Tag Archives: Diocese of Montreal

New Dean installed in Diocese of Montreal’s Christ Church Cathedral

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From here (page 4):

THE NEW DEAN of Christ Church Cathedral, Very Rev. Paul Kennington, right is joined by Bishop Barry Clarke and Rev. Canon Alan Perry, who served as the bishop’s chaplain, as the new dean is applauded after his installation.

The diocese had to go all the way to the UK to find a Dean who is in a same-sex civil partnership. The Very Rev. Paul Kennington is hitched to Jonathan Bailey and they both were at St. Mary’s Battersea which proclaims, “Open Church, Open Heart, Open Mind” – one of the lesser known sayings of Jesus.

Jonathan wrote back to their former church:

You will note Paul’s cassock, with scarlet piping courtesy of Stephen Miles (thanks!) and 39 scarlet buttons sewn on lovingly by Tim, Marie-Ca and Philippa all had a fabulous time in Montreal, and it was wonderful for Paul to have them with him at this big change in his life. It was also lovely for the children to see where Daddy will be working and living

It’s all about the cassock with its 39 darling buttons.

Diocese of Montreal gains new staff member: author of “Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints”

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From here (page 12):

A scholar who once served as dean of students at Concordia University is joined the staff of St. Matthias’ Church in Westmount, effective September 19. Don Boisvert is in his final year of study at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College and is completing his “in-ministry” requirement for graduation. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa and two books and several scholarly articles to his credit.

Born in the United States of French-Canadian parents, he studied for several years at a Roman Catholic seminary and is still on the faculty at Concordia. He specializes in the history of Christianity, religion and sexuality and religion in Canada. He was received into the Anglican Church of Canada last year and is married to Gaston Lamontagne, his partner for 34 years.

“Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints” is Boisvert’s attempt to see the traditional saints through a haze of homoeroticism:

he constructs an image of a perfectly shaped, highly eroticized male body ascribed to each of the saints. This imagined saintly body is repeatedly described as “beautiful,” “erotic,” “titillating,” “handsome,” “bare-chested,” “naked” or “semi-naked,” “muscular,” “glorious,” “ragged” and endowed with “perfection,” “virile masculinity,” “masculine strength,” etc. More often than not, the saints of old appear in a body conforming to the modern norm for gay beauty.

And we mustn’t leave out his homoerotic fantasies of Jesus:

Though Boisvert imagines Jesus to be a “handsome man,” “caring and attentive, sensitive yet principled” and working “bare-chested in the burning sun” (p. 180), he is attracted also to the “broken body” of Christ. The crucified Jesus (a “handsomely glorious body of Jesus [hanging] from the cross” (p. 171)) “elicits strong feelings of comfort and passive submission, the male docile and compliant body.” Yet, this submissiveness is immediately complemented by the symbol of the “lion” with its “brute aggressive force, the male as dominant energy and the definite top” (p. 170). Not surprisingly, the “fully male, genitally endowed” sculpture of Michelangelo’s Risen Christ, with its “muscular arms, thighs and buttocks” (p. 177), commands Boisvert’s admiration.

Just what the Anglican Church of Canada needs on staff: a homosexual, “married” to a man, who is so immersed in his twisted little world of gay sex that, when he writes a book about Jesus and the saints, he cannot see beyond the end of his genitals.

The Diocese of Montreal’s same-sex marriage liturgy

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Has been published:

The Blessing of the Marriage

The people remain standing. The couple kneel, and the celebrant says one of the following prayers.

Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life. We thank you, also, for consecrating the union of two people in his name. By the power of your Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this couple. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast for ever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.

Reading the liturgy reinforces the grotesqueness of calling a same sex union “marriage”.  It does violence to Mark 10:6-7, makes a mockery of marriage and a laughing-stock of the putative church.

A diocese that is unable to see such a cheap counterfeit for what it is, is no longer entitled to call itself a Christian church.

Diocese of Montreal: whatever you do, don’t repeat the marriage vows

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The Diocese of Montreal has a “Protocol for Use” of the rite for the blessing of Civil Marriage. All of which is a euphemism for blessing same-sex unions. You can read the “Protocols” on page 2 here:

‘The marriage vows should not be repeated’
There is an intimate relationship between the vows of marriage and prayers of blessing which may follow them, even when there is a considerable interval of time between the two events.

Nothing that is done in the blessing of a civil marriage should reflect negatively on the original exchange of vows. The blessing of a civil marriage is not a second marriage. The marriage vows should not be repeated.

It is pretty clear that the intent is to ratify in a Christian – or at least Anglican – setting the sexual union of same-sex partners. That liberals in the Anglican Church would like to actually marry same-sex couples is beyond doubt. They must think the timing is not quite right: that the average Montreal Anglican is not quite “ready”; that to do so would finally push parishioners over the edge; that conservatives haven’t quite all left yet. Thus, for the moment,  we have “Protocols of Use”.

So whatever you do, don’t repeat the marriage vows. I did once, but I think I got away with it; yes, this is a farce.

Anglican Diocese of Montreal supports the burka

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A Canadian Muslim, Tarek Fatah, agrees with the banning of burkas in Quebec government offices, schools, and other publicly funded institutions. He cites numerous reasons; this is among them:

I have no reservation in stating categorically that the burka is not just a piece of clothing, but is a symbol of Islamofacism and a rejection of the West as well as our cherished value of gender equality. The cruel reality is the burka castigates women as a source of evil (A’wra), condemning them to a life of isolation away from the gaze of men. Once veiled, they are marginalized, denied equality and made subservient to men. This leads to economic dependency, intimidation, violence and emotional abuse. Under the veil, the woman has no civic or secular identity. Her rights to make civic and political decisions are controlled and usurped by men, and by extension the hierarchy of the organized groups.

None of this deters Anglican Bishop of Montreal Barry Clarke though, who, after plumbing the depths of his Islamic savoir-faire, announced support for the burka:

MONTREAL – A bill that would bar a woman wearing a face veil from receiving government services is an attack on women’s rights in the guise of defending equality of the sexes, say the Anglican diocese of Montreal and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute.

In a statement approved Monday night by local clergy and Bishop Barry Clarke, the diocese said the bill erodes freedom of religion guaranteed under the Quebec and Canadian human-rights charters.

The local church body added that Bill 94 also unfairly targets women, since there are no men who wear the niqab, a veil with slits for the eyes worn by a small minority of Muslim women in Quebec.

“Obliging women to choose between the free exercise of their Charter right to freedom of religion, and the exercise of their rights to participate in society is odious,” the diocese said.

Also undeterred was the Simone de Beauvoir institute which has as its mission:

The Institute strives to stimulate the investigation, understanding and communication of the historical and contemporary roles of women in society, and to encourage women to develop their full creative potential.

There’s nothing that develops a woman’s creative potential quite as effectively as wearing a burka.

For a Lent study, a Quebec Anglican Church invites imam to speak about Islam

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Just what every Anglican needs to meditate on during Lent: the basics of Islam:

Also, on three Tuesday evenings at 7:30, beginning Feb. 23, we welcome Dr. Ahmad Shafaat, the imam of the local mosque, who will teach us some basics about Islam. He will bring several members of his congregation to join us in conversation. Take the time for what interests you; everyone is welcome.

The series was called, “Understanding Islam” and:

Dr. Shafaat’s lectures dealt with the life of the prophet, the roots of Islam, and the prayer recited by the faithful five times daily. It begins, “In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, Master of the Day of Recompense.” Everything we have comes from God, Dr. Shafaat said, and our relationship to Creation is based on respect. The nature of God is indescribable but unmistakable, a transcendental reality.

As Anglicans we do need to remember, particularly during Lent, that Jesus died on the cross to help us understand Islam better.

A shake-up is coming to the Diocese of Montreal

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The Diocese of Montreal, having lost 45,000 members between 1981 and 2001, is dwindling in much the same way as the Diocese of BC.

A consultant has been hired to find out what can be done; her report says, among other things:

As is her wont, Myrlene Boken does not recommend the closing of any churches in the Diocese of Montreal, preferring to leave the final decision up to parishioners.

But she makes no bones about considering some churches more strategic than others. Her report divides the slightly under 100 churches in the diocese into five categories.

She considers 50 churches – a little more than half – to be in strategic locations and another dozen in “second-level locations” that “round out our coverage of the mission field” but, for example, would not be a priority for replacement if they burned down or needed major repairs.

Another eight are in “tertiary” locations, generally buried in residential neighbourhoods and often dating from the 1950s and 1960s. They often benefit from dedicated local members and leaders even today, so Ms. Boken’s suggestion that the diocese not devote important resources to them could be controversial.

There are 18 “final generation” churches, generally in rural areas and some of them almost “family chapels.” They have few prospects for the future but Ms. Boken thinks it would often cause unnecessary hard feelings to force them to close. (A few of these are already on the way to being wound up by local parishioners.) Finally, there are a half-dozen tourist sites in the Laurentians that she thinks can play a useful role with summer student placements.

Although Boken does not recommend the closing of any churches, she does seem to think that it would not be a bad thing if half of them burned down. And that, after all, is what you pay a consultant for: creative thinking.

As comic relief, in the same issue of the diocesan paper, Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. rambles on about “God’s mission in a changing world and church”, drawing on a Marxist political theorist for inspiration. His most profound insight is this:

In light of the new Pentecost, Christians in general, and Anglicans in particular, are beginning to ask ourselves: How much does the translatability of the Gospel and the missiological imperative of inculturation inform our worship and common life as Christians today?

Scarcely a day goes by without an Anglican acquaintance piously murmuring in my ear his concern about “missiological imperative of inculturation”.

With Professor Douglas helping to push them over the edge, I’m quite sure that the Diocese of Montreal will soon be following the example of the Diocese of BC and closing churches. Those that don’t burn down first.