Tag Archives: Niagara Anglican

Niagara Anglican circulation numbers

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In one year the Niagara Anglican’s (the Diocese of Niagara’s paper) circulation has declined by 6.4%. This is due to the “[i]ncapacity or death” of former recipients.

It’s not unreasonable to infer that the decline in circulation is at least matched if not exceeded by an equivalent 6.4% decline in membership.

Interestingly, the circulation numbers include parishes that have left the diocese – there are 4; I and others in the departed congregations continue to receive the paper – so basing membership on the circulation numbers probably yields an inflated figure.

You will be please to know that $426,573 of your tax dollars have contributed to distributing Anglican Church of Canada newspapers.

From here (Page 4):

In her 2013 report to the recent Anglican Editors Association conference, Senior Manager Beverley Murphy provided the following information:

• Total circulation [of the Anglican Journal] was down 4.49% since last year;

• Incapacity or death is the reason given in most instances for cancellation;

• Electronic updates average 72 per week;

• Majority of updates are sent by parishes via regular mail;

• Half of all circulation emails come from individuals, then parishes (36.7%) and dioceses (13.3%);

• The Canada Periodical Fund provided a grant ($426,573 from April 2012 to April

2013) which basically covers half of all mailing costs for the Anglican Journal and the 23 diocesan newspapers;

• The Canada Post’s Address Accuracy Program compares subscribers’ addresses with valid addresses on Canada Post’s database. All diocesan papers have sustained the required rate of 95% accuracy.

In 2012, the Niagara Anglican had an accuracy rate of 98.5%.

In June 2012, the Niagara Anglican had a circulation of 10,406, which stood at 9,740 in September this year. It is the fifth largest among the diocesan papers.

Toronto Anglican is the largest, followed by Anglican Life (Newfoundland and Labrador), Huron Church News and the Diocesan Times (Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island). The total Anglican Journal circulation for June 2012 was 155,383 subscribers compared with 143,510 in September 2013.

Diocese of Niagara: distributive justice is the primary message of the Bible

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Forget about individual sin, eternity, Jesus dying for our sins, reconciliation with God, the cross, the Atonement, the Resurrection, glorifying God as a purpose for living. At last the true message of the Bible can be revealed, courtesy of the Niagara Anglican. It’s all about the government taking money from people whom it thinks have too much and giving it to people who have too little – in practice, government employees.

The Bible is full of examples of Jesus petitioning the Romans to take money from the wealthy and give it to the poor; I just can’t put my finger on any at the moment.

As Jesus said in Luke 6:20: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of the welfare state.”

From here (page 8):

On the weekend in mid-October when the Occupy Wall Street movement appeared in cities in Canada and around the world, a Biblical scholar explicated the timeless message of God’s will, as taught by Jesus, Paul and the Old Testament prophets, for distributive justice for all peoples. His key phrase, distributive justice, refers to a peaceful, democratic community with an economy characterized by a just distribution of the essentials of life, as opposed to the injustice that characterizes a military dictatorship claiming to bring peace through victory.

[….]

The necessary revolution in our age, as in Jesus’ time, is to create God’s kingdom of distributive justice in our earthly societies. This is also the primary message of the Bible.

 

The attack of the mutant alphabet: LGBTTTIQQAA

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No, my head didn’t just fall on the keyboard. This apparently random collection of letters does mean something. Here goes: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirited, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, and Allies.

Although I am not an expert on the fine distinction between these vocations, there is an organisation that can educate anyone prepared to disconnect their critical faculties.

If only the Rev. Hollis Hiscock had availed himself of this education  before penning an article in the Niagara Anglican and getting himself in a bit of a muddle. The Rev. writes:

Our goals include building bridges with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirited, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, and Ally (LGBTTTIQQAA) communities, educating people and promoting St. Christopher’s church as “a more welcoming, affirming and safe church” for everyone.

Affirming and welcoming what, you may wonder: LGBTTTIQQAAs (I’m unsure of the plural of LGBTTTIQQAA – should the final “s” be capitalised, is it plural without the “s”? Who knows. Who cares), of course.

Rev. Hiscock: in my eagerness for maximal inclusion, you have no idea how long I spent looking for the new, hitherto unexplored sexual deviation – the Ally orientation – only to discover, in my frustration and disappointment, that you had no idea what you were talking about. You meant “allies”: allies of the other letters – which, in my unceasing efforts to be a Green Anglican by conserving bandwidth, I won’t repeat.

Unfortunately, Rev. Hollis Hiscock has just been appointed as the new editor of the Niagara Anglican, replacing Chris Grabiec. I look forward with dismay to many more meaningless, misinterpreted acronyms strewn extravagantly amongst the wasteland of degenerate tripe that represents the worst Canadian Anglicanism has to offer.

And it’s all at the taxpayer’s expense.

 

 

Nailing Jesus down in the Diocese of Niagara

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Malcolm Muggeridge, in the title of his essay Tread Softly for you tread on my Jokes, was referring  to the difficulty of parodying an institution which, through its own self-parodying, was already surpassing all possible outside efforts.

Thus I realise the futility of attempting to compete with the nescient witlessness – blind to irony or inadvertent allusion – of a contributor to the rag of a post-Christian Anglican denomination in writing this phrase about Christ: “there’s a mystery about him the moment we try to nail him down”.

The Diocese of Niagara’s September edition of its paper arrived on my doorstep this morning; as of this writing, it isn’t online. The same article goes on to note that the Nicene Creed is so fourth century:

I have to admit that I don’t find the traditional Nicene formula of the 4th. Century a good fit in the 21st. I’m thankful that in our church, St. George’s, Guelph, we seldom use the Nicene Creed.

Let’s all stand and sing John Lennon’s Imagine.

The Good News, the Gospel, is that God is in everyone so he is really, really inclusive and we’re all reconciled to him, like it or not; take that Christopher Hitchens:

the good news, as I see it is that God is in the world, in everybody. Thank God we’re an inclusive church, but how inclusive is inclusive? I believe as Paul said, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. That’s our good news to the world. Heaven is on earth. God loves everyone. He lives in and among us, as Our Father. We’re all reconciled to Him. This was Jesus’ message, misunderstood by the Pharisees and many today.

There is no Fall, no sin, no need for a Saviour, no future heaven or hell, no transcendence and, so…… no point:

But what is the good news? Is it the tradition that if we’re good girls and boys we’ll go to heaven? Or, if we believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior? Lord perhaps, but savior? Savior from what? He does say that if we believe in Him (God who so loved the world, or Jesus himself?) we shall not perish, but have eternal life. But there’s no past or future in eternity, only a perpetual present, the eternal now. If this be so, the present should be our chief, and only, concern, not after we die. Heaven and Hell are present realities.

Apparently, we don’t actually know who Jesus was, so we might as well let everyone decide for himself – after all, we wouldn’t want to exclude someone (the only sin left) who thinks he is the reincarnation of the Easter bunny – that would lead to confusion and conflict:

God is chiefly drawn from his [Jesus’] life, as recorded in the Scriptures. But there’s a mystery about him the moment we try to nail him down. Why not dispense with creed making, and let each person find out who Jesus is for her or himself? Orthodoxy leads only to confusion, conflict and exclusion.

So, welcome to church where nothing is real, transcendent or believable but at least you will feel  included in the gibbering crackpot collective known as the Diocese of Niagara.