Tag Archives: Anglican

Montreal parish does Lenten study on Islam

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The Parish of St. Andrew and St. Mark studied Islam during Lent:

Understanding Islam:

Conversations with our Muslim Brothers and Sisters

Everyone who is interested in learning about another faith is invited to come and share in our Tuesday Lenten Series on Islam, The evening will begin with a talk given by our local Imam, Dr. Ahmad Shafaat,  on the basics of the Islam faith.  It will be followed by a question period, and opportunities for more conversation in small groups, with invited visitors from our local mosque.

Three Tuesdays in Lent

February 23, March 2, March 9.

7:30  PM

St Andrew and St. Mark’s Anglican Church

To make sure they had the hang of Islam, 23 parishioners attended prayers at the Dorval Mosque:

 

There is no word on whether the 23 Anglicans converted to Islam or not. Either way, it probably wouldn’t make much difference.

Anglican priest gets PhD in snowboarding

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Anglican priest, Rev. Neil Elliot is celebrating the completion of his PhD in snowboarding, from Kingston University in London.

He discusses the minutiae of the spirituality of snowboarding here, where he observes:

One thing that came out very clearly in my research is that people in contemporary society are talking about spirituality without God and they are looking for spiritual growth and development without necessarily including God. We need to understand why that’s the case.

Understanding why people prefer spirituality to God isn’t that difficult: God makes demands of us, spirituality, in its all you need is love mushiness doesn’t.

The important thing is unity

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Some interesting observations on ARCIC, the ecumenical gabfest between Anglicans and Catholics from the Catholic side here (my bold):

The trouble with ARCIC always was (as a former Catholic member of it once explained to me) that on the Catholic side of the table you have a body of men (mostly bishops) who represent a more or less coherent view, being members of a Church which has established means of knowing and declaring what it believes. On the Anglican side of the table you have a body of men (and it was only men, on both sides, in those days) the divisions between whom are just fundamental as, and sometimes a lot more fundamental than, those between any one of them and the Catholic representatives they faced: they all represented only themselves.

And they all, Catholics and Anglicans, quite simply belonged to very different kinds of institution. It isn’t just that Catholics and Anglicans believe different doctrines: it’s that there is between them a fundamental difference over their attitude to the entire doctrinal enterprise. I remember very vividly, in my days as an (Anglican) clergy member of the Chelmsford Diocesan Synod, a debate on one of the ARCIC documents followed by a vote on whether to recommend to the General Synod in London that it should be accepted. The document was accepted overwhelmingly. At lunchtime, standing at the bar with a number of clergy, I asked how they had voted; they had all voted affirmatively. I then asked them if they had read the document. None of them had; and most of them, it became clear, had little idea of what it contained. “Well”, I asked, puzzled, “why did you vote for it, then?”  “The point is,” one of them replied, “the important thing is unity. The RCs are frightfully keen on doctrine. You have to encourage them: so I voted for their document”. There you have it: what the late Mgr Graham Leonard, when he was still an Anglican bishop, once called “the doctrinal levity of the Church of England”.

And there you do have it: the important thing is the illusion of unity. The same affliction assails orthodox Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church of Canada or TEC for the sake of supposed unity – the ACA, the ACI, the Wycliffe College bunch et al.: they are actually sacrificing their principles to an illusion.

Another nail in the marriage coffin

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From here:

Saskatchewan’s highest court has ruled that marriage commissioners who are public servants cannot refuse to marry same-sex couples.

The decision by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejects two proposals from the provincial government that would allow some or all marriage commissioners to refuse to perform a service involving gay or lesbian partners if it offended their religious beliefs.

The government proposed that marriage commissioners who were employed before the law changed in 2004 could refuse to perform the services. It also proposed a second option where all marriage commissioners could refuse.

But the court noted that marriage commissioners are appointed by the government to perform non-religious ceremonies and are the only option for some same-sex couples seeking to tie the knot.

This decision has the unusual property of making sense and not making sense simultaneously.

It make sense because, from a secular perspective, once marriage has been redefined – and it has been – to mean just about anything you want it to mean, you cannot deny it to those who would have been outside its purview before redefinition. We shall see how long it takes for incestuous and polyamorous marriages to be accepted by the courts.

It makes no sense in the context of religion – which, after all, was the inventor of marriage – since all major religions define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Western Anglicanism excepted, of course, but, then, it is no longer a major religion.

Anglican vicar fights to keep strip clubs and sex shops open

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Rev. Paul Turp is vicar of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, a church which was immortalised in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons: “When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch”.

It now has another claim to fame since Rev. Turp is supporting something that will undoubtedly start a trend in the Anglican Church: he wants to keep the local strip clubs and sex shops open – not for his own personal use, of course.

His argument is that closing them would drive the businesses underground where they would be controlled by criminals. By that standard, the borough might as well install some opium dens and brothels, too. Rev. Paul Turp could rent them space in his church making it rich – as the bells would say.

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Strip_club.flv 740 450]

The unravelling of the Western Anglican Church

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The most damning opinions of Western Anglicanism come, unsurprisingly, from those outside its liberal priestly clique, a malignant coterie whose wilful ignorance of the decadence of the institution in whose employ it finds itself has become a fitting illustration of the psalmist’s point when he said: “Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear”.

David Pryce-Jones does get one thing wrong: the Anglican Church is doing just fine in the third world – it’s in North America and the UK that it is undergoing its Kafkaesque transformation into a cockroach.

From NRO:

The split in the Anglican Church has been a long time in the coming, but it has now become irrevocable. The turning point was a decision this July to support the ordination of women bishops. The issue, like the acceptance of gay priests, has been too much for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to handle. Instinctively a fence-sitter, he always manages to upset everyone and get the worst of all things. Earlier in the year, his astonishing support of sharia law destroyed what little authority he had left. Five bishops are now leaving the Anglican Church to become Roman Catholics. They are taking with them an unknown number of congregants, probably so far only in the hundreds. But whole parishes are likely to convert, bringing into question ownership of property, including church buildings and vicarages. Pope Benedict XVI has set up a mechanism known as an Ordinariate to receive them, which for instance allows married men to be Catholic priests.

Enthusiasts are claiming that the Protestant Reformation is reversing, and Catholicism will undo the work of Henry VIII and reclaim its status as the church in England. Not at all, according to an angry roar from the professor of Church History at Oxford, the departure of the bishops and their followers is good riddance to bad rubbish. Besides, the Catholic Church is in feeble shape. One of the few Anglican priests with intelligence and character is Nicolas Stacey, and he has pointed out that in the predominantly Catholic city of Liverpool last year, there was just one ordination to the priesthood and currently there are only nine seminarians.

The old institutions exist in name but no longer function. Last week the British Navy and the Royal Air Force were left unable to defend the country, and this week the national church hollows out. The country is dispensing with its beliefs and its purposes — fast.

Anglican Archbishop calls for transparency on toilets

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From here:

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba has joined the call for the City of Cape Town to release an internal report on the Makhaza toilet saga.

Last week, members of the Social Justice Coalition marched to the Civic Centre and demanded to see the report into the construction of the open air toilets.

“I believe that transparency is fundamental to building trust. Withholding information is guaranteed to undermine that information,” he added.

One can only hope that the Social Justice departments of Anglican Churches everywhere are inspired by this effort and mount their own campaigns for Waste-Justice.

Canada’s new Governor General is Anglican

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The Journal reports:

Canada’s next governor general, David Johnston, is a respected academic and lawyer. He is also Anglican.

Currently the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo, Johnston will succeed Governor General Michaelle Jean when her term ends on Oct. 1.

According to the Globe and Mail:

Mr. Johnston combines a mind that has traversed securities law, Quebec separatism and emerging high technologies with the formidable diplomatic skills of someone who has served as president of two universities. And he possesses what is universally described as a personality that combines unaffected warmth with boyish enthusiasm.

He will be guided, as well, by his Anglican faith.

Everything seemed fine up until that last sentence.

We need a new word for squabbling amongst bloggers

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Perhaps “sbloggaling”. And here is some prime sbloggaling between Stand Firm and David Virtue after SF published a reaction to Rowan Williams’ video address to the GSE4 conference that David Virtue didn’t agree with:

More bullshit from stand firm. I was there. There was polite applause when Rowan ended.
Fuckwits at stand firm wouldn’t know poop if it hit them in the face..
D

Who cares who’s right? The entertainingly comedic enlightenment on the human condition is all revealed in the sploggal; it was the same in the Sopranos.

Extravagant mud slinging from the Christian dimwit contingent

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Margot Fernandez from the Tuscon Liberal Christian Examiner seems to think that the ACNA is full of bigots and that Archbishop Peter Akinola is a war criminal. Contrary to my initial suspicion, she is not related to Christopher Hitchens:

Episcopal bigots supported by prominent African war criminal.

Another thing that jumped out at me in the story–and I am sure to anyone who is aware of the human-rights record of the African Church–was the presence of Peter J. Akinola at the meeting. Just in case some of you may still not believe that I am the Oracle of Truth, here is a link to a page detailing the actions of Akinola in the Nigerian Church. It doesn’t go into his personal militia and his war crimes against Nigerian Muslims, but look at his career here: www.petertatchell.net/religion/nigeria-akinola.htm. I heard of Akinola and his slaughter of Nigerian Muslims right here in Tucson, where horror stories about him have arrived years ago. Nice guy for the ACNA to hang out with.

Up until recently, Archbishop Peter Akinola was Anglican Primate of Nigeria and spent his time building the Church of Nigeria into a “bible-based, spiritually dynamic, united, disciplined, self supporting church, committed to pragmatic evangelism and social welfare: a Church that epitomises the love of Christ.” The Anglican Province of Nigeria now has the largest number of active Anglican Christians of any Province. Peter Akinola managed to achieve this in the odd moments when he was not occupied with the favourite pastime of prominent Anglicans – slaughtering Muslims.