Category Archives: Anglican Church of Canada

As the Anglican World Turns

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In 2007, the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada decided that blessing same sex unions is consistent with the core doctrine of The Anglican Church of Canada. I’m not sure I could present a convincing argument against that: the core doctrine of the ACoC meandered away from Biblical truth a few decades ago, so embracing something explicitly forbidden in the Bible fit’s quite comfortably within the increasingly porous confines of what passes for core doctrine in the ACoC.

Still, resolution A186 provoked considerable debate, much of it bitter. As a result, the 2010 General Synod, rather than restarting the debate on same-sex unions and their place within the ACoC, came up instead with a sexuality discernment statement. In seven paragraphs, it manages to use “conversations” six times, “dialogue” six times, “discernment” six times, “diverse” and its variations four times and “transparency” twice; “Christ” was mentioned twice as well, but I expect that was an oversight. “Sex”, ostensibly what the document was about, was mentioned just once, thus confirming the obvious: the statement was prophetic propaganda from the ACoC’s department of missional disinformation. It was designed to obfuscate and divert attention away from the issue.

The 2013 General Synod unravelled much of the sterling work of its predecessor. Resolution C003 asked the Council of General Synod to go a significant step further than same-sex blessings and “prepare and present a motion at General Synod 2016 to change Canon XXI on Marriage to allow the marriage of same sex couples” (my emphasis).

At the recent COGS meeting, Fred Hiltz said:

When Resolution C003 passed, “the truce was broken and once again we find ourselves in the midst of chaos,” Hiltz quoted these bishops as having said.

The chaos was always there even though the 2010 GS tried to pretend otherwise; a few members of COGS, heads firmly in the sand, wish to return to the halcyon days of 2010 Anglican fence-sitting:

[s]ome wondered whether there was a way to “come up with a neutral recommendation” at General Synod.

Like it or not, same-sex marriage is coming to the Anglican Church of Canada eventually. There are only two ways of stopping it: the ACoC ceases to exist before it summons the backbone to announce a decision or God decides it is worth saving after all and brings repentance to its clergy.

Fred Hiltz soft pedals changes to the marriage canon that will allow same-sex marriage

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It’s nothing to worry about because: there can be no final decision before 2019 and who knows what could happen by then – Hiltz could retire, Jesus could return (a real shock to the ACoC, since it believes in the parousia as fervently as I believe in unicorns); other parts of the communion will be “consulted” (and ignored if they disagree); it will be discussed in dioceses (over and over and over again until the opposition weaken from exhaustion).

Anyway, no priest who is indifferent to his career prospects will be compelled to perform same sex marriages.

From here:

That question might be particularly relevant when it comes to controversial matters such as the resolution passed by General Synod in Ottawa, which asks the Council of General Synod to draft a motion to be considered by the next General Synod, when it meets in 2016, to amend the marriage canon to allow same-sex couples to marry, with a conscience clause that gives any clergy, bishop, congregation or diocese that objects the option of not participating. The primate said he had heard from bishops across the theological spectrum that they had experienced “a sense of peace” about the issue after General Synod 2010 published its pastoral statement, following its meeting in Halifax, which they did not experience after the resolution was passed this summer in Ottawa.

The issue is not for the House of Bishops to resolve; it is a matter for the Council of General Synod and the order of bishops in General Synod, Hiltz acknowledged, but he said he opened the discussion with the bishops, understanding that there are tensions and concerns around the issue.

“There’s been a huge effort in the life of the church to talk about this as a pastoral response, not a change of doctrine, and now it feels like the ground has shifted,” Hiltz said. The change to a question of doctrine creates difficulties in dioceses where bishops “have worked really hard to hold all voices and all people together,” and where some people are asking how this shift happened. The motion, he noted, came from individual members of General Synod, not the Council of General Synod or a diocese.

While the issue has been divisive, the primate said he did not have a sense of lines hardening within the House of Bishops. “We reminded one another that, because it is a doctrinal matter, it will take two successive general synods to do anything in terms of a final decision anyway, and between the first and second reading it would be discussed in provinces and dioceses.” The bishops considered the international reaction and said, “we ought not have this conversation in isolation, that we should be consulting with other parts of the Communion,” said Hiltz, who will relay the bishops’ input to CoGS.

Anglican Peace in Our Time

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At the recent Toronto Pan-Anglican Congress, Rev. Canon Christopher Seitz summarised the aggressive plans for a stalwart defence of conservative orthodoxy: they intend to go down with a whimper .

Sietz, acknowledging that that battle has already been lost, concentrated on whether conservative parishes will be permitted to retain their orthodoxy. In other words, the retreat continues apace: no more reforming North American Anglicanism from within; the best conservatives are now hoping for is to be ignored by their dioceses, as they remain (if they are permitted to remain, that is) little islands of orthodoxy afloat in a festering swamp of heresy. Anything to preserve unity.

Read it all here:

Conservatives should seek terms for a negotiated peace to the Anglican wars, the Rev. Canon Christopher Seitz, Old Testament Scholar and Senior Research Professor at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto and a leader of the Anglican Communion Institute told a conference marking the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 Toronto Pan-Anglican Congress.

The battle had been lost leaving conservatives as “strangers in their own church,” he said on 18 Sept 2013, and “the question for conservatives [now] is about encouragement. Will we be allowed to walk the well-worn paths of the faith,” he asked “or must we follow the trailblazers?”

[….]

But the political battled had been fought, and the conservatives had lost. It was “no longer a matter of saying the new ways are wrong. That point has passed. “

“We are in a new time. It is now here. We can see a before or after” in the Episcopal Church since the consecration of Gene Robinson and in the rise to power of Katharine Jefferts Schori. One group has been defeated” and “traditional Anglicans have lost a battle.”

There is now “no single understanding” of the faith. New Prayer Books will emerge that will enshrine the majority faction’s dogmas. The question for conservatives is not whether they can stop this but if the majority will allow “two rites [to] exist side by side.”

Prof. Seitz noted the “intermediate steps” taken at the 2012 to allow each bishop to approve or reject local gay marriage rites had “no long term integrity.”  The General Convention endorsed “diocesan autonomy here, but rejects it elsewhere.”

In the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada “we are in a genuinely new time. A time of accomplishment and tidying up,” Prof Seitz said, and this is “why encouragement matters” for conservatives remaining in these churches. “Others have left us and our blazing new trails,” but not all hear the call to depart.

Encouragement for the conservative remnant “would be allowing the status quo ante. Not a new church allowing traditional Anglicans” a home, but the existing churches giving conservatives “the moral space and right to exist.”

“Will dioceses and parishes be permitted to do what has been done before,” he asked. Will we be given the “moral space to conserve our traditions? Can bishops let go of parishes? Can dioceses choose to say no? Can we [as Episcopalians] remain a valued and trustworthy expression of the church catholic?”

[….]

“Conservative parishes are waiting and trusting,” he said, as “God is hiding his face for a season for his own purposes.”

Perhaps God is hiding his face because the conservative parishes still in TEC and the ACoC have ignored his call to disentangle themselves from institutional apostasy.

Today was “Back to Church Sunday”

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Back to Church Sunday is not to be confused with returning to Christ, of course; this is, after all, the Canadian Anglican Church.

In 2009 Toronto bishops dressed up in all their finery and handed out leaflets outside Union Station:

29-09-2013 5-05-55 PM

There hasn’t been a repeat performance by the bishops. As one observer noted:

Well intentioned, but . . well, those of my friends who are not now churchgoers wouldn’t go to church because a scary, robed bishop gave them a leaflet.

He has a point: the Anglican Church of Canada in its desperate quest for relevance, contorts its beliefs to accommodate contemporary culture – from same-sex marriage to there being many ways to God to having no set dogma at all, just community whose commonality is doctrinal incoherence.

The one thing that visibly separates bishops from the common herd is the one thing they won’t give up: dressing up in robes and pointy hats. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Bishop Patrick Yu’s remarks in the Toronto Back to the Anglican Future Conference

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Bishop Patrick Yu is a bishop in the Diocese of Toronto. He is a self-proclaimed conservative bishop who has decided to stay put in the Anglican Church of Canada.

He spoke towards the end of the Toronto Back to the Anglican Future Conference and Sue Careless, Senior Editor at the Anglican Planet, recorded and transcribed what he said. She kindly gave permission to post his remarks here.

You can draw your own conclusions about Bishop Yu’s remarks, so I will confine myself to just one thing that struck me:

In the second paragraph Bishop Yu laments the limited theological diversity of those attending the conference and in paragraph six, perhaps forgetting what he said in paragraph two, laments the presence of “people ordained by other communions sitting in this room [who] still tend to plant churches in Toronto”. Evidently a diversity too far.

Bishop Patrick Yu. Photo: Sue Careless

Bishop Patrick Yu. Photo: Sue Careless

On Sept. 18th when Dr George Sumner, Principal of Wycliffe College, opened the last ten minutes of the Back to the Anglican Future Conference to a question-and-answer period, Patrick Yu, the area bishop for York Scarborough in the Diocese of Toronto, stepped up to the podium at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Bloor Street and used the full ten minutes to deliver the following comments:

I would like to speak on a point of privilege.

This conference is not as geographically and theologically as diverse as the Toronto Congress [of 1963] was. I wish it was more theologically diverse.

In this Diocese [of Toronto] people are not judged or driven out by their theological convictions. We have canons and even bishops who self-identify as conservatives. I was a founding member of Fidelity, a group set up to have a conservative discussion about homosexuality. Paul Feheley was the vice-president and we still have our jobs. [Feheley is currently Principal Secretary, Primate’s Office of the Anglican Church of Canada.] I do not want any students or clergy or international guests to think that here in the Diocese of Toronto we persecute conservatives.

The question was asked: “How can we support conservatives? I have two comments. I would like to question the definition of the word ‘orthodox’. Are there only 1,000 orthodox priests in the United States? I known they are in a bad way but surely there are more than that? We can define orthodoxy in terms of one’s belief in the Trinitarian formularies of the Church, in one’s commitment to Christ, in adherence to the Scriptures, and the historical creeds. But I have been guilty in the past of putting those who disagree with me theologically as unorthodox.  As someone has said, “Orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is your doxy.” I have met unfortunately unorthodox conservatives as well as orthodox liberals and the converse is also true.

I have personally suffered as a conservative who did not leave the church and there was guilt by association internationally. I think that when we castigate people in the United States and Canada or both if you are there [staying in the church] you must be in the ranks of sinners. It makes conservatives who decide to stay in this church very fearful.

I am the first Chinese bishop and the only one in Canada and I must say that all of the four Chinese churches in Toronto have adopted a conservative stance towards the issue of homosexuality. And it is to their great surprise, disdain and anger when someone ordained a bishop from the Province of Rwanda comes without their knowledge and begins to lure their parishioners away. And I understand that other people ordained by other communions sitting in this room still tend to plant churches in Toronto. That does not help conservatives who stay in the church. And as speaker once said: “If we are not at the table, we cannot contribute to development in the future.”

Lastly, a lot has been spoken about being victims. I caution you – particularly our international friends – to be very cautious in listening to victim narratives. In Canada victim narrative is one of the most powerful political forces around. Our gay and lesbian friends have used this narrative very powerfully and very successfully. For those who attempted to claim victim it is a very tempting short-term tool but in the long term it is very damaging. It helps you to think of yourself as always the outsider. My counsel is to go into the church and act as if you own it, because it is your church. This church is for conservatives and liberals. My mentor Professor Oliver O’Donovan who was one of the authors of the St Andrews Day statement said: “We invite everyone who confesses the Trinitarian formularies of the Church into this discussion.” So when we protest about being excluded, let us be aware not to exclude others from the conversation.

I also speak as the convener of the Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative of the Anglican Communion. Now it is called Anglican Witness. I have to say that people’s experience of Lambeth [2008] was very different. I agree with Archbishop Ian Ernest that evangelism is a difficult topic here as well as in your diocese. When people think about Lambeth they think about sex. Actually the other issue that was very prominent in the report of the indaba discussions was the strong commitment to evangelism. My organization was a follow-up of that.

Let me share with you my own five years of involvement in that organization. When you talk of evangelism with people from Nigeria and Canada and Solomon Islands and South Africa and Burundi there is very little disagreement even though our perspectives on certain theological issues must be very different. So it seems to me we can talk about the Anglican Communion in terms of its organization, and indeed in terms of its issues and problems but when we do that we would commit our resources in a certain way. But if we commit our resources in terms of evangelism and mission, it seems to me that the things that divide us, the problems that seem intractable, may not be so intractable after all.

I’m very glad that Justin Welby spoke to us. We met in London… He said: “I have only two priorities for my archepiscopate. One is reconciliation and the other is evangelism.” My prayer for the Communion is not overcoming [differences] as that seems more difficult but with our differences and with our imperfect instruments we will take into account and deeply embrace the mission and evangelism that is God’s call to us. Then we may discover that we have a Communion after all. God bless you and that’s my response of my privilege.

***

Dr. Sumner then concluded with: “Part of our hope is free exchange, hearing and being heard, candor, parrhesia, free expression. That is certainly our goal at Wycliffe College: theological reflection with a free expression of views. That is a good thing. Our promise was 9pm. Our time is done.”

Anglican Church of Canada: the “I’m so sorry” celebration

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It’s an odd thing for an organisation to celebrate apologising for abusing children but, then, the Anglican Church of Canada is an odd thing.

Here they are celebrating a 20 year old apology for sexually, physically and emotionally abusing children. It’s a nauseatingly self-congratulatory statement, awash with revolting faux-humility, lamenting the supposed attempt to remake the children in a white man’s image.

That was never the problem: the problem was that those who abused the children were not Christians; they couldn’t have been. The Anglican Church of Canada’s fault was – as it is today – allowing those who believed and peddled a false gospel to remain within its leadership ranks.

As if to compensate, the ACoC in its sacred circles and smudging ceremonies has, for some time, been attempting to remake itself in an aboriginal image.

Anglican Church in Canada celebrates the twentieth year since the apology to American Indians in Canada

Twenty years ago, on August 6 1993, the Anglican Church in Canada apologized to the Canadian-American Indians, who attended Anglican residential school in Canada.

Like the United States, Canada also did their share to destroy various nations and people, using both genocide and their own brand of Carlisle Schools, but Canada’s government and Anglican Church gave a formal public apology.

Today, the Anglican Church in Canada celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Church’s apology.

Archbishop Michael Peers listened the stories of the Natives and felt moved to make amends. During the National Native Convocation in Minaki, Ontario on August 6 1993 Peers, devoted to healing, gave an apology for how the Church treated the Natives in Anglican residential schools.

He made a series of “I’m sorry” statements, which included an apology for the Church’s sexual, physical, and emotional abuses, attempting to remake them into the White man’s image, taking away their identities, and then stated that he understood words are meaningless and action means more.

Cardboard cut-out police cut crime

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From here:

As part of an effort to cut crime at the Alewife MBTA subway and bus station in Cambridge, transit police placed a cardboard cutout of a police officer in the bicycle cage. Hundreds of people use the racks daily.

Deputy Chief Robert Lenehan says the fake cop, along with video cameras and a new lock, has cut bike thefts by 67 percent.

It’s also a money saver. Lenehan estimates it would cost $200,000 a year to have an officer watch over the cage full-time.

The Anglican Church of Canada could learn something from this: replacing bishops with cardboard cut-out replicas would save Anglicans millions of dollars. No more high salaries; no more travel expenses; no more lawsuits.

Anglican Church of Canada asks clergy for three-year extension to bridge underfunded pension plan

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Ironically, one of the threats the Anglican Church of Canada holds over clergy considering extricating themselves from its tender embrace to join ANiC is that they would be jeopardising their pensions by leaving.

As it turns out, clergy may be jeopardising their pensions by staying.

From here:

The Anglican Church of Canada is asking members of its pension plan to vote in favour of a proposal that would buy it more time before having to top up its underfunded pension plan by hiking premiums or cutting benefits.

By law, the plan must have the support of two-thirds of members before government will consider giving their OK to the proposal. A vote is scheduled for Sept. 6 in which the plan members hope to get permission from its active, inactive and retired membership.

[….]

Pension liabilities are calculated in two broad ways. They are valued on a “going concern” basis (that measures the plan’s health on the assumption it will operate indefinitely) and on a “solvency” basis — which measures the plan’s ability to pay all its debts if it were liquidated immediately.

On the first count, the church’s plan isn’t faring too poorly. At the end of the church’s last fiscal year, the pension plan had $602.8 million in assets, but a $28.7 million shortfall. Still, that’s considered 95 per cent funded over the long term. On the second count, however, the plan faces a cash crunch. The Anglican Church’s pension plan is only 70.5 per cent funded on a solvency basis were it to be wound up tomorrow.

The plan’s administrators are asking for a three-year extension on having to address that gap. The hope is that by then, the plan’s finances will have improved, no doubt helped along by rising interest rates that improve the plan’s valuation.

“With funding relief, we will have three years to try to improve our plan’s funding level,” the plan administrators told pension members in a recent letter. “At the end of three years, we will do another valuation of the plan. If there is still a solvency funding shortfall, we will likely have no choice but to cut benefits.”

The church’s pension plan returned 13.2 per cent last year, and has averaged 7.5 per cent per year for the past decade.

A spokesperson for the Anglican Church of Canada declined to comment on the story.

The Anglican Church of Canada should check its own shtreimel

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The Anglican Church of Canada delights in excoriating Israel – the only free and civilised democracy in the Middle East – while turning a blind eye to Palestinian villainy: Palestinian foibles such as its support of terrorism, its unrepentant refusal to recognise Israel’s right to exist and the calls for Israel’s annihilation by its more extreme elements.

Israel is not perfect but then, neither is the Anglican Church of Canada as the last five years of punitive law-suits against orthodox Christians, the financially motivated snatching of buildings for which it has little use, and the inhibiting of recalcitrant clergy will attest.

Incidentally, since Intel manufactures the core i-series computer processor chips – both Ivy Bridge and Haswell – in Kiryat Gat, Israel, I am looking forward to the day when Canadian Anglican clergy divest themselves of their tainted computers, all of which depend on these chips to run.

As this article notes, the ACoC should check its own shtreimel:

First the good news: The just concluded General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) did not call for a boycott of companies doing business with Israel, as did the United Church of Canada a few weeks before.

Now the bad news: Instead, the ACC urged members to “explore,” “educate,” and “enable awareness” about all the terrible ways in which Israel behaves.

We guess Jews should be grateful. And we’re all for exploration and education. So in the spirit of cooperation, we would like to aid this church to achieve its goals.

● The Anglicans are urging their faithful to “educate the church about the impact of illegal settlements” on the West Bank. We politely urge their faithful to “educate the church” on the illegal occupation of territory now called Canada. Today, the Indigenous people – the original inhabitants of the land – reside on a mere 0.2 percent of Canadian territory. As ACC members become “educated,” they will learn that very few of the Indigenous spoke French or English. They should heed the call of Bishop David Parsons, during the floor debate: “Are we prepared now to call upon all of Canada and all of the provinces to move off of aboriginal land which they have legal entitlement to?” We will applaud the ACC as it deeds back the land on which its churches stand and its members cede their houses to some “refugee” Indigenous. To be practical, they should aim to do it all in a single day. Soon.

● ACC resolution A172 calls for “deeper church-wide awareness of and response to the call of the Kairos Palestine document” which casts the creation of a Jewish state as a theological sin. May we urge “deeper church-wide awareness” that Kairos refuses to condemn Palestinian terror? It strips the Jewish people of any connection to the Holy Land. It rewrites history to place all blame for the Middle East quagmire on Israel. Speaking of awareness, if the ACC is really serious it will question where Kairos Palestine inexorably leads. It will learn that the American Kairos Palestine group’s last “response to the call” explicitly denied the right of existence of a Jewish state of Israel, and embraced the right of the use of terror.

● The resolution calls on ACC members to “explore and challenge theologies and beliefs, such as Christian Zionism, that support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories,” as well as “theories and beliefs that deny the right of Israel to exist.” We should all explore complex issues, but we wonder why the pro-Israel arguments are called “theologies” while the anti-Israel ones are called “theories.” Will there be ACC members who will have the courage to challenge those who have taken up once again Replacement Theology; who in the zeal to deny Jews any stake at all in the Holy Land – and to counteract the Christian Zionism they hate – are once more preaching that the Jews of the Hebrew Bible have been tossed out and rejected, replaced by the New Jews?

And who among the ACC will educate Rev. Naim Ateek of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (a Kairos Palestine partner) who calls the Palestinians the new Jesus on the Cross, with Jews once again crucifying the innocent – reviving the theological doctrine of deicide which motivated the murder of untold numbers Jews though the centuries?

Memo to the explorers: Why do Palestinians serially deny the 3,500-year connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel? Did Jeremiah preach in Gibraltar? Did Isaiah prophesy in Ireland? Did not Jesus, himself a Jew, walk the length and breadth of the Holy Land?

● Anglicans, according to the resolution, are supposed to unravel “the complexities of economic advocacy measures.” We respectfully urge the ACC to explore and challenge the punitive anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns that help not a single Palestinian; they hurt them and their Jewish neighbors economically. Churches, do you want to help? Reflect on positive investment in the Palestinian economy and in joint Israeli-Palestinian ventures that will not only improve living conditions for Palestinians but also create momentum toward genuine reconciliation and peace

As rabbis, we would be out of character in trying to help our Anglican friends if we did not tell a story. A couple of chassidic newlyweds spent their first Passover with the bride’s family, which was not as well to do as that of the groom. The husband was horrified when he saw, in the soup bowl placed before him, pieces of grain swimming in the hot liquid, apparently turning into forbidden chametz. He screamed about what kind of terrible family this must be and threatened to dissolve the marriage. His wife could not calm him; in time, he agreed to take his grievance to the town rabbi.

After the rabbi heard his tale of woe, the sage asked the newlywed to remove his shtreimel, the round fur hat worn on important occasions by chassidim. The rabbi took it and shook it vigorously. This dislodged many more pieces of grain, left from those the congregation had showered upon him as a blessing for a bountiful future when he had been called up to the Torah before his wedding a week before.

The great Maggid of Jerusalem, Rabbi Shalom Schwadron, wonderfully distilled the moral of the story. Before you criticize others, check your own shtreimel first.

Even if you are Anglican.

 

Fred Hiltz thinks marrying same-sex couples is going to be controversial

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Very astute.

From here:

The primate said he was not surprised that the resolution asking the Council of General Synod to prepare a resolution for 2016 that would change the marriage canon to allow same-sex marriage “sparked some difficult moments.”

Asked to comment on opinions expressed by some members that there wasn’t enough time to debate on the merits of the resolution, Hiltz said, “It doesn’t matter what kind of resolution you have on the floor that’s going to change the marriage canon of the church so that same-sex couples can be married. It’s going to be controversial.”

Reacting to statements made by some members that allowing same-sex marriage is a big leap from the blessing of same-sex unions, the primate said, “None of that surprises me. There’s nothing new in that perspective; that’s been there in the life of the church for many years.”

Saying “[t]here’s nothing new in that perspective” is evading the point.   For years, the Anglican Church of Canada has been boring everyone – well, Anglicans, most of whom already have one foot in the grave – to death with explanations of why blessing same-sex couples is not the same as marrying them. The former, supposedly, is not against “core doctrine”; no-one is suggesting that the church is going to embark on the latter, we were assured, so there is really nothing to worry about.

Now the ACoC is going to vote on performing same sex-marriages in spite of all protestations to the contrary; naturally no priests would be compelled to perform same-sex marriages. Given the church’s duplicitous performance thus far, does anyone believe that?