Church sign vandalised

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In the Diocese of New Westminster, vandals changed St. Alban’s church sign to read “BE GAY AND HORNY”.

There isn’t anything particularly surprising or shocking about this: by today’s standards of ubiquitous scatological, profane and four-letter obscenities that pepper much of what passes for speech today, it is positively benign.

St. Alban’s blesses same sex marriage and has had a lesbian priest, so the sign is not out of character for the church. Indeed, it qualifies as a suitable epitaph to be inscribed on the tombstone of the Anglican Church of Canada once it has fully expired.

The diocesan communications officer, Randy Murry, seems to approve of the sentiment; he expressed admiration for the sign’s “pithiness”.

I’ll leave to your imagination the reaction we would have seen if the scrabble addict had added another word and the sign had read: “DON’T BE GAY AND HORNY”. No I won’t. At the urging of the bishop, the diocesan communications officer would be lamenting the presence of a homophobic bully in the neighbourhood and report the incident as a hate crime.

From here:

A church sign in Richmond that read “be gay and horny” last weekend got community members laughing after someone broke in and rearranged the letters.

The sign, at St. Alban Anglican Church near Granville Ave. and No. 3 Road, was broken into sometime on Friday night and the cheeky message was there for all to see on Saturday morning.

“Oh my god, it was so funny,” said Dina Morgan, who drove by the sign while dropping her kids off at the SkyTrain station.

“The minute my little one, who is gay, said it, (they) started squealing in the back seat.”

Morgan’s kids made her stop and take a picture on the way home, and the image made rounds on social media over the weekend.

Randy Murray, communications officer with the Diocese of New Westminster, said the sign casing was locked, but someone was able to break in.

The prankster switched the letters around, and took out the extra ones. The missing letters have not been returned.

“You’ve got to admire its pithiness,” Murray said of the message.

St. Alban’s previously had an openly gay female minister, and blesses marriage ceremonies between same-sex couples. It’s now changed its sign back to display the regular Holy Week message.

Four Toronto priests write an open letter about marriage

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Murray Henderson, Dean Mercer, Ephraim Radner and Catherine Sider-Hamilton have written an open letter to the Canadian House of Bishops. Although it’s a good letter, it is little more than yet another rearguard action in what is about to become not just a losing battle but a lost one.

The interesting question is: what will the four priests do when the motion to change the marriage canon passes in July?

An Open Letter to the House of Bishops

Tuesday in Holy Week

On March 29, The House of Bishops released a call to prayer which included their hope for the upcoming General Synod. From the bishops’ point of view, there will be two doctrines of marriage in the church, and for both there ought to be support and protection.

That said, the church is still rolling like a freight train toward a formal and canonical change and the declaration of a novel and single doctrine of marriage. This new doctrine changes marriage from a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman for procreation, to an erotic agreement between adults.

The purpose has changed, and so the boundaries of marriage become unclear and contestable. Everyone understands the boundaries for marriage and marital intimacy when marriage is defined as the union of sexual opposites in which procreation and the stable nurture of children and families is logically and ontologically implied. Remove that purpose from the nature of marriage, define it primarily as an erotic arrangement between consenting adults, and marriage becomes infinitely malleable. Why limit it to two partners, for instance? There are now articulate advocates for polyamory, and fidelity to more than one partner. Change the definition of marriage, and why should there be only one relationship of depth between one woman and one woman, or one man and one man?

Furthermore, given the magnitude of the proposed change, where is the rationale for it? Where, for a matter of this gravity, is its explanation and rooting in the Scriptures and the received tradition of the church?

Was the Primate’s “This Holy Estate” the rationale? When was it ever declared publicly to be so? Was the Communion ever asked for its opinion of “This Holy Estate”? Was it ever given, borrowing from the academy, a peer review? Were the criticisms ever answered, two of the most glaring being the flat-footed omission of the central scriptural texts on same-sex relations, and the complete absence of a representative conservative scholar on the rationale’s editorial committee – like a boxing match where you never let the received tradition enter the ring.

In other words, this is not an expansion of marriage but a fundamental change. The rationale for it is questionable and unclear and without anything approaching a consensus. Altogether, it is novel and untested.

If the bishops want two doctrines at work, we would urge the House of Bishops to say so. Leave the received doctrine as it is and bring forward a motion that describes the

alternative, its aims and its rationale. Add a term limit for the two to be tested against each other, say 25 – 30 years. We believe that a majority would shout for its approval.

The bishops are right to offer this prayer. There is more than one reason to let time be the judge, to let time clarify the divisions rather than letting rashness deepen them.

Anglican Journal abandons editorial independence

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Read it all here:

The previous mandate of the Journal, as specified in the handbook of the General Synod, is to be “a national newspaper of interest to the members of the Anglican Church of Canada, with an independent editorial policy and not being an official voice of or for the church.”

The new mandate reads, “the General Synod shall produce and distribute journalistic content of interest to the members of the Anglican Church of Canada, whose purpose is to connect and reflect the Church to internal and external audiences, providing a forum for the full range of voices and views across the Church.”

The Journal has always had a bias towards theological liberalism, so for all intents and purposes, it has always been a mouthpiece for the Anglican Church of Canada. The only difference now is that it is no longer pretending to do otherwise.

There is one thing that could change, though: currently, the Journal receives over $500,000 yearly from Canadian Heritage – from our taxes – but only if it maintains editorial independence.

Consequently, the print edition, once distributed with gay abandon – even I used to receive one – now has to be requested:

The article go on to note:

The new editorial policy states that the Journal is expected to “adhere to the highest standards of journalistic responsibility, accuracy, fairness, accountability and transparency” and publish journalism which is “fact-based, fact-checked and in-depth, tackling important issues, asking and answering difficult questions.”

This is Newspeak for “The new editorial policy will adhere to the highest standards of journalistic responsibility by promoting same-sex marriage, climate change activism, anti-capitalism, anti-Trumpism, abortion and euthanasia insouciance, anti-Israel bigotry, fossil-fuel phobia and ecclesiastical wokeness, even when the subject at hand has nothing to do with those topics”.

Notre Dame

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Watching the burning of this magnificent cathedral last night, it appeared to me to be a grim metaphor for the end of Christendom. Just as we have abandoned our Christian heritage, so it has abandoned us, leaving only dross fit for nothing but to be consumed with fire. Ironically, nowhere is this more apparent than in mainline denominations.

Here are a few of the photos I took of my visit to Notre Dame in 2008:

The Syncretistic Diocese of Niagara

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The Diocese of Niagara is promoting a book by Bishop Carlton Pearson called “God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu … God Dwells With Us, in Us, around Us, as Us”.

Pearson was declared a heretic by his church in 2004 and  now espouses a treacly new-age universalism laced with generous helpings of meaningless gibberish such as “Self Actualization” and “Expanded Consciousness”:

Stand with our Movement to inspire Self-Actualization of Soul and Self and Expanded Consciousness. Support us in our stand for global freedom from extreme religious tyranny, unreasonable dogma, and fear-based theologies. Help us reclaim, recover and inspire radically inclusive love on this planet to activate and inspire the best and most accurate spirituality!

The Diocese of Niagara is attracted to this sort of thing like a moth to a flame:

God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu … God Dwells With Us, in Us, around Us, as Us

by Carlton Pearson (Atria Paperback, 2010)

Rob Roi

In the preface the author writes, “Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theologies teach us that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. If this is even close to the truth, then to believe in God is to believe in yourself — in your own soul.”

Bishop Carlton Pearson dares to ask questions we Christians don’t ask, or even think about: What is God? Where is God? Who is the true God? Questions about the divinity of Jesus, and the real political motives of the church. He claims that living in Christ consciously has nothing to do with rules, rites or rituals, and even less to do with what has become to be known as Christianity.

Bishop Pearson respects the bible, pointing out that it is a book of history and allegory — a book of myth, magic, and miracles that sheds light on our interpretations of God and the actual, unfiltered wisdom of Jesus.

The Bishop ends his book with, ”No, God is not a Christian, nor a Jew, Muslim, or Hindu, but you can be one, or anything else you’re inclined to be, as long as you don’t let whatever that is obscure the magnificent, mystical, and transcendent spirit you are and will always be!”

The Reverend Rob Roi is a parish deacon at St. James’ Dundas.

No sane person thinks God is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Hindu: that would be a category error, confusing creator with creature and founder with disciple. What Pearson is getting at is that he thinks there is no difference between Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism, an idea that makes nonsense of them all.

At the bottom of all this rubbish is the age-old temptation that was Satan’s downfall: I will be my own god; I will be like the Most High.

We seek to help teach and remind people of their personal and powerful and often forgotten Divinity…Jesus said, “Ye are gods.”

[….]

I believe in my own Self and Soul, my own Spirit, my own destiny, and my power to create, co-create and re-create it.

It appears to be the Reverend Rob Roi’s downfall, too.

The Anglican Church of Canada and the atheist reverend

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Rev. Gretta Vosper is a minister in the United Church of Canada; she is also an atheist. Or, to keep up with the times, I should probably say she self-identifies as an atheist. The Anglican Church of Canada, a loose affiliation of gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual individuals who like to dress up in strange robes and backwards collars self-identifies as a Christian denomination. As you can see, Vosper and the ACoC have a lot in common: both are at war with reality.

An atheist minister might seem to the naïve to be an ecclesiastical oxymoron. That doesn’t worry Vosper who is quite open about her disbelief. So much so that the United Church expressed some doubts about employing her:

We have concluded that if Gretta Vosper were before us today, seeking to be ordained, the Toronto Conference Interview Committee would not recommend her. In our opinion, she is not suitable to continue in ordained ministry because she does not believe in God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. Ms. Vosper does not recognize the primacy of scripture, she will not conduct the sacraments, and she is no longer in essential agreement with the statement of doctrine of The United Church of Canada.”

Other than the fact that she has not yet, as far as I know, announced that she is a lesbian, she has all the qualifications to fit easily into the ACoC. No doubt it was the rumour that the ACoC considered Vosper to be quite a catch that convinced the United Church to keep her: they have “settled all outstanding issues between them”.

You would think that settling the differences between atheism and theism, a miracle only a little less spectacular than the raising of Lazarus, would be the cause of great celebration, a triumph to be shouted from the housetops. Justin Welby must be green with envy: he can’t even settle the differences in his own church. But the United Church has decided to hide it: “The terms of the settlement, beyond the fact that the Rev. Ms. Vosper may remain in ministry at West Hill United Church, are confidential.” Poor Justin will never know how it was done.

The Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church have issued a joint statement to show there are no hard feelings between them. The ACoC will just have to try harder to attract its own atheist clergy:

The Anglican-United Church Dialogue of Canada held its most recent meeting February 20-22, 2019, at the Queen of Apostles Renewal Centre in Mississauga, ON. Many items of ecumenical relevance in the life of the two churches were addressed on the agenda.

Among these, the Dialogue devoted a portion of time to a discussion of the November 2018 decision of the Toronto Conference of The United Church of Canada to enter into a settlement with the Rev. Ms. Gretta Vosper which allows her to remain in her current ministry at West Hill United Church.

  • The decision that the Rev. Ms. Vosper may remain in ministry at West Hill United Church was a decision taken by Toronto Conference, a regional governing body with the responsibility and authority to act in this matter. This decision was not made by the national United Church of Canada; the national United Church of Canada did not have authority in the matter.
  • The Conference and the Rev. Ms. Vosper chose to settle the matter between themselves during the preliminary stage of a Formal Hearing on the matter. As a result, the Formal Hearing itself did not take place and therefore no testimony was heard from expert witnesses.
  • The terms of the settlement, beyond the fact that the Rev. Ms. Vosper may remain in ministry at West Hill United Church, are confidential.
  • This decision, made by a regional body with authority in the matter, does not set a precedent either for that region or for the rest of the United Church of Canada.
  • The United Church of Canada’s major restructuring that took effect January 1, 2019, means that now all disciplinary decisions about ministry personnel in the United Church of Canada are made by a national committee in the newly created Office of Vocation.
  • This decision does not change United Church of Canada Doctrine in any way. In United Church of Canada polity, changes to Doctrine require a decision during a General Council meeting to approve a change, a vote in favour of the change by the governing board of a majority of the United Church of Canada’s Pastoral Charges and also by a majority of its Regions, and then an affirmative vote by the subsequent meeting of the General Council to ratify the change.

We offer these clarifications to our churches to assist our ongoing dialogue and cooperation in faith and service to the Gospel.

What could be clearer than that?

Bishop Andrew Asbil has a globally warmed Easter

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As I started to read the bishop’s Easter musing in the diocesan paper, I found my heresy antennae being soothed by the gentle balm of that most remarkable unguent: an Anglican bishop who believes in the resurrection. Or, at the very least, a bishop who does a passable imitation of one.

It all turned to dust and ashes as I approached the end of the article. What really interests the bishop isn’t a man coming bodily back to life who claims to be God, claims to take our sin away, claims to reconcile us to his Father and claims that through him we, too, will come back to life and live in eternity with no more pain, tears or woe. No, what really interests the bishop is global warming.

From here (page 4):

And now, it is the very garden that is under threat. Our over-reaching and grasping ways, our neglect and cavalier attitudes have put such a strain upon creation. As temperatures continue to rise, weather patterns shift, species once named so long ago slowly disappear. Some make predictions, some deny and some believe, some downplay while others wring their hands. And what about us? How do we as a people of faith respond?

The last question that is put to us in the Baptismal Covenant in the Book of Alternative Services is: Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation, and respect, sustain and renew the life of the Earth? We respond by saying, I will, with God’s help. It’s time to find our gardening tools, to take instructions from scientists and climatologists, mystics and children, farmers and monastics, Indigenous elders and theologians. It’s time to tend the garden with all our might, to avoid the moment when, try as we might, we cannot reattach the stem to the root. After all, when we confess that God is our helper, anything is possible. Christ is Risen!

Candidates for replacing Primate Fred Hiltz

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In July this year, Fred Hiltz is retiring as Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. Here are the replacement candidates:

The Right Reverend Jane Alexander of the diocese of Edmonton;

The Most Reverend Ron Cutler of the diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada;

The Most Reverend Gregory Kerr-Wilson of the diocese of Calgary and Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert’s Land;

The Right Reverend Linda Nicholls of the diocese of Huron; and

The Right Reverend Michael Oulton of the diocese of Ontario.

It goes without saying that they range from the theologically liberal to hyper-liberal and all are in favour of same-sex marriage.

The only surprise is that no married lesbian atheist was available to stand.

And the headlines become more raucous

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Here is one from the Daily Mail:

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby BANS gay bishops from bringing same-sex partners to global Anglican gathering in London to keep conservative church leaders happy

The paper goes on to note that “The future of an international Anglican church summit is at risk after gay bishops were told they could not bring their same-sex spouses.” So there is some good news: Lambeth 2020 may not happen or, as a consolation prize, it will be the last one.

The university hosting the event is under fire from students, one of whom claims it is putting Mammon over morals. And, since she is an “LGBT student” (all simultaneously? I wonder how that works?) doing a PhD in biodiversity management, she obviously has a firmer grasp on the finer points of morality than the collective efforts of Justin Welby his bishops, clergy and the university administration. Admittedly, that isn’t saying much.

The student notes that the university has sinned against the god of inclusion. She has a point: it’s the same god that the Church of England worships.

LGBT student Natalie Yoh, 25, who’s doing a PhD in biodiversity management, accused the university of putting income above moral values.

She said: ‘I was shocked that this is happening in Kent, which I have always thought of as an inclusive place.

‘I think it would suggest, whether rightly or wrongly, that they are putting their commercial interests above their moral values.

‘Whether or not they have made the decision about who is allowed to attend, they’re still choosing to host an event that’s being exclusive.’

Butterflies and babies

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On the first Sunday in May many ANiC churches will be celebrating sanctity of life Sunday:

As a diocese which affirms the sanctity of life we are encouraging all our parishes to make a special effort on Sunday May 6th (this was from last year) to affirm that life is a gift from God; gift from start to finish. This could take many forms in worship, prayer and teaching.

The Diocese of Niagara, on the other hand, has Earth Sunday:

As spring is with us, Creation Matters Working Group, a National Church group, encourages your parish to prepare to celebrate Earth Sunday, either on Easter Day — April 21 — or the following Sunday, April 28.

[….]

And for a small creature — the plight of the monarch butterfly seems to have motivated so many people to plant milkweeds.

I like butterflies as much as the next Anglican but to focus one’s effort on the plight of butterflies while ignoring that of tens of thousands of aborted babies seems to be straining out a gnat – or a monarch – while swallowing a camel.