Tag Archives: Rev. Michael Thompson

Something fishy in the marriage canon vote recount

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General Secretary, Michael Thompson has released a statement on what went wrong on the first count of the marriage canon vote.

You can read the whole thing from the link above, but let’s focus on this part:

It was at that point that Mr. Copeland, the person supporting the electronic voting, discovered that it was in fact my own vote as General Secretary that had been overlooked in the electronic count. Initially, we thought that it had been miscoded as a lay vote, rather than as a clergy vote. We have since been provided, by Mr. Copeland, the list from which the electronic voting was coded, a list prepared by my office. That list described the General Secretary as “clergy, non-voting”. Data-on-the-spot simply coded the information that my office gave them. This error took place in my office, and I take responsibility for it. We were more than well-served by Data-on-the-spot. In fact, without Mr. Copeland’s prompt attention, I am not sure that we would have discovered the nature of the error and had a chance to understand and correct it.

Thompson is telling us that his vote was “overlooked” because he was categorised as a non-voting member of synod.

The computerised voting system was supplied by Data on the Spot. For an idea of how the system works, take a look at the video here. You will note that “each clicker device has a unique and secure serial number”. That means that the data gathering program would have, as part of its input, a database of serial numbers correlating to each person’s name.

Thompson is claiming that he was designated (and, therefore, his clicker was designated) in the database as a non-voting member of synod. Any computer program worth anything would immediately flag this as an error as soon as the non-voting member used his secure clicker in an attempt to vote. The marriage canon vote was at the end of the synod. How many times had Thompson already used the clicker before this in other votes? Why was the error not flagged before the marriage canon vote?

Either the Data on the Spot programmers have some serious problems with missing error routines in their computer code or….. there is something very fishy going on.

There should be a thorough third party audit of the whole process.

The Anglican Church of Canada smudging the altar

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Today, most people think that Christianity is a collection of antique superstitions no longer fit to be taken seriously by anyone whose reasoning faculties are intact.

This is not true, of course. Christianity is perfectly rational: it has its own set of presuppositions, none of which are less plausible than an atheist’s presumption that God does not exist. The Anglican Church of Canada has its heart set on changing all that: it is busy polluting the elegant inner coherence of Christian belief with vacuous rites whose meaning would stretch the credulity of anyone but an ACoC priest beyond the breaking point.

From here:

As we gathered in the chapel to celebrate Eucharist, our friend and colleague Barbara was preparing to smudge the altar. In attempting to light her sweetgrass braid from the altar candle, she held it too close to the flame and for a moment too long, and the flame sputtered and died.

Well, one of the very best things about extinguishing beeswax candles, as many of us know, is the rich honey scent that the smoke carries across a space as it disperses from the tiny flame into the wide world and then vanishes.

It turns out that at the moment that Barbara’s sweetgrass braid put out the flame, an ember appeared on its tip. Its smoldering smoke joined that of the spreading honey-scented beeswax as Barbara slowly circled the altar. The blending of smoke from sweetgrass and smoke from beeswax filled the space with what you might call a providential aroma; both sweetgrass and beeswax were there, but so was something else, something at once brand new and ancient, the aroma of encounter, partnership, hope.

More like the stink of nonsense.

Michael Thompson appointed General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada

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From here:

The Ven. Dr. Michael Thompson will serve as the Anglican Church of Canada’s next General Secretary, beginning Nov. 1, 2011.

The Ven. Dr. Michael Thompson, rector of St. Jude’s Anglican Church in Oakville, Ont., will serve as the Anglican Church of Canada’s next General Secretary, starting Nov. 1. Archbishop Fred Hiltz, Primate, announced Mr. Thompson’s appointment to Church House staff on Sept. 6.

[….]

“I am confident, friends, that Michael is the person for this position at this time,” wrote the Primate in an email to COGS members.

I’m confident of the same thing. He appeared at St. Hilda’s one Sunday morning just before we voted to separate from the Diocese of Niagara. He was a likeable fellow who confided that he rather admired the certainty of our faith – a certainty which he couldn’t share. What more fitting person to hold the post of Secretary General than one whose uncertainty of what he believes matches that of his employer.