Anglican Queerest and Dearest Family Camp

Posted on by
12

No, I didn’t make that up, it’s a Diocese of New Westminster family camp for sexual minorities where the chapel services will have a strong focus on queer and trans theologies and our lives as queer and trans Christians. 

Enrol now before it fills up.

More here:

Queerest and Dearest is being sponsored by the Diocesan Youth Movement in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster and specifically being organized by a diverse group of volunteers, which includes queer parents, straight parents of queer kids, queer adults without children, trans and cisgender parents, trans youth, cisgender queer youth, people of colour and white people, settlers and indigenous folks. We are mostly Anglicans, with one Lutheran amongst us. A number of us are involved in children, youth and family ministry, and a number of us have experience leading queer- and trans-focused camps as well as camps without this focus.

Michael Curry’s sermon in Diocese of Rupert’s Land Pride Parade

Posted on by
7

All you need is love. Because love is the only way. Any kind of love. For anything or anyone. Anywhere, anyhow, any way you like it. Because love is the only way. And because Michael Curry said so in front of the queen. And because the Archbishop of Canterbury applauded along with every other half-witted bishop in the Western hemisphere.

Euthanasia and the bishop

Posted on by
4

I am reposting this article because Andrew Asbil, the clergyman who participated in  euthanising the couple, has just been voted the next bishop of the Diocese of Toronto.

I remember a time when for a church to be “prophetic” it had to stand against the tide of the culture, against the immorality of the state, against the prevailing delusions that beguile our impressionable egos. Not so today. Because same-sex marriage is legal, the church has embraced it and has assigned committees loaded with waffling liberal clergy to contort Scripture to their collective will. It is much the same for abortion. And now euthanasia.

On March 27 Mr. and Mrs Brickenden committed suicide together with the help of a doctor:

On March 27, George and Shirley died holding hands in their own bed in a Toronto retirement home.
Their children, who watched from the foot of the bed, say the couple drew their last breaths at almost the same moment.
They had been married for just shy of 73 years.
The Brickendens are one of the few couples in Canada to receive a doctor-assisted death together, and the first to speak about it publicly.

The local vicar was on hand, perhaps to deliver a sermon in hope of hastening the couple’s exit:

Present were Pamela, Saxe and Angela, their spouses, the two doctors and Andrew Asbil, the Dean of Toronto’s St. James Cathedral, who later told me he had “without hesitation” supported the couple’s wish for their funeral to be held at the Anglican church.

March 27 was Maundy Thursday when we remember Jesus’ Last Supper before his excruciating death on Good Friday, an unpleasantness that he would be pastorally encouraged to sidestep by today’s Dying with Dignity Anglicanism.

The Anglican Church of Canada has produced a report in which it comes down firmly on the side of indecision. There is also a study guide to encourage parishes to have indecisive conversations about the church’s indecision.

It is important to remember that In Sure and Certain Hope was not intended as a contribution to the debate about the moral appropriateness of medically-assisted dying. The changed legal landscape has moved us beyond that to a point where many of us are likely to know, love and care for those who will face difficult decisions and may choose to avail themselves of medically-assisted dying or to reject such an option.

How long will it be before General Synod has a motion before it to approve a euthanasia liturgy and consummate its longing to become a death cult. I’d give it 10 years.

Andrew Asbil to be new Toronto bishop

Posted on by
2

And what a surprise! He supports same-sex marriage:

The Very Rev. Andrew Asbil (answering whether he would vote to change the marriage canon)
I would vote in favour of the motion.

Bishops run in the Asbil family. Andrew’s father is Walter Asbil who was bishop of the Diocese of Niagara from 1991-1997. If son takes after father, Toronto might be in for interesting times considering how the Disaster  – sorry, Diocese – of Niagara has turned out.

Diocese of B.C. to hold Pride Eucharist in cathedral

Posted on by
6

The Diocese of B.C. should formally enter the real estate business since it spends so much time selling empty churches to all and sundry to pay off its debt. Further diocesan woes include clergy holding views that are unencumbered by any hint of Christian theology and woodpeckers that are eating the cathedral.

No matter, help is at hand in the form of a Pride Eucharist. That should scare the woodpeckers away.

Possible human-rights complaints after marriage canon changes

Posted on by
5

From here:

The officer of General Synod who advises the Anglican Church of Canada on canon law and legal matters says he’s “absolutely confident” that human-rights complaints made against clergy who refuse to perform same-sex marriages would fail.

“Human rights legislation recognizes freedom of religion and of religious organizations, and I am absolutely confident that that complaint would be dismissed,” Canon (lay) David Jones, chancellor of General Synod, told Council of General Synod (CoGS) at a session dedicated to the marriage canon Saturday, June 2.

I am quite sure that eventually there will be a human-rights complaint against a clergyman who refuses to perform a same-sex marriage. David Jones’s confidence that it would fail misses the point: would the Anglican Church of Canada pay the legal bills and fines of the refusing clergyman? Will pigs fly?

If the church is not legally bound to defend an employee who is being hounded by the HRC, all reassurances are worthless since the hapless cleric could be financially ruined.

On a brighter note, Dean Peter Wall plans to leave the church and crawl into a hole if the marriage canon change does not pass. Liberals love to harp on about “walking together” in spite of disagreements. But that only applies if they win.

Peter Wall, dean of the diocese of Niagara and chair of the General Synod planning committee, said with a strained voice he feared he would leave the church if the vote were to fail.

“My fear is that if the resolution is defeated, I cannot stay in the church,” he said. “I really fear that I would walk away and never come back into a church again, and take all my leadership, and all my experience…And I’m afraid I would crawl into a hole.”

Anglican clergy lose their warm blankies

Posted on by
5

In their ceaseless quest for relevance, Anglican Church of Canada clergy are once again dismantling racism by standing on blankets and feeling the pain when they are whipped out from under them.

Once the blankets are all gone, they begin the thumb sucking exercise.

From here:

An interactive learning experience to teach the history of Indigenous Peoples in Canada through colonization and the resulting loss of land, the KAIROS Blanket Exercise involves participants standing on a large number of blankets which are gradually removed, allowing them less and less space to stand on. Throughout the exercise, participants read texts that take them through the experience of pre-contact, the making and breaking of treaties by European settlers, colonization, development of reserves, the residential school system, and ongoing Indigenous resistance.

Following the blanket exercise, council members gathered again in a circle and opened up for discussion. Many related personal life experiences sparked by their participation in the blanket exercise. Some non-Indigenous members expressed feelings of shame at their descent from settlers who had gained from the historical subjugation of Indigenous Peoples. Meanwhile, some Indigenous council members recalled the pain that they felt due to racism and the intergenerational trauma rooted in colonial policies such as the residential school system.

Bishop Michael Curry: from Royal Wedding to Britain’s Got Talent

Posted on by
Reply

If anyone has any lingering doubts about whether Bishop Michael Curry was peddling anything more than thinly disguised secular platitudes at the royal wedding, here he goes again, this time on his rent-a-bishop circuit introducing Britain’s Got Talent.

It’s all part of being in showbusiness:

Anglican Journal may scrap print edition and editorial independence

Posted on by
6

I hope it doesn’t disappear altogether: less to make fun of.

From here:

The Anglican Journal’s print edition may be discontinued after a “lengthy transition period” and its mandate as an editorially independent news source may be changed under possible scenarios now being considered by a working group, the Council of General Synod (CoGS) heard Friday, June 1.

The paper is presently editorially independent: in other words, it isn’t the official voice of the church. This doesn’t mean that it is unbiased, of course: it is so biased in favour of the liberal theology of the Anglican Church of Canada that discarding editorial independence would make little difference to the content and would at least be more honest. The reason for maintaining a façade of independence is the yearly $596,627 subsidy from Canadian Heritage, only granted if it maintains editorial independence.

Sixty-five per cent of the 400 randomly surveyed Anglicans said they thought the Anglican Journal should be “the official voice of the Anglican Church of Canada” with only 35 per cent preferring that it retain its current status as “An independent, ‘arm’s length’ observer of the Church.”

Bishops “were asked a different question, but it was a parallel question and less than 50% of bishops think that the current mandate of independence is important, and they estimate that about a third of their folks find it important. And, lo and behold, it was a third of the folks who answered the survey,” said Alexander. “I have the sense that bishops have their finger on the flock fairly closely.”

On the other hand, over half of General Synod members and about 75 per cent of diocesan editors feel the Journal’s editorial independence is important, he said.

“Having an independent editorial policy makes the paper more credible as a news source,” Alexander quoted a respondent of the General Synod survey as having commented; “As an unofficial, and, as it were, non-partisan paper, the Journal acts as a fair dealer, offering news from a variety of perspectives,” wrote another.

The Anglican Church of Canada has developed a neurotic dislike of all things binary: there are no definitive decisions or conclusions. It seems to me obvious that this is because the ACoC is too cowardly to take a stand, preferring obfuscation and ambivalence in the hope that no-one will notice that it no longer believes in anything of import.
The fact that the ACoC is so opposed to binary decisions is a strong indicator that there must be something good about them. Musing along those lines, it occurred to me that the real world which is generally regarded as analogue in nature, may in fact be a digital creation masquerading as analogue. Rather like an analogue quartz watch whose hands don’t move smoothly, but appear to at first glance. This might provide an elegant solution to Zeno’s paradoxes.

I bet the “we” mentioned below typed this on a digital computer using nasty binary logic:

“We’re beginning to realize it’s not a binary discussion… ‘either you’re an official voice, and therefore you’re some kind of Pravda, or you’re independent’,” he said. “Editorial independence and diversity of views are not necessarily yoked together.”