Then there is the Queer Eucharist conducted by Canadian Primate, Fred Hiltz.
So much for walking together with the rest of the Anglican Communion:
If being a peculiar people is not enough for you…
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Tag Archives: Fred Hiltz
Fred Hiltz on the Primates’ gathering
Fred Hiltz tells us what he thinks about the 2016 Primates’ gathering, here.
It seems that Hiltz has taken some heat for not standing “in solidarity with The Episcopal Church. Hiltz assures us that he feels empathy for Michael Curry but not quite enough empathy to accept the “consequences for our own Church”
To make up for this lack of spine, Hiltz apologises profusely to the ACoC homosexual contingent. Over and over.
In case anyone is labouring under the misapprehension that the issue at stake is one of Biblical truth or the definition and meaning of marriage, Hiltz sets us straight: it’s really all about “the very diverse political, cultural, social and missional contexts in which we live”. Or, to put it more plainly: “We are enlightened, they are not.”
The rest of the missive – which is not copied below – is about the usual temporal matters that are so dear to the heart of the Primate of Canada’s Christianity-Lite Anglicans: global warming, and so on.
Throughout the meeting of the Primates last week, I thought much about St. Paul’s teaching about the Church being the Body of Christ in the world. It is the image at the very heart of Anglican ecclesiology. It informs the manner of our relationships in the Church local, national and global. In 165 countries we are 85 million people proclaiming the Gospel of Christ in more than 1000 languages. We are a family of autonomous Churches that understand ourselves to be “Formed by Scripture, Shaped by Worship, Ordered for Communion, and Directed by God’s Mission”. We are bound together by the long held principle of “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ” articulated at the great Anglican Congress of 1963 in Toronto.
While for the most part this principle inspires our common work and witness, there are times when our capacity to abide by it is deeply challenging given the very diverse political, cultural, social and missional contexts in which we live. While being ordered for communion, we recognize that in the face of deep difference of theological conviction over certain matters of faith and doctrine the bonds of affection between us can be strained, sometimes sadly so, to the point of people speaking of a state of impaired communion.
This meeting of the Primates was particularly challenging with respect to the tending of our relationships in light of the developments in The Episcopal Church regarding the change in its Canon on Marriage making provision for the blessing of same sex marriages. I, of course, was deeply mindful of a call from General Synod 2013 for the enacting of a similar change in our own Canon, the first reading of which is scheduled for our General Synod this summer.
Since returning home, I am especially mindful of the pain the LGBTQ community within our Church is feeling. I am very sorry. I acknowledge their frustration and that of their supporters in being made to feel like the sacrificial offering on the altar of the Church’s unity. I recognize that many are angry and deeply disillusioned with the very Church in which they endeavour to live out their lives as disciples of Jesus. I know that for some it is in fact very difficult to remain within its fellowship, and that it will take a great resolve of will and courage to do so.
I apologize for the manner in which the Church has often regarded the LGBTQ community and condemned their lives with very harsh language. I call on our Church to re-affirm its commitment to rejecting anywhere in the world criminal sanctions against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer or questioning people. I call on our Church to renew its resolve in listening to the voices and the stories of its LGBTQ members as we wrestle through conversations regarding the pastoral care we are called to provide for all people. I ask the prayers of the whole Church for the LGBTQ people in the midst of the hurt they are bearing and the hope to which they cling for the recognition and sacramental blessing of their relationships.
I am aware of sharp criticism over what some regard to have been a failure on my part to stand in solidarity with The Episcopal Church in openly rejecting the relational consequences it bears as a result of The Primates’ Meeting, or in accepting similar consequences for our own Church. Allow me to comment on each of these matters.
First, in relation to The Episcopal Church, I empathize with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry as he faces a firestorm of reaction in the United States. I recognize a need for a space of time in which that Church will respond through its National Executive Council. Notwithstanding the call of a majority of the Primates for the “consequences” named in the Communiqué, I recognize that there could well be a response from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council. I know The Episcopal Church to be very committed to the work and witness of the Communion as a whole, and I recognize the frustration they will feel in not serving in a representative way on our Ecumenical Dialogues for example. I recognize that if The Episcopal Church is not allowed to vote on a matter of doctrine or polity that the life of the Communion is diminished. I am grateful however, that they will still have a voice in the discussions of such matters.
I have covenanted with Bishop Curry to uphold him and The Episcopal Church in my prayers, and I would ask the same of our whole Church. I was deeply impressed by the grace with which he spoke at The Primates’ Meeting. While declaring in no uncertain terms the pain he was feeling for the Church he leads, he was absolutely convinced that in good faith the General Convention acted. He recognized the strain that places on relationships throughout the Communion, and he declared his unwavering commitment – in spite of the said consequences – to walk together in the hope of “healing a legacy of hurt, rebuilding mutual trust, and restoring relationships”. He was a stellar example of leadership under pressure, of courage with grace.
Secondly in relation to our own Church. For me to have entertained any thought of accepting consequences for our own Church would have been an overstepping of my authority. To do so would have been a betrayal of my office as President of The General Synod. I was not and am not prepared to take any action that would pre-empt the outcome of our deliberations at General Synod in July. As the report “This Holy Estate” declares, “It is for the General Synod to decide the matter” in accord with the jurisdiction given it regarding “the definition of doctrine in harmony with the Solemn Declaration”. (The Declaration of Principles, 6. Jurisdiction of The General Synod [j]). I believe in the synodical process and by the ministry entrusted to me, I am obliged to uphold it.
In this entire matter our Church has faithfully honoured the call within the Resolution (C003) of General Synod 2013 for broad consultation across our Church, throughout the Communion and with our ecumenical partners. Alongside all the counsel received and noted in “This Holy Estate”, including that of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) one could indeed regard the outcome of The Primates’ Meeting as another piece of information.
I ask your prayers for the members of the Council of General Synod in the task mandated to them to bring forward a resolution to the General Synod to affect a change in the Marriage Canon. I ask your prayers for the General Synod Planning Committee in the care they will take in designing a process for our consideration of this matter. I ask your prayers for all the members of General Synod that they will enter into their work well prepared and with a commitment to speak and listen respectfully and in openness to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
While the meeting of the Primates was particularly challenging with respect to relationships throughout the Communion, there was about midway through a declared unanimous continue walking together and not apart. This meeting could have been marked by calls for exclusion of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and me. It was not. It could have been marked by walk-outs as some had anticipated. It was not. It could have been marked by ranting and raving. It was not. Instead it was marked by perseverance to remain in dialogue that was frank but respectful. It was marked by a generosity of grace and patience, with one another. It was marked too, by renewed commitments in the consideration of matters of doctrine that could be of a controversial nature, to consult broadly in the seeking of advice and counsel.
We were reminded once again of the principle named by the Windsor Continuation Group that “when the Primates speak collectively, or in a united or unanimous manner, their advice – while it is no more than advice – nevertheless needs to be received with a readiness to undertake reflection and accommodation”. While there have been calls through the years for “an enhanced authority” on the part of The Primates’ Meeting, there has been – and rightly so – a resistance to the meeting becoming a Curia for the Communion. We recognize that we are but one of The Instruments of Communion which is the only body with a Constitution outlining its objects and powers, all of which are focussed in one way or another on our relationships in the service of God’s mission in the world.
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Fred Hiltz asks for prayer and hopes for openness at the Primates’ gathering
The gathering of Anglican Primates in Canterbury is due to begin on Monday. While the GAFCON primates have been clear that they expect TEC and the ACoC to repent of their blessing and marrying of same-sex couples, Canada’s Primate, Fred Hiltz, sees a need for “mutual openness” and a
need to confess any and all ‘uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbours and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,’” quoting from the Book of Alternative Services’ Litany of Penitence for Ash Wednesday.
We can only hope Hiltz takes his own advice since ACNA’s Foley Beach will be present, as will ANiC’s Moderator, Charlie Masters; the first day could easily be filled with nothing but Hiltz confessing uncharitable thoughts.
Let us, as Hiltz suggests, pray: that attempts to bamboozle or divide the GAFCON Primates would be thwarted; that truth will take precedence over phony unity; that loyalty to Jesus will be set above loyalty to an institution; that something will finally be settled, even if it’s merely a formal recognition that we now have two denominations with two gospels, worshipping two different gods.
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A Fred Hiltz Christmas
In his Christmas message, Fred Hiltz tells us that “as I read the Christmas story, I am always taken by the way we portray the innkeeper”, an odd fascination for an archbishop, since in the Biblical account of Christmas, there is no mention of an innkeeper. Still, the important thing about Christmas isn’t that it is an event of cosmic significance around which all history pivots, because God himself entered time as a baby, but that Canada must accept more Syrian migrants.
And for that we need an innkeeper.
The other problem is that Hiltz completely forgets about the little drummer boy.
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Fred Hiltz to protest climate change
By burning jet fuel.
From here:
The United Nations climate change conference – Cop21 – begins next week in Paris, and there will be a large Anglican and ecumenical presence at the two-week event to lobby for a fair deal for the world’s poorest people – those most affected by catastrophic changes in the world’s climate……..
The Anglican presence will be headed by two primates: Archbishop Thabo Makgoba from the Anglican Church of Southern Africa; and Archbishop Fred Hiltz, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.
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Fred Hiltz: Surprised by Hope
As I was reading the article below, I had one eye and ear trained on CNN, listening to the unfolding terror crisis in Paris. In a juxtaposition that strains the boundaries of opposites, while France has just closed its borders, has imposed the first curfew since 1944 and has declared a state of emergency, Fred Hiltz, because a liberal government that plans to absorb 25,000 Middle-Eastern migrants by Christmas – sorry, Holiday Season – has been elected, is overcome with hope for the future.
From here:
While seeming to disavow any political partisanship, Hiltz said the new federal government also gave him much hope for the future.
“I’m not a politician—you all know that—but I tell you, this is a time of hope for this country,” he said. The Liberal government, he said, appears to have social priorities much in line with those of the church, as even some new departmental names seem to suggest—the former Department of Immigration and Citizenship will now be known as the Department of Citizenship, Refugees and Immigration. He applauded, too, the naming of an Aboriginal woman, Jody Wilson-Raybould, as the country’s new justice minister and attorney general.
“If that’s not hope, I don’t know what is,” Hiltz said of Wilson-Raybould’s appointment.
“I’m not wearing red today, but I think there is in this country a hopefulness that we’ve not seen for some time,” he said. The new cabinet seemed to collectively include a great deal of “respect, and proven expertise, and experience and abiding passion for community development, foreign aid and global concerns,” he added. “We actually as a country have some recovering to do with respect to our place among the nations, and I think there’s a time of hope that is before us.”
Apparently, there is “synergy” between the Liberals and the Anglican Church of Canada; who would have guessed that?
While Hiltz and Johnson, like many other church leaders, remained non-partisan throughout the long campaign—focusing instead on the issues they would like to see dealt with, such as poverty, reconciliation and environmental stewardship—the Anglican church’s special advisor for government relations, the Rev. Laurette Glasgow, noted that there is “a greater synergy between the priorities of our church and those of the incoming government” than there has been in recent years.
“Synergy”, as I am sure you know, means:
the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects
In this context, synergy is a good thing: the combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects means that the ACoC and Liberal Party will be mutually hastening each other into oblivion more quickly than each could alone. That’s the optimist in me speaking: try as I might, I don’t really suppose the ACoC has the wherewithal to pull the Liberal Party down the Ecclesiastical toilet after it.
Hiltz goes on to note that:
despite the considerable sensitivity of the issue and the difficulty the church has had in the past coming to decisions around sexuality, he was optimistic about the discussions around the marriage canon expected at the General Synod next summer……
“I am uneasy with the rhetoric in the Communion that talks about how fragile the Communion is, or how broken it is—that’s not my read.”
At least Hiltz is consistent in his misreading of reality.
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Justin Welby and the Dead Parrot
There have been numerous articles – here is an example – written about Justin Welby’s attempt to inject an illusory aura of unity into something that has been decomposing since it expired in 2003: the Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams tried to do this too by channelling Hegel; he failed miserably – does anyone remember the Covenant? – and retreated to academia.
Justin Welby is inviting the Anglican primates to a “special gathering” in January 2016 to “look afresh at our ways of working as a Communion”.
The Anglican Church of Canada has its own parochial perspective on all this. In a 2012 visit to see Justin Welby, Fred Hiltz expressed his “ongoing concern about efforts by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to be recognized by the Church of England”. The last thing the rapidly dwindling Anglican Church of Canada needs is more competition from another Anglican Province in North America – one that is recognised by Canterbury. Hiltz’s worst fears may be coming to a nail-biting climax since ACNA’s Foley Beach has been invited to the January 2016 gathering; it looks likely that he will attend. The Anglican Journal sees this as “fuelling the controversy”, omitting the obvious fact that the controversy was ignited by Hiltz and Jefferts-Shori in the first place when they decided to promote same-sex blessings in spite of strenuous protests from the rest of the Communion:
Fuelling the controversy was an invitation extended by Welby to Archbishop Foley Beach, head bishop of the Anglican Church in North America, to be present for part of the meeting.
Welby points out:
We each live in a different context.
“The difference between our societies and cultures, as well as the speed of cultural change in much of the global north, tempts us to divide as Christians: when the command of scripture, the prayer of Jesus, the tradition of the church and our theological understanding urges unity. A 21st-century Anglican family must have space for deep disagreement, and even mutual criticism, so long as we are faithful to the revelation of Jesus Christ, together.
If that sounds like the old familiar Anglican Fudge it’s probably because it is. The ACoC and TEC are not “faithful to the revelation of Jesus Christ”. That has always been the problem, is still the problem and unless Jesus returns before January will almost certainly continue to be the problem.
Happily, the GAFCON primates, having already been fed Anglican Fudge to the point of gagging, see what is going on perfectly clearly and have issued something that is quite unfamiliar to Western Anglicans: a lucid statement. It contains this:
It is on this basis that the GAFCON Primates will prayerfully consider their response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter. They recognize that the crisis in the Communion is not primarily a problem of relationships and cultural context, but of false teaching which continues without repentance or discipline.
For my part, I am somewhat indifferent to the outcome of the “special gathering”. My main interest is to be a part of an institution that is easily identifiable as a Christian Church, something that, while sober, I could not accuse the Anglican Church of Canada of.
I just wish I could be in the room when the GAFCON primates tell Fred Hiltz and Michael Curry that they must repent of their false teaching.
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Primate hopes marriage canon debates will be respectful
The object on which an Anglican bishop rests his hope rarely fails to confirm my low expectations.
Fred Hiltz could be hoping that the outcome of the debate will align with the Biblical understanding of marriage or, to say it another way, with God’s will for a Christian marriage. Instead, he hopes that there will not be too much squabbling.
From here:
Archbishop Fred Hiltz said he is aware that there is anxiety among Anglicans about how the 2016 General Synod will deal with a motion amending the marriage canon (church law) to allow the marriage of same-sex couples.
Hiltz expressed hope that the debates that will precede any decision will be conducted with respect and patience.
He is praying, he added, that people will “know the leading of the Holy Spirit” and that there will be “grace in the midst of what will be a very difficult and challenging conversation.”
[……]
In July 2013, General Synod — the church’s governing body — approved Resolution C003, which asked Council of General Synod (CoGS) to prepare and present a motion to change the church’s Canon 21 on marriage “to allow the marriage of same-sex couples in the same way as opposite-sex couples.”
It also asked that this motion include “a conscience clause so that no member of the clergy, bishop, congregation or diocese should be constrained to participate in our authorize [sic] such marriages against the dictates of their conscience.”
It’s hard to take the prayer “know the leading of the Holy Spirit” seriously, since the “conscience clause” (not that anyone takes that particularly seriously since those that exercise it will be ridiculed, ostracised and eventually driven out) anticipates disunity, something that would not be present if the delegates were more interested in being informed by the Holy Spirit than in using him as rubber stamp for their own opinions.
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An Earth Day message from Fred Hiltz and Susan Johnson
From here:
Let us remember our first calling as human beings is caring for the Earth. So sacred is this calling that as Lutherans worldwide mark the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in 2017 with an overall theme “Liberated by God’s Grace,” one of the subthemes is “Creation—not for sale.” So sacred is this calling to Anglicans worldwide that they hold among their Marks of Mission a commitment “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain and renew the life of the earth.” This mark of mission is now reflected in the vows made in baptism.
I don’t dislike pollution any less than Fred Hiltz but, surely, “our first calling as human beings” – or, at least as Christians – is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the unsaved, not to “care for the earth.” The earth is not a sentient living thing made in God’s image, possessing a soul whose eternal destiny rests on whether or not it has received Christ’s free gift of salvation. It is just like the rest of the universe, a system which is subject to entropy; it is running down, degenerating gradually into disorder until God remakes it as part of the New Heavens and New Earth.
That is, unless, as appears to be the case for the purveyors of this Earth Day Statement, your god is Gaia.
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Episcopal Church of Cuba votes to return to TEC
Presently it is affiliated with the Anglican Church of Canada.
From here:
Members of synod for the Episcopal Church of Cuba narrowly voted in favour of returning to the church’s former affiliation with The Episcopal Church at their recent meeting last month in Cardenas, Cuba.
The move came two months after the historic decision by the United States and Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations after a 54-year hiatus. The Cuban church had been part of a province in The Episcopal Church until the 1959 revolution, which made travel and communication between the two churches difficult. The Metropolitan Council of Cuba (MCC)—which includes primates of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Province of West Indies and The Episcopal Church—was subsequently created to provide support and oversight.
Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and Archdeacon Michael Thompson, general secretary, attended the synod—which ran from Feb. 19 to 22—as representatives of the MCC.
This will mean a big change for Cuban Anglicans: they will move from a Province that is radically liberal, blesses same-sex unions, boasts practising gay clergy, believes dogma is redundant, and is losing people faster than Obama is losing votes to a Province that that is radically liberal, blesses same-sex unions, boasts practising gay clergy, believes dogma is redundant, and is losing people faster than Obama is losing votes.
The decision was made, it seems, largely so Cuban clergy could retrieve their pension funds, proving that, no matter how vehemently they may protest otherwise, when it comes to their livelihood, Cuban clergy are just like their North American brothers: capitalist running dogs:
Hiltz went on to explain that one of the significant factors behind the drafting of the substitute resolution is “the frustration of a number of people in the church in Cuba with the fact that since the break with The Episcopal Church and the political situation between Cuba and U.S., the pension fund for clergy has just basically been frozen [in the U.S.].”
