Mitt Romney does something right at last

Posted on by
Reply

He has offended the Palestinian Authority. Even better, they are calling him a racist – a sure sign of that most rare spectacle: a politician not dissembling.

From here:

Mitt Romney has offended again. And again, it may be a blunt and undiplomatic reflection of what he really thinks.

He was talking to donors at a breakfast at Jerusalem’s plush and historic King David hotel. Each of them had paid at least $25,000 (£16,000) to attend.

Mr Romney was talking about what he called “the dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He said that in Israel, the gross domestic product was $21,000 per capita compared to $10,000 in the Palestinian territories.

[….]

Certainly one senior aide to the Palestinian Authority’s president has condemned the remark, calling it a racist statement that did not recognise that the Palestinian economy could not reach its potential because of an Israeli occupation.

According to the ACA, the Diocese of Toronto's gift of $250,000 to the Diocese of New Westminster was a tithe

Posted on by
10

As I mentioned here, “the Diocese of Toronto’s Bishop Colin Johnson has paid Bishop Michael Ingham $250,000 for being the Canadian test case in the building dispute between the ACoC and ANiC. …. the ruling sets a Canadian precedent, effectively guaranteeing that the ACoC will be able to hang on to church properties – so that they can close and sell them.”

Rev. Dr. Murray Henderson from the Anglican Communion Alliance, a conservative group within the Anglican Church of Canada, has made a rather extraordinary statement about what he calls this  “tithe” to New Westminster:

I further advocated at the Council Meeting that the announcement of the gift make it clear that this was not our taking a stand on the issue of same sex blessing, but strictly a matter of paying our fair share as a diocese and parishes which are interested in maintaining our ownership of our property. The Archbishop made this clear in his announcement last Saturday.

It is evident he does not wish the Diocese of Toronto’s payment to be a condoning of same-sex blessings – even though the diocese is actively engaged in performing them – but, rather, wants to pay a “fair share” of the litigation cost of ejecting worshipping congregations from buildings for which they have a use to place them in the hands of dioceses who are allowing them to stand empty.

It’s not entirely clear to me whether it is worse to bless same-sex couples or turf fellow Christians out of their buildings but evidently, it is to Rev. Henderson: how far would he take it, one wonders? Would he be content to see all parish buildings stand empty so long as his diocese retains ownership of them and has not taken a “stand” on same-sex blessings – even though, to the un-blinkered it obviously has?

Not only does the ACA statement illustrate the impotence of struggling conservatives in the ACoC but it bodes ill for any plausible possibility of a conservative come-back within the church. To make it worse, I fear Rev. Henderson has strained out a gnat (albeit a big hairy one) and swallowed a camel.

United Church of Canada: now is the time to say goodbye

Posted on by
14

The United Church of Canada has replaced heaven later with utopia now, salvation of your soul with sustainable solar and the resurrection with renewable resources. Consequently, it is on the way out, expiring, soon to be no more; it is rotting from the head down, decaying in its own corrupt putrescence, a stench in the nostrils of God – the sooner it is dead and buried the better.

Just like the Anglican Church of Canada.

Read it all here:

Two weeks from now, the United Church of Canada will assemble in Ottawa for its 41st General Council, where it will debate church policy and elect a new moderator. The top item on its agenda is a resolution calling for a boycott of products from Israeli settlements. Fortunately, nobody cares what the United Church thinks about Israeli settlements, or anything else for that matter, because the United Church doesn’t matter any more.

For many years, the United Church was a pillar of Canadian society. Its leaders were respected public figures. It was – and remains – the biggest Protestant denomination in a country that, outside Quebec, has been largely shaped by centuries of Protestant tradition.

But today, the church is literally dying. The average age of its members is 65. They believe in many things, but they do not necessarily believe in God. Some congregations proudly describe themselves as “post-theistic,” which is a good thing because, as one church elder said, it shows the church is not “stuck in the past.” Besides, who needs God when you’ve got Israel to kick around?

 

Coming soon to an Anglican Church near you

Posted on by
3

The Pray-O-Mat, the latest in fully automatic, multi-faith praying machines, the envy of every right left-thinking Anglican bishop in Canada:

 

From here:

A multi-faith praying machine called the Pray-O-Mat has been installed at the University of Manchester.

The specially converted photo booth offers more than 300 pre-recorded prayers and incantations in 65 different languages via a touch screen.

The free-to-use machine, designed by German artist Oliver Sturm, is part of a three-year project on multi-faith spaces by the university.

Prayer choices include Aborigine devotional songs and Jewish chants.

The machine also features Our Father in German and English, and Buddhist and Islamic prayers among others.

A research team has visited almost 250 multi-faith spaces in the UK and abroad collecting prayers.

 

Diocese of Toronto in Gay Pride Parade

Posted on by
8

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.

Rowan Williams deconstructs Narnia

Posted on by
2

Rowan Williams, when asked his thoughts on C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, declared that he finds Aslan to be “on the knife-edge of the erotic.”

One wonders what C. S. Lewis would make of Rowan Williams and his ideas; Williams himself provides a clue in the same interview: “”Lewis thought most theologians were gutless liberals who didn’t care about the truth enough.”

And Aslan would almost certainly say: “Oh, Adam’s son, how cleverly you defend yourself against all that might do you good!”

From here:

On C S Lewis and theology: “Lewis thought most theologians were gutless liberals who didn’t care about the truth enough.”

On the sensuousness of Aslan the lion: “on the knife-edge of the erotic.”

On the Aslan resurrection scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “I think it is such an obvious parallel. The more interesting thing is how does Lewis convey a sense of what the religious climate, the religious sensibility might be in another world? That is the teasing thing.”

On his first response to C S Lewis’ Narnia books: “When you’re 14 or 15, as I was when I read some of those books, you think, wow, we’ve got a clever man on our side! Isn’t that good!”

Of a pagan who gets to heaven: “Here is someone with total courage, passion and generosity who’s giving all that to a mistaken target. But the heavenly postman knows better and delivers it to the right address.”

Why Aurora

Posted on by
1

Theodore Dalrymple ruminates on why James Holmes committed mass murder in Aurora and comes to the conclusion that Naturalism provides no answer and can never provide an answer. He is right, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer outside of Naturalism.

Holmes is not unlike a Dostoevsky protagonist who does evil to prove that he has free-will unconstrained by God, is his own master and, thus, is a god himself. The ultimate expression of this brand of “free-will” is to kill oneself – as Kirillov in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed – since it is the indelible denouement of the rebellion against what God intends for us; it is a popular choice for many mass killers, although not James Holmes.

None of this is new: it is as old as Eden when the serpent said to Eve concerning the apple: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” It has been downhill ever since.

The simple truth is, people do evil for the sake of doing evil, for the sake of demonstrating that they can, for the sake of falling again for the serpent’s fatal lie – that it will make them free.

From here:

By a strange irony, alleged Aurora mass murderer James Holmes was a doctoral student of neuroscience—the discipline that will, according to its most ardent and enthusiastic advocates, finally explain Man to himself after millennia of mystery and self-questioning.

But what could count as an explanation of what James Holmes did? At what point would we be able to say, “Aha, now I understand why he dyed his hair like the Joker and went down to the local cinema and shot all those people?” When we have sifted through his biography, examined his relationships, listened to what he has to say, and put him through all the neuropsychological and neurological tests, will we really be much wiser?

[…..]

We seek a final explanation, but cannot reach one because, as Haitian peasants say, “Behind mountains, more mountains.”

Hotel replaces Bibles with trashy novel

Posted on by
2

The hotel owner helpfully explained that, since private bedrooms are no place for Bibles, he has replaced them with tenth-rate pornography. No, I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey and have no intention of doing so even if its popularity does suggest that, contrary to expectations, it may actually be third-rate pornography.

Besides, I’d rather read the Song of Songs.

From here:

A hotel in England has replaced in-room bibles with the erotic bestseller “50 Shades of Grey.”

Instead of the standard Gideon bible, the owner of Damson Dene opted for the steamy novel known for its explicit sexual content because he thought it was the hospitable thing to do.

“Because everybody is reading ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ we thought it would be a hospitable thing to do, to have this available for our guests, especially if some of them were a little bit shy about buying it because of its reputation,” hotel owner Jonathan Denby told NBC News.

The hotel said it discretely stashes the bestseller in the bedside table for guests to discover –the place one reserved for the bible.

Denby  told NBC he found religious books a “wholly inappropriate” choice for private bedrooms in England’s modern, secular society.

Anthony Robbins, the snake handler of self help

Posted on by
2

21 people were burned at an Anthony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event when they attempted to walk on hot coals. Evidently, for the 20 burn victims that followed the first, the power within that was unleashed wasn’t common sense.

From here:

Nearly two dozen people were treated for burns on their feet after walking on hot coals during a motivational seminar conducted by self-help expert Tony Robbins in San Jose, Calif., local media reported.

Firefighters treated at least 21 people for burns to the soles of their feet, several of them second- and third-degree, on Thursday night, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News. None of the injuries was life-threatening, the report said.

It was the first night of the motivational seminar called “Unleash the Power Within,” a four-day Robbins event attended by some 6,000 people, the Mercury News reported.