionary icon Fidel Castro for five hours and showed The Associated Press photos of the encounter, quashing persistent rumors that the former Cuban leader was on his deathbed or had suffered a massive stroke.

[….]

Son Alex Castro told a reporter for a weekly Cuban newspaper that his father “is well, going about his daily life.”

The Anglican Church of Canada suppresses free speech

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I used to leave comments on Anglican Journal articles but gave up doing so because they never appeared. I am not the only one: it seems that the ACoC can tolerate anything except disagreement.

The excruciatingly dull blog that exudes like a foetid ectoplasm from the Diocese of New Westminster expunged a dissenting view on St. Matthews Abbotsford:

Note on Another Matter:
nwanglicanblog received a lengthy response to a recent posting that comments on the move of the ANiC congregation in Abbotsford out of its former physical facilities. This response will not be posted on the blog as it reiterates familiar arguments and makes disparaging statements that do not contribute to the advancement of the Gospel.

Since the Diocese of New Westminster’s expertise lies mostly in the art of breaking up the Anglican Communion, it’s hard to see how it could harbour the conceit that it is, itself, in any way advancing the Gospel, especially since Michael Ingham went to some lengths to prevent one of the world’s foremost evangelical thinkers – J. I. Packer – from setting foot on any diocesan property.

I have been blocked from following the twitter feed from the Diocese of Niagara for fear, presumably, that I might make an unflattering remark about its contents.

Still, the Anglican Church of Canada does love conversation; just don’t question the tergiversations of its hierocracy.

The reason people are leaving the Anglican Church of Canada

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The Anglican Church of Canada is very shy about how many people attend its churches on a Sunday: there have been no attendance statistics since 2001. Even in 2001 or in prior years, the average Sunday attendance is not mentioned, rather the total members on the parish roll is given. Since I still receive a paper copy of the Niagara Anglican – a moment in the month that I have come to cherish – I have an uneasy suspicion that I am still on the “parish roll” of a Diocese of Niagara church.

The figures are almost certainly inflated, perhaps grossly inflated.

According to statistics published here, in 2001 there were 641,845 people on parish rolls. The total number of clergy was 3591.

In 1961, the church’s heyday, there were 1,320,649 on the parish rolls and 2380 clergy.

I’m surprised no-one has noticed this before, but, as the number of clergy increased by 150%, the number of laity decreased by 211%. Church membership is varying inversely to the number of clergy: far be it from me to concoct a spurious causal relationship, but it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the clergy are driving out the laity.

This isn’t as surprising as it first might seem. If orthodox faith is to be found in an Anglican Church of Canada parish, the last place I would expect to find it would be in the clergy; lay people in numerous parishes are busy praying for the conversion of their leaders. Seminaries churn out sceptics rather than Christians, bishops complete the process by weeding out candidates whose faith miraculously emerges intact from seminary and, of course, scour the continent for “married” gay candidates in order to solidify their credentials as non-homophobic.

What’s the solution? Fire all the clergy – beginning with the bishops – and start again with missionary priests from Africa.

Diocese of Huron seeks $445,486.37 in court costs against the people of St. Aidan’s

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The Diocese of Huron won a court case against the ANiC parishioners who paid for and maintain St. Aidan’s in Windsor. The parishioners were evicted and the diocese took possession of the building.

One would think that this would be enough for the diocese, but, no: they also sued for $445,486.37 in court costs.

This goes to show that the grasping avarice often associated with the legal profession pales to insignificance when compared to that of the average Canadian Anglican bishop – Bishop Robert F. Bennett in this case; although, come to think of it, he is a mediocre rather than an average bishop. Perhaps Bennett needs to reread the Five Marks of Mission that are so beloved by his denomination, paying particular attention to “To respond to human need by loving service” and “To seek to transform unjust structures of society”.

The judge denied the diocese the $445,486.37; never mind, Bob, to assuage your financial embarrassment, you could always pass a tin cup to Colin Johnson and James Cowan.

From here:

In a decision released on September 26, Justice H A Rady of the Superior Court of Ontario denied the Diocese of Huron’s bid to exact legal costs from the leadership and parish of ANiC’s St Aidan’s (Windsor, ON). He says: “…I have come to the conclusion that it would be fair and just that the parties bear their own costs.” The Diocese of Huron had been seeking $445,486.37 from the people of St Aidan’s and has now appealed this decision. Your prayer support is appreciated.

Breaking Bad: Romans 3:10 for today

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Before I was a Christian, it seemed to me self-evident that humankind was a morass of evil and corruption. Its members had a pathetically short, meaningless existence punctuated by episodes of vanity and despair set between the nothingness before birth and the blackness after death – yet man still had the odd talent of making the whole thing seem comical.

As a Christian, my view is not that much different: man is evil, but his evil has an explanation and a remedy; his earthly pursuits are rendered even more vain by Christian understanding, yet there is meaning to be found in life and it does not end in black nothingness. With the abundance of evidence for the existence of evil – personal evil – I’ve never been able to understand why some Christians find it so hard to believe in the devil as a person.

Unsurprisingly, my favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes – and one of my favourite TV shows was The Sopranos and, now, is Breaking Bad. Some of my Christian friends don’t approve of my viewing tastes – among other things – but both seem to me to represent the human condition – sans redemption, admittedly – rather accurately.

From here:

Breaking Bad, the AMC television drama that wrapped up its fifth season this past summer, is one of the most critically-acclaimed shows of the last several years. It recently won its seventh Emmy award and has been touted by many critics as the best show on TV today.

[….]

Behind all of Breaking Bad‘s artistic and technical brilliance is a clear and consistent picture of human nature fully consistent with orthodox Christianity. Perhaps no other show has ever presented such an honest and carefully drawn picture of total depravity. This emphasis surely comes from Gilligan himself. Although he now describes himself as “pretty much agnostic,” Gilligan continues to bears the imprint of his Catholic upbringing. His show portrays moral decay as part of the natural order of things in a fallen world. “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface” is the pithy way Gilligan puts it when asked to describe Breaking Bad in a single sentence.

If you are in Ontario you can change your gender by fiat

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All you need is a note from your psychologist – and most of them are daft enough to give you one – and, hey presto, your sex changes.

There is no mention of a limit on how many times you can switch, so gender could become a fashion accessory to be adjusted as whim dictates.

From here:

Transgender people in Ontario can now amend their gender on their birth certificates without first having to undergo gender confirmation surgery.

Ontario is the first province in Canada to scrap the requirement, a move that has been hailed as an important victory for the transgender community.

New rules that have now come into force allow transgender people born in the Canadian province to apply to have their documents amended by submitting a letter from a doctor or a psychologist.