Tag Archives: Anglican Angst

Words that have become repulsive: Gracious Restraint

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One comes to expect pharisaic phrases from the Anglican hierarchy, but none can set the teeth on edge quite as effectively as “gracious restraint”. It is one thing to bend words to make them convey something slightly different from their natural meaning; it is quite another to make them mean the exact opposite. “Gracious restraint” has become “graceless abandon”.

The bishop of Ottawa, John Chapman is the beneficiary of the usual liberal seminary indoctrination and has executed a perfect parisologist’s pirouette  to subvert meaning, make black white and apply Anglican Alchemy to make sense nonsense.

Thus, in a spasm of tangled antimony he manages to say:

I must be committed to honouring the church’s need to observe gracious restraint and as well, honour the prayer and discernment that has unfolded in the Diocese these last many decades. With these concerns in mind, I proposed to Synod 2008 that I would bring before the Canadian House of Bishops the following intention: That, we, in Ottawa, begin to explore experientially, the blessing of duly solemnized and registered civil marriages between same-sex couples, where at least one party is baptized.

Chapman is in the malodorous company of Ingham and Bird (whom, for Lent,  I have forsworn calling short) and I would be equally critical of all three, if it were not for an impulse to exercise gracious restraint.

According to the Anglican Church of Canada, Jesus was a racist

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The ACoC has published some Lenten Meditations.

Here is one of them:

“… a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the houseof Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ ” – Matthew 14:22-27

This not a story for people who need to think that Jesus always had it together, because it looks like we’ve caught him being mean to a lady because of her ethnicity. At first, he ignores her cries. Then he refuses to help her and compares her people to dogs.

But she challenges his prejudice. And he listens to her challenge and grows in response to it. He ends up healing her daughter. What we may have here is an important moment of self-discovery in Jesus’ life, an enlargement of what it will mean to be who he was. Maybe we are seeing Jesus understand his universality for the first time.

This meditation makes a number of important points:

Jesus did not “always have it together”. This is modern vernacular for saying Jesus was not sinless.

Jesus was prejudiced against a woman because of her race. The woman in question points out his error, Jesus becomes enlightened and understands his “universality for the first time.” Thus, Jesus was not God, made mistakes and had to be set straight. The reference to understanding his universality is undoubtedly an attempt to point out that, once the woman corrected him, Jesus came to the light as proscribed by 21st Century liberalism: inclusivity is all encompassing, paramount and – well, god.

This is an officially sanctioned document from the ACoC: it denies both Jesus’ divinity and the fact that he is sinless. The ACoC seems to be going out of its way to present itself as a non-Christian organisation; I think it has succeeded.

Ephraim Radner at the Entmoot

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Truthful Language and Orderly Separation – of the wheat from the chaff in the Anglican church.

I’m sure Ephraim in a lovely bloke with wonderfully good intentions. The trouble is, he and the rest of the ACI are ponderously slow to act, suffer from logorrhea of such proportions that no normal person can read an entire article without becoming comatose and live in an ivory tower so high that they can no longer find their way down.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be a tiny change of direction. Ephraim, while taking a very long view, acknowledges that separation is inevitable – although he still isn’t in favour of it – and wants the separation to be orderly (he doesn’t really say why) and, that’s where the ACI comes in: to make it orderly.

At least, I think he is saying that.

Trouble is, by the time the ACI is actually geared up for action, it will all be over.

Insomniacs can read it all here

Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt, recently aroused comment when he [said], “I continue to see a negotiated ‘orderly separation’ as the best and most fruitful way forward for the Anglican Communion. The experience of this Lambeth Conference […] has again convinced me that the Anglican Communion cannot hold in tension convictions and practices that are incompatible, and so not patent of ‘reconciliation’, without continuing seriously to damage the life and witness of Anglican Churches”. It was this reference to “orderly separation” that struck many as significant, coming as it did, not from the bigoted reactionary that some have wrongly made him out to be, but from a bishop who has steadfastly stood for and offered witness on behalf of the imperative and blessings of ecclesial Communion among Anglicans. His admission that such an “orderly separation” may be necessary at this time is significant because, in fact, he has worked hard for unity and believes in it. It is this kind of admission that should spur us to hard thinking.

Indeed, I do not want such a separation. I pray against it’s demand… But I agree that the sheer practical dynamics of the situation we are now in may well uphold Bp. Scott-Joynt’s views…
What, therefore, shall we do? I offer the following conclusions – as well as the preceding reflections – not to attack current directions being followed by Communion leaders and offices of various persuasions, but rather to point out the need to face challenges that have become increasingly visible.

At the least:

We must allow our categories of discussion, policy, and strategy as a Communion (and hopefully within member churches) to reflect and respond to the reality we confront:

  • there should be no more use of the term “moratorium”; instead, clear directives need to be stated
  • “moral equivalence” must disappear as qualifier or anti-qualifier, in favor of simple descriptive demands that are bound to the realities of each context and approached on their own terms: the notion that the practices of gay inclusion and boundary-crossing are logically analogous issues is false

…
…
… it now looks as if separation is simply necessary, not historically so much as logically and morally. … And the survival of catholic Christianity makes plain the moral necessity of such orderly separation by demonstrating the demands of one logic over the other. It is separation that preserves Anglicanism as a Catholic form of Christianity.
Some have suggested that the Covenant and the process leading to its adoption would, of itself, if not deliberately at least as a matter of course, provide the “orderliness” by which a separation, if needed, could indeed unfold. If it is to be the Covenant and its process, this indicates that we must not fear the kind of clarity and accessible steps of implementation that would allow for such differentiation if that is indeed the end towards which the present logics turn out to be moving. … A Covenant that makes clear that diversity has its limits and attaches consequences for violation of those limits preserves Communion while holding open the possibility of reconciliation…

The Diocese of Niagara: A tale of hypocrisy and lies.

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On February 17th 2008 St. Hilda’s Anglican Church, Oakville held a vestry meeting to consider a proposal to join the Anglican Network in Canada. The vote was unanimously in favour with 1 abstention. A lot has happened since then and I thought it might be interesting to chronicle the story so far.

Immediately after the vote our pastor, Paul Charbonneau, was suspended with pay and was inhibited from ministering in the Anglican Church of Canada; shortly after, he was fired. The diocese relieved the wardens of their duties, installed a parish administrator working on behalf of the diocese and froze St. Hilda’s bank account. They attempted to take St. Hilda’s to court on Friday February 29th – clearly this move was prepared ahead of time – but, through the efforts of our legal team we were given a week of grace.

We circulated the details of our plight to all the Oakville Anglican churches in the hope of mustering some support; there were few responses, but this one from Dan Tatarnic, Assistant Curate, St. Christopher’s Church, Burlington is representative: “Dan Tatarnic here, keep your opinion to yourself, it is not worth two cents.”.  Thanks Dan.

On Sunday February 24th, the diocese held a service in St. Hilda’s building as a political statement; outsiders were invited to attend to swell the numbers which would otherwise have been close to zero. The resultant travesty is chronicled here. After this, we had our usual service . As a particularly pastorally sensitive gesture, the priest in charge for the diocesan service inflicted this on his unsuspecting victims.

On February 29th, the court ruling was that St. Hilda’s was to be given exclusive use of its building – temporarily.

On March 20th We were back in court – this time with a different judge – and the ruling handed down on May the 5th was that St. Hilda’s and the diocese had to share the building;  the diocese was given a time slot on Sundays that made it impossible for St. Hilda’s to worship in the building. We decided to conduct our Sunday worship at a local school; the first Sunday at the school was Pentecost 2008, a date that symbolised a new beginning. The diocesan service had a disappointing turnout: here is the parking lot. And here are some pictures from the real St. Hilda’s.

Since then, the diocesan service each Sunday has had no-one attending its service other than the priest, his wife and the person who sets up the altar. In an abundance of trivial irritations, it is hard to choose one to represent them all, nevertheless: the ‘priest in charge’ at St. Hilda’s (the diocesan euphemism for ‘stooge’), Brian Ruttan asked us to return the communion vessels and linen – much of which was donated or handmade by parishioners – so that he could use them for his congregation of zero. We returned them and are using plain replacements; interestingly enough, the plain replacements have acquired a special value.

In a spirit of reconciliation and to reduce court costs, St. Hilda’s has approached the diocese to settle the dispute outside the courts with an arbitrator; this has been rebuffed by the diocese who want things to be settled by the courts ‘in public’.

As of this writing (September 2008), the diocese is still holding empty services in St. Hilda’s building each Sunday and still refusing to negotiate. Which brings us to the question of why does each side of this issue want the building? St. Hilda’s wants it for ministry, including:

  • Food Drive: Food for Life Canada, together with Kerr Street Market and St. Hilda’s Church, run an outreach program for people in need in the Hopedale area.
  • “Cloz for Moz” Project: An outreach to Mozambique which delivered crates of nearly new clothes and blankets to this area of need in Africa
  • Garage Sale “Giveaway”: We have a community Garage Sale, but the items are Free! An illustration of God’s love for us.
  • Free Car Wash: We offer free car washes to passers by as an illustration of the love of Jesus.
  • Power and Light: A junior youth group where kids from the church and community meet Friday evenings for Fun and Games!
  • Freebie Friday: Freebie Friday is a drop-in for the students of Blakelock High School, which is located just a few doors away. Each Friday during the school year, St. Hilda’s Parish Hall is open from 11:00 am – 1:30 pm for the students to drop by during their lunch hour to have lunch, play games, talk to a volunteer or to go into the church to pray. We usually get more than 100 kids.
  • Artists for Africa: A fund raiser by St. Hilda’s artists to help alleviate poverty in Africa.
  • Alpha: Members of the community are invited to find out more about Christianity
  • Marriage Alpha: A marriage course open to members of the community.

Why does the Diocese of Niagara want it? Because the land it sits on is worth around a couple of million dollars.

The children are not returning to their wicked step-parents

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From the Telegraph.

Clergy who have defected from their liberal national churches to join traditionalist provinces overseas said the scheme to put them in a “holding bay” before returning them home was “demeaning and unacceptable”.

Meanwhile orthodox Anglican leaders have pledged to press ahead with the creation of their rival movement, claiming that it is an “illusion” to believe that the damage caused by the election of an openly gay bishop can be undone.

It comes just days after Dr Rowan Williams said that the Lambeth Conference gathering of Anglican bishops last month had exceeded expectations and showed that most wanted the 80 million-strong worldwide Communion to stay together despite deep divisions over sexuality.

A letter written by five bishops who have defected from the ultra-liberal Episcopal Church of the USA to conservative churches in Africa and South America was highly critical of the plan announced at Lambeth to create a “pastoral forum”, headed by Dr Williams, that would try to resolve new crises in the Communion and act as a “holding bay” for parishes that have left their home countries.

It said: “We note that the pastoral forum proposal has been developed without any consultation with those most directly affected in North America. This had led to a number of serious misunderstandings with regard to the situation at the local level and the relationship between the bishops, clergy and congregations and their sponsoring provinces.

“We would also observe that the various analogies offered, for example, that we are disaffected children being reunited with our parents or that we are being placed in a holding bay before being restored to our proper province are both demeaning and unacceptable.”

The Communiqué is here.

Poor old Rowan still has his head in the clouds – perhaps he is suffering from the delusion that he never left Swansea. How could be possibly think that the parishes in North America who have risked losing everything but their integrity, would be willing to sit in a ‘holding bay’ until they were ready to return – suitably chastened – to the dioceses who abused them. The same dioceses that turfed them out of their buildings, froze their bank accounts, fired their priests, took them to court and have repeatedly refused to talk – in spite of being pathologically addicted to ‘conversation’ with everyone else about anything at all.

It is about as likely as Rowan saying something clear and straightforward.