Tag Archives: Diocese of Niagara

How churches are surviving in the Diocese of Niagara

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They are becoming community centres.

St. Peter’s in Hamilton, having been given to the diocese by the ANiC parishioners, is now no longer used for Christian worship, but is a community centre used by HARRRP.

St. Aidan’s in Oakville is still used part time as a church but seems to be placing most of its emphasis on becoming a community centre too; sharing its building with many service agencies is, apparently, now an act of outreach. Coincidentally, it also happens to bring in a lot of cash.

From here:

The ‘little church on the corner’ — St. Aidan’s — that serves Oakville’s West River and Kerr Village neighbourhood recently celebrated a new look…..

The first phase of the changes are now complete and Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn,  Angelo Di Cintio of the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Rev. Bishop Michael Bird of the Niagara Diocese were on hand to participate in the ribbon cutting at the open house.

A $130,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation grant in 2009 provided a springboard to get the project underway. More fundraising is underway and phase two plans are in the works.

To date, a new ramp and electric door at the church’s north entrance have been added to make the building more accessible.

The first floor of the building has been reconfigured to make the space more usable and comfortable for groups that meet there throughout the week.

As well, two new washrooms, a kitchenette and servery area, lighting and sound systems were completed this fall as part of phase one.

Through its local outreach, St. Aidan’s shares its space with many service agencies and partners who are able to offer innovative educational and support services for those in need.

St. Aidan’s has again become a hub in the community and a much needed gathering place for the neighbourhood, according to Fricker.

In partnership with organizations like T.E.A.C.H., the Halton Multicultural Council, Art House, Ace, Hopedale Nursery School and Kindermusik, to name just a few, quality programs that directly serve the needs of children, youths, seniors, and new immigrants are offered

The Diocese of New Westminster: still distorting the facts

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Trustees of four Vancouver-area churches will be filing an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, appealing an earlier court decision which prevents them using their church buildings.

In spite of the fact that the parishes have made generous offers to settle the dispute, the Diocese of New Westminster seems determined to portray the Vancouver parishes as litigation villains who are unwilling to negotiate with the diocese outside of the courts.

The diocese declares:

ANiC Trustees Initiate Further Legal Action

Bishop Ingham has offered to meet with the leaders of the four congregations to discuss how everyone can move forward in keeping with the decisions of the courts and appoint new clergy for these parishes. To date, there has been no response.

Bishop Ingham and Diocesan leadership do not believe that there is any need to take any further court challenges, which will incur more expense and anxiety. However they respect the Plaintiffs’ right to request the Supreme Court to hear their case as the final legal option available to them.

Ingham has left the parishes the option of submitting to his leadership, leaving their buildings or continuing the appeal. His belief that there isn’t any need for an appeal is hardly surprising since things have gone his way so far: the fox has a chicken in its mouth and doesn’t see any need for the chicken to continue struggling.

A diocesan document that was filed with the courts to obtain costs from the parishes goes further:

ANiC is obviously pursuing systematic, widespread litigation across the country aimed at securing church properties for its use, in the same manner as this litigation. As ANiC has stated in its newsletter, the case at bar is just the “first significant ANiC parish trial”. If ANiC were to be insulated from adverse cost awards (and a fortiori. To be indemnified for its own legal costs from parish funds), the natural result will be simply that ANiC will pursue litigation more readily and ACC will be left to defend itself against a zealous litigant with nothing to lose.

All of which is arrant nonsense, since in the vast majority of court cases, it is the ACoC diocese that has been the zealous litigant. Even the Vancouver parishes only used the courts as a last resort: it was the only alternative to being thrown out of their buildings.

The same twaddle is being peddled from the pulpit in the Diocese of Niagara: the diocese is claiming to be the defendant in the Niagara court cases, even though it initiated the litigation.

The Diocese of Niagara wants to be recognised internationally for well trained and highly effective clergy

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From here:

By 2012, the Diocese of Niagara is recognized across Canada and internationally for its well trained and highly effective clergy and lay leadership whose life changing collaborative ministry is grounded in covenants between clergy, Bishop and parish.

If there is anything that the Diocese of Niagara has become known for internationally, it is the materialistic, rapacious greed it exhibits in trying to cling on to buildings for which it has little use other than to sell  in order to replenish its dwindling coffers. Nevertheless, there’s nothing quite as pretentious as church pretension, so the diocese is putting on a bold face – a lying bold face.

A priest – who really is an effective leader – regaled me with the tale of how he has been threatened by Bishop Michael Bird with cancellation of his license since he has left the diocese for another denomination because of theological differences with the diocese. Bird, unable to hold on to a priest with integrity and talent, is vindictively attempting to punish him because he has violated the most significant diocesan principle mentioned above: subservience – in newspeak, covenant – to the bishop.

The Diocese of Niagara, its bishop, his benighted vision and all diocesan hangers-on will be recognised by history an example of why fervent purging of the transcendent from Christianity is a bad idea.

Diocese of Niagara: Jesus was only a caricature of God

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From here: (page 3)

Jesus certainly had the character of God; his relationship with God was so close that his contemporaries called him the Son of God; but, without being irreverent, he was only a caricature of God. The author of the letter to the Hebrews chose his words most carefully to distinguish between God and Jesus Christ.

Michael Burslem, the author of this article in the Niagara Anglican, has laboured tirelessly over the years to diminish Christ’s divinity. He probably wouldn’t claim to speak for the whole diocese, but his articles are repeatedly published in the diocesan paper: I suspect he does.

He goes on to venture the following insight:

But is this to mean He is God of God or Light of light? Was God really born of Mary? Before we speak to anyone else about Jesus, I think we ourselves need to do some rethinking.

I’ve done my rethinking and left the diocese.

Diocese of Niagara litigation costs

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For the first time that I’m aware of, the Diocese of Niagara has included the cost of suing ANiC parishes in a financial statement.

You can find the statement here and the relevant line shows that in 2009 the diocese, while not preoccupied with distributing free hugs, spent $395,895 on lawsuits:

Where did this money come from? It wasn’t budgeted – and it still isn’t. It presumably came from the diocese’s primary source of income: the diocesan assessment. That means that with a total assessment in 2009 of $3,044,139, 13 cents out of every dollar contributed by Diocese of Niagara parishioners was used to sue fellow Christians.

The financial statement goes on to declare that the diocese was the defendant in the 2009 legal action; it was actually the plaintiff – the instigator of the suit – as can be seen here. In addition, even if the diocese does finally win all the litigation, it will not recover its legal costs; of the $395,895, only around $80,000 of  was recovered.

Diocese of Niagara publishes its religion of works

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And they are green works. The list is here and includes the 10 pieces of dogma to which a person must adhere to be fit for green heaven.

Just as in real Christianity, some of the articles of faith are harder to comprehend than others: a notable example is the difficulty in deciding whether to use a garbage bin, green box or blue box to chuck your Niagara Anglican in before reading it. The diocese suggests the pious family will ensure that “[e]veryone in the home has been “trained” in the correct use of the blue, green and regular garbage bins.”

It goes without saying that:

Low flow shower heads are installed
Single use plastic bottles are not used in the home
Fair trade coffee and other products are used in the home
At least two days a week are designated as meat free
Organic Ontario food is bought when possible
One day a week the car stays in the garage

And so on. As you can see, the Diocese of Niagara is keen to inflict  its 21st C version of self flagellation on parishioners and is encouraging family members to inform on one other when a miscreant is caught sneaking a bite of non-organic Texas beef by the light of an incandescent bulb in between swigs of water from a plastic bottle. With non-fair-trade coffee to follow. Violators will be incarcerated in the nearest Justice Camp for re-education.

Diocese of Niagara seminar: Ten Simple Things to Improve Your Parish Income

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The Diocese of Niagara is holding a seminar entitled: Ten Simple Things to Improve Your Parish Income. It includes the following, but notably absent is preach the Gospel:

Rejuvenate your Stewardship Team
Simmer your Stewardship all year long
Frame your Narrative Budget [what on earth does that mean?]

Build on Strengths
De-mystify DMM
Advocacy – Our Biggest Need

Try Something Different
Challenge the Money Myths
Run a “Thirteenth Month” Campaign

Get Insights
Healthy Parish Checklist
Parish Giving Analysis

Encourage Clergy
Effective stewardship announcements
45 Scriptural Resources about Stewardship

Also absent is the number one strategy: sue churches that used to be part of the diocese so you can sell the buildings they paid for.

The hijacking of the Holy Spirit

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I attend an Anglican Church that experienced what, in the 1980s, we called “renewal”. We acknowledged the presence and activity of the third person of the Trinity in worship, practised the gifts of the Holy Spirit and were viewed by the sober apparatchiks of the Diocese of Niagara as loony fundamentalists. We didn’t particularly care, since we ignored the diocese and they ignored us – unless they were running short of cash. All that was to change in 2008 when we joined ANiC – except for the diocese’s voracious appetite for Mammon to pay its lawyers.

But I digress. In the 1980s no respectable Anglican wanted anything to do with the Holy Spirit: his presence brought change, chaos, mayhem and, well, people who knew what they believed and took Christianity seriously – and that will never do in a church that is preoccupied with embracing “uncertainties, our fears, our doubts and the many challenges raised by scientific insights.”

In those halcyon days, any self-respecting bishop was constitutionally incapable of saying “Holy Spirit” – outside of the sterilising setting of liturgy – without having an attack of the vapours. Sadly, those times are gone and now the Canadian bishop does not exist who is not prosecuting some ploddingly dull or extravagantly heretical plan or other at the behest of the “spirit”, using the word as a justifying incantation at every opportunity. That this is a bogus “spirit” goes without saying. After all, the third Person of the Trinity is eternal and of one substance with the Father (come to think of it, Anglican bishops don’t even believe in the Father); the irritatingly ubiquitous phantasma, apparitions, bishops’ familiars are spirits of another kind.

In the worthy missive of the Diocese of New Westminster, we are told that there is only a “Holy Spirit” in order to foster “diversity”. If we could be just a little more diverse of our own accord, this particular spirit – the diversity-coach spirit – would not have been needed and presumably not created (page 2):

Commenting on our life together in the unity of the Spirit, Charleston asked “Why is there a Holy Spirit?” “Because God knew we would never agree and gives us comfort, guidance and wisdom to supply what the human family of God needs in conflict — the ability to live together in our very real diversity.”

The same article tells us that the church has moved from the “Age of Faith” to the “Age of Belief” into the “Age of the Spirit”; indeed it has, but it would be more accurate to say the “Age of the Zeitgeist”.