Rev. Cheryl Fricker is the rector of St. Aidan’s Oakville; she has also been parachuted into St. Hilda’s as the “priest in charge” at the diocesan Potemkin St. Hilda’s.

At the building sharing hearing, the court gave the diocese access to St. Hilda’s building from 7:00 am – 10:00 am Sunday morning and for a 4 hour afternoon  and 3 hour evening period. The diocese, having no shame whatsoever, has appealed to people attending local parishes to come to their 8:30 a.m. Sunday service. They haven’t had much success. Orthodox Christians who remain in the diocesan parishes have expressed disgust at the diocesan attempts to create a bogus parish.

All this is being done to create the illusion that the diocese needs the building to accommodate the hoards of  people desperate to attend a diocesan service in the sparsely furnished, orange-carpeted, mould-smelling structure at 1258 Rebecca Street, Oakville.

The diocese is so confident  – or perhaps sloppy – that they are not even bothering to conceal the fact they are moving meetings from another parish to St. Hilda’s simply for the reason of occupying it. For example St. Aiden’s brazenly advertises that it has moved its bible study location:

Wednesday Bible Study

St. Aidan’s, Oakville

Our Wednesday Bible Study resumes looking at the resurrection appearances of Jesus in the four Gospels. All are welcome 1:30 to 3:00 at St. Hilda’s Anglican Church Oakville

Cost: no fee

April 29, 2009 – 1:30

There is little hope that anyone in the diocesan administration has enough moral fibre to protest, but, parishioners of St. Aidan’s, you do not need to be a party to the diocese’s contemptible games.

Michael Coren, on his Facebook Wall, gives a measured and nuanced response to this:

Incredible. These people represent the final spasms of a moribund liberal cult. They have only a few years left.

A generous assessment.

The land of mindless, trite clichés is ripe with drivel so meaningless that to dwell there too long can induce a spontaneous lobotomy, rendering the hapless victim fit for nothing other than to be a business executive or, even worse, a bishop.

One of the most irritating is this: “Think Outside the Box”. It made its initial assault on humanity in the 1970s and was rapidly spread by Management Consultants who made a living preying on gullible executives. It is a tribute to its inventor that, just like a cleverly designed computer virus, it spread and multiplied and can still be found today living in the backwater recesses of pedestrian minds everywhere.

It takes an especially vacuous cove to come up with the vapid jumble of nonsense compressed into the following couple of sentences; it would be beyond most, but Michael Bird, bishop of Niagara is up to the task:

What I have absolutely no interest in, however, is a ministry of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  I need your commitment, your willingness to journey and take risks, your capacity to dream and think outside the box, in order to build upon and grow the work and ministry of this diocese in the days to come.

Here we have the jewel of clichés set in a dazzling array of Titanic deckchairs, journeyers, commitment, dreamers, risk takers, builders and growers.

The most potently mind-numbing concoction outside of an Indaba group.

Here are the five points:

1. Flourishing cultures of innovation
2. Outstanding leadership for ministry
3. Prophetic social justice making
4. Life changing worship
5. Effective resource management

The only point that, on the surface, may have a tenuous connection to Christianity is “Life changing worship”. Closer inspection reveals that even that is all about the worshipper, not God, the object of worship.

These five “focus points” appear to be a collection of random clichés cobbled together from mediocre “How to run a business” seminars. It is difficult to ascribe meaning to the bishop’s apparition, but each of us may have a favourite banality upon which we would like to concentrate. Mine would be “outstanding leadership for ministry”, since it is the one component of the bishop’s chimera that is easy to fulfill: fire everyone at head office from the bishop on down – the lights could then be turned off at the Cathedral and its offices, thus fulfilling “Effective resource management“.

Once the flotsam is jettisoned from 252 James Street, the unjust lawsuits against ANiC would cease – completing point 3 – permitting ANiC to concentrate on innovation and worship – points 1 and 4. Perhaps it’s not such a bad plan after all.

After the Diocese of Niagara threatened me with a lawsuit for exposing Michael Patterson’s lies, what have they actually done? Nothing so far. Which leads me to believe that it’s all about this:

The Church of the Resurrection in Hamilton, Diocese of Niagara had a Maundy Thursday drive-through foot-washing.

Some might consider the drive-thru foot wash irreverent or disrespectful, the priests acknowledged.

“Sometimes you have to step out of the box,” said Burke.

“We need this kind of diversity,” Murray agreed. “There’s more than one kind of tree in the woods and if we’re kind of fruity, that’s fine.

It’s hard to disagree with that last sentence: the Diocese of Niagara is extremely fruity.

How does a liberal Anglican priest get around the uncomfortable predicament of not actually believing the Christian faith?

One way is illustrated below by Peter Wall, Dean and Rector of Christ’s Church Cathedral, diocese of Niagara. In the first clip, he declares he believes in the Virgin Birth, but he doesn’t know what it means.

He also has no idea what the Resurrection is:

So Peter Wall doesn’t know what the Virgin Birth means and doesn’t know what the Resurrection is, but after “struggling”, against all reason claims – with an air of effete condescension –  he believes both.

It’s no wonder Anglicanism in the West has become a denominational village idiot.

It’s encouraging to know I have the attention of the Diocese of Niagara, but it appears they have absolutely no sense of humour and want to shut me up. I don’t have the details yet, but they are threatening a defamation of character suit, apparently. The pursuit of excellence through compulsive suing.

And all because I just happened to mention the fact that M—–l P——-n has been telling l–s.

Read it all here while you still can.

There was some disagreement on Stand Firm about the legitimacy of my excursion into a diocesan service at St. Hilda’s building to take photos of the inside of the church while the service was in progress. Many people supported my action and some didn’t. I subscribe to a devotional called Every Day With Jesus, and by one of those interesting God-coincidences that occur from time to time, I found this in my inbox this morning:

The next quality of our Lord we consider is His courage. His was not the excited, desperate courage of a battlefield, but the quiet courage He displayed when He confronted difficult issues. Take the matter we have read about today – the cleansing of the Temple. It took great courage on our Lord’s part to walk into the Temple, drive out the money-changers, and insist that His Father’s house be kept as a house of prayer, as the comparable accounts in Matthew and Mark tell us. But He didn’t hesitate to do so. He was angry, of course, but His anger was righteous, not unrighteous, anger. What’s the difference?

Righteous anger arises from grief at what is happening to another; unrighteous anger arises from a grudge at what is happening to oneself. I don’t know about you, but I feel righteously angry at some things that are happening in parts of the Church today – such as the ordination to the ministry of practising homosexuals, the performance of civil partnership ceremonies for people of the same sex and the presentation of discourses based on mere personal opinion and focus group ideas rather than the Word of God.

What do you think our Lord would do if He were here in the flesh today? I think He would make His way into these churches and would say: ‘Get these out of here!’ As followers of Christ, we must have the same kind of righteous anger – an anger that causes us to stand up and say: ‘Such things ought not to be happening.’ Let us be clear, I am not advocating a harsh lovelessness towards those involved in any of the situations mentioned in the previous paragraph. I am simply saying that we should be like Jesus and not compromise on clear moral and spiritual issues.

I don’t usually set too much store by this kind of apparent coincidence, but it did tickle my fancy.

Having recovered from my exciting adventures at the Diocese of Niagara’s Easter Sunday service, I thought I would take a look at how the diocese likes to portray itself:

St. Hilda’s is an Anglican Church in the Diocese of Niagara. To be an Anglican in Niagara is to love Jesus, it is to love the Word of God in Scripture and through them to learn to love not only our neighbours, but our enemies as well. In Christ we learn that we really have no enemies, only brothers and sisters. Together we are called to live like Him, as God’s children, striving to serve goodness in our hearts in our homes and in the world. All are welcome as we learn and grow together in this journey of faith.

Now I don’t regard the diocesan bouncer as my enemy, I really don’t. But, even though I have been accused of being a socially maladroit misfit unable to pick up and adapt to the subtle niceties of acceptable behaviour, I have this funny feeling that when someone shoves you hard, they don’t like you very much. So I fear the bouncer saw me as an enemy.

Perhaps the diocese should revise its description to include: “See how these Christians shove one another!”