Is Here
I will be commenting on it more fully later.
For now, note that the diocese was asking for $236,893.03 and was awarded $75,605.27.
Full court ruling on Diocese of Niagara vs ANiC costs
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Tag Archives: Diocese of Niagara
The New Westminster and Niagara trial updates
The diocese of New Westminster is reporting on the trial between it and ANiC to determine ownership of church properties. This update on the Niagara court proceedings was at the end of the day 3 report:
In another legal matter involving the Anglican Network in Canada, in the Superior Court of Ontario, Madam Justice Jane Milanetti awarded leaders of three dissenting congregations to pay $75,600 in court costs after the failure of their attempt to obtain exclusive use of buildings in the Diocese of Niagara in Ontario, until a trial could be held.
The case had been heard in March of 2008. The diocese had offered to share the buildings, Judge Milanetti noted in her judgement, “an offer substantially better…than my ultimate order.”
After the judge ruled in May of 2008 that the buildings must be shared, the Network parishes decided instead to leave. The parishes were St. George’s Lowville, St. Hilda’s Oakville, and the Church of the Good Shepherd, St. Catharines.
“Despite my order that the parties share the properties, the respondents have apparently chosen not to do so. I have learned that they opted to incur additional costs to worship elsewhere. Although that is clearly their prerogative, those additional expenses (despite their argument based on same), cannot and will not be considered by me in this decision,” she wrote in her decision on costs made public Wednesday (May 27).
Not entirely accurate. In St. Hilda’s case, we did not decide to leave: we worship at a school on Sundays since the diocese was given the building at the time we hold our services. During the week we are still in the building and run ministries out of it.
Initially the diocese offered to relieve us of the keys to our building, not to share it; once they realised they weren’t going to get them, as a second best option, they did offer to share it. Considering that we believe the diocese to be heretical, sharing the building with them made little sense; if we could amicably share the building, we would not have had to leave the diocese in the first place. The first trial judge, Ramsay recognised this and gave us exclusive use of the building.
The subsequent “sharing” has been little more than a ploy by the diocese to create a perceived need for the buildings to house their congregation; in actual fact they only have around 5 people – imported from another church in St. Hilda’s case – attending Sunday worship in the Niagara churches; their true interest is the value of the properties.
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The youth of the Diocese of Niagara, gender-neutral language and rainbow flags
Youth at the Diocese of Niagara Youth Synod had this to say among other things:
Delegates will be asking their local municipalities and schools to fly the rainbow flag on International Day against Homophobia, and they challenged themselves to offer support to those who have been hurt by homophobic language.
They vowed to take a stand against homophobia and bullying wherever they encounter either. At the successful passing of the Homophobia motion, delegates presented a rainbow flag to St. Christopher’s asking them to fly the flag every May 17. The delegates pledged to volunteer their time and energy to a youth ambassador program that connects parishes to diocesan youth ministry events, and is a presence at diocesan events. And they didn’t stop at challenging themselves! They invited the church to use gender-neutral language in liturgy in diocesan worship services; asked the Diocesan Youth Ministry
Committee and the Program Consultants to set up the Youth Ambassador Program, and to provide training to volunteer staff and Youth Ministry program participants about bullying. Finally, the delegates of Youth Synod 2009 affirmed the Diocesan vision and resolved to continue the leadership role of Youth Ministry as the vision unfolds and they invited Bishop Michael to affirm his commitment to living out the diocesan vision in partnership with them.
Barring the repeal of Pr. 22:6, it’s hard to believe that the youth of the hyper-liberal diocese of Niagara would be this interested in homophobia and gender-neutral language without a little coaching from Michael Bird and his cohorts.
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An Anglican Professor of Church History has noticed that the Anglican church is falling apart
Alan Hayes is Professor of Church History at Wycliffe, University of Toronto, and he has this to say about the plight of the Anglican Church of Canada (Page 3):
And now, in 2009, the Anglican Communion gives a very good impression of falling to pieces. Some of this gets blamed on debates about sexuality, but, if you’ve followed me so far, you’ll know that I see deeper and more enduring causes than that.
What’s the way forward? If our problem is what I suspect – that we’re depending on a Vatican II theology which was never really ours to begin with and which is now showing signs of age—then the way forward is theological too. We need to rediscover, together, the faith of our Church. We need to agree on what we stand for, and we need to discern our distinctive theologically grounded mission.
I doubt that techniques of church growth or strategies of relevance will move us ahead until we’ve had our own Anglican Vatican II, and that will mean prayer, self-criticism, ressourcement, and aggiornamento.
This is the first time I have seen Alan openly admit that the ACoC is imitating something that is falling to pieces. Of course, for many of us, it is quite clear that the ACoC isn’t doing an imitation, but actually is falling to pieces: just as Bob Dylan observed you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows, you don’t need a professor of church history to tell you what the rotten smell is in the ACoC.
His point that we adopted something that isn’t ours – Vatican II – and that we need our own version is interesting but impossible: we don’t have a Vatican. It has become transparently apparent that there is absolutely no working authority structure in the worldwide Anglican communion; someone other than Rowan Williams might have had the guts to impose order, but it is quite clearly beyond Rowan.
When we see this sort of thing:
the Roman Catholic Church’s new and totally unexpected spirit of self-criticism, its re-thinking of Christian basics, its ressourcement (its return to essential sources, especially Scripture), and its aggiornamento (its passion to come to faithful terms with the modern world).
We may persuade ourselves that in this there is a glimmer of hope, in phrases like return to essential sources, especially Scripture; the glimmer is dimmed when we read: passion to come to faithful terms with the modern world. Rather than plainly say that the ACoC has departed from historic orthodox Christianity, we have something sufficiently slippery that it can used by liberals whose view of coming to faithful terms with the culture is to capitulate to it.
Liberals like Michael Burslem, whose article by a stroke of fortuitous irony, appears on the same page:
In Anglicanism we have neither an infallible pope nor an infallible Bible. The Word of God is our supreme authority, not exclusively the Bible. This is the Logos of St. John’s prologue, which he defines as Jesus Christ. However, since his Ascension he is no longer with us in person, but he did promise to send his Holy Spirit, who is the Logos in the world today. The Spirit certainly speaks to us through Holy Scripture, but also through other means, such as our culture and traditions, other people, (especially our spouses) through visions, dreams, through music, poetry, drama and literature; through the wonders of science; yes, and through common sense. He deals with us individually. There is no ‘one size fits all’ which would be if the Bible alone were our supreme authority.
Here we have entered the realm of sanctified subjectivity: contemporary cultural prejudice justified by the rubber stamp of a bogus holy spirit.
Alan’s way forward, We need to rediscover, together, the faith of our Church, is more of a way sideways: with nothing explicit in mind, it would be used by liberals to conform the church to contemporary preoccupations while making the claim of returning to the church’s roots.
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How am I mean? Let me count the ways
A few recent conversations started me thinking about how utterly rotten I am to the Diocese of Niagara and the Anglican Church of Canada; possibly even downright abusive and taunting.
What has been keeping me awake at night is, is it justified?
The parish I attend is an ANiC church that used to be in the Diocese of Niagara; the diocese is suing 3 of the ANiC churches in Niagara – or more accurately the wardens of the churches. The parishes in question had a choice of whether to fight for their buildings or to hand over the keys to the diocese; I think a moderately convincing case could be made for simply handing over the keys and avoiding further strife: the case could be based on 1 Cor 6, or Matt 5:40 for example. J. I. Packer addresses these issues to some extent here. He makes the point that parishes have a duty to try to hang on to their buildings if the gospel would suffer by letting them go. I find this convincing for at least the parish I am familiar with.
In that context, let me get back to being mean. Two reasons have been presented to me for being “nice”:
First, as a parish, being kind and generous is “who we are”; the person who suggested that would probably concede that it is not who I am – but let’s examine the idea anyway. It is true that the parish I attend is a loving, caring, giving community of wonderful people. Nevertheless, we are engaged in a lawsuit that we believe to be legitimate. Fighting someone in court is not an amicable activity: to pretend otherwise, adopt a simpering grin and make gestures of phony friendship is merely concealing a warzone with treacly charm: it is futile. I concede, though, that we are programmed to adopt the veneer of politeness from an early age and it probably does help to hold anarchy at bay. After all, if I were as naturally impolite as this individual, it could have ended up with riot police and fire-hoses – perhaps not the end of the world, but it would have ruined the carpet.
The second is the game-playing aspect: we want to look like the good-guys. Preferably the innocent, downtrodden, set-upon by an unfeeling institutional Goliath, helpless, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-our-mouths good-guys. Well, the simple fact is, we are the good-guys, but we are also fighting a messy battle in court where cut, thrust, chop and dice make a little verbal taunting look tame. To insist on verbal niceties would be like forbidding 2nd world war solders from singing the vulgar version of Colonel Bogey so as to avoid offending Hitler.
So now, back to sleeping soundly and – counting the ways.
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Diocese of Niagara honours the right person
I hate to rub the Diocese of Niagara’s nose in anything, I really do, but a photograph that I simply cannot ignore happened to come my way, so here goes.
The Order of Niagara is presented to lay people to honour their work in the diocese.
In the photo we see Bishop Ralph Spence presenting a person with the Order of Niagara on September 24, 2006. The recipient of this prestigious award from such a caring and loving diocese happens to belong to a parish that voted unanimously to join ANiC.
The recipient, Paula then went on to give numerous media interviews here, here, and here, among others, and appeared on the Michael Coren show (not wearing the medal, I notice) which you can watch here
An additional touch of irony was provided by the scripture reading – a reading which Paula used for inspiration in the trials that were to follow. It was read by Dean Peter Wall who, as far as one can tell, doesn’t actually believe any of it .
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. 2 Tim 3:14-17
Paula would like to know if the medal can be modified by the diocese to read Order of Niagara, ANiC; Michaels Bird or Patterson, any thoughts on that?
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The Diocese of Niagara sinks to newly plumbed depths of infamy
As reported here, the diocese could not make up its mind on who to sue: ANiC parishes or the wardens of the parishes.
Last week they decided. In court their lawyer announced that the diocese is seeking over $200,000 in court costs from the wardens of the parishes: Bishop Michael Bird and his cohorts in this sordid villainy are out to punish church volunteers. It’s hard to envisage a more contemptible, pecksniffian, anti-Christian act, but I expect the scelestious Bird–Patterson duo will find one.
Oh, yes, they also want to chuck the rector out of his home.
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Next month the lawsuits will stop
It says so here:
Healing and Reconciliation Month
Dioceses and parishes are invited to observe a “Healing and Reconciliation” month starting on May 26, the National Day of Healing and Reconciliation, and concluding on June 21, National Aboriginal Day.
Now the ACoC has stopped abusing native children, are they also going to stop using the courts to abuse fellow Christians who happen to disagree with them?
Bishop Michael Bird – are you listening?
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The Diocese of Niagara has a *new* dynamic, Fresh Expressions discussion board
The Diocese of Niagara on spreading infectious disease
The Diocese of Niagara is intent on doing its bit for the eradication of swine flu. To this end, they have for some time forbidden intinction at the Eucharist:
However, he said, the practice of dipping the wafer, called intinction, may carry a higher risk since fingers are also often dipped into the wine. During the SARS outbreak in Canada, at least one diocese, the Diocese of Niagara (Ontario), banned intinction in its churches. The Anglican Church of Canada published on its website a research report on risks of infection and communion practices.
Of course, when it comes to the spreading of AIDS amongst homosexuals, the diocese is considerably less fastidious about who dips what into whom. This is because so many of its clergy are, themselves, enthusiasts of the practice.