Category Archives: Anglican Church of Canada

Fred Hiltz meets with Justin Welby and warns him about ACNA

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Hiltz-WelbyOne of Fred Hiltz’s recurring nightmares is that Canterbury recognises ANCA and ANiC, making ACNA an official North American Anglican province with ANiC as one of its dioceses. In order to forestall this calamity, Hiltz has taken his “ongoing concern” to Justin Welby.

It’s worth noting that a contributing factor to the judge’s decision to award the ANiC church buildings to the Diocese of New Westminster was that they are held in trust for “Anglican worship”. By the judge’s reasoning, since the ACoC is the only recognised Anglican Church in Canada, Anglican worship and doctrine, no matter how perversely bizarre, is set by it and no-one else.

If ACNA is recognised by Canterbury, it would mean that the beloved nonsense emanating from Hiltz’s beloved church would no longer be the sole official measure of Canadian Anglicanism.

Welby, apparently, is “very appreciative” of ACoC contributions to the Anglican communion. Things like the pioneering work on suing Christians, ejecting them from their buildings, inhibiting world famous theologians such as J. I. Packer, filling the ranks of its clergy with partnered homosexuals and performing the Vagina Monologues in a cathedral.

There aren’t many Anglican Provinces that can make those claims.

From here:

The leader of the Anglican Church of Canada has emerged from his Dec. 6 meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Justin Welby, feeling “very optimistic about his leadership.”

Archbishop Fred Hitz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, noted Welby’s “extensive ministry of reconciliation” and told the Journal that, “I get is a sense that he wants to be personally pro-active to build relations.

[….]

During his meeting with Welby, Hiltz said he mentioned ongoing concern about efforts by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to be recognized by the Church of England. Composed of Anglicans who have left the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the U.S., ACNA describes itself as “an emerging Province in the global Anglican Communion.”

Hiltz said he requested that if bodies of the Church of England are to meet with representatives of ACNA, “in fairness, they should also meet with us to get a better picture.” Welby was “very appreciative” of the place of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Communion and the contributions it has been able to make, added Hiltz.

 

Are there any big deals left in the Anglican Church of Canada?

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A bishop announcing that he believes in the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Christ would stretch my credulity; a lesbian priest married to another woman would merely be par for the course.

From here:

Football star’s mom, a lesbian priest, no big deal in Anglicanism.

Sports reporters preparing for the Grey Cup game on Sunday could hardly believe it this week when Calgary Stampeders star Jon Cornish revealed his mother, a veteran Anglican priest, has a “wife.”

But stories like that of Rev. Margaret Cornish, who has been vicar of St. Alban’s Church in Richmond for almost seven years, are becoming commonplace in liberal Christian churches in Canada and the United States.

There are hundreds of women in the ministry in the Anglican Church and United Church of Canada who have either always been in lesbian relationships or have moved into them in their middle years.

As of this writing, St. Alban’s website is down, but the cached version of its welcome page contains the words “inclusive” and “diversity” – enough to confirm a lingering suspicion that the fictitious bishop of the first paragraph would not feel at home there.

Putting something new in the Anglican Church of Canada

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The Anglican Church of Canada has a $600,000 deficit, churches are closing, buildings are being sold, and employees are being laid-off. Even the Anglican Book Centre is no more.

All this leads the ACoC’s general secretary, Michael Thompson to muse that “God is putting something new in the church.” Yes, he is: judgement.

Michael Thompson turned up at St. Hilda’s one Sunday a number of years ago; he was supposed to dissuade us from fleeing the Diocese of Niagara. He wasn’t entirely successful and, although I thought he was a nice enough well-intentioned fellow, he flatly admitted he didn’t quite know what he believed and he envied us our “certainty”.

To put it another way: he is an amiable but clueless cove; that’s how he ended up as general secretary to the ACoC.

From here:

Amid the fiscal challenges facing General Synod, Archdeacon Michael Thompson urged Anglicans “to be patient and kind with ourselves in this time of transition and transformation.”

“God is putting something new in the church,” Thompson told the Council of General Synod at its meeting Nov. 15 to 18.

Reflecting on his first year as general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, Thompson noted the “change in ecosystem of the way the church lives.” He likened it to the trail that he and his wife hike near Lake Superior, where land burnt by a forest fire is now home to healthy blueberry bushes. Could the church adapt to a similar challenge? he wondered. “We don’t have trees anymore, so God doesn’t expect us to be in the lumber business,” he said. “Can we figure out what to do with the blueberries?”

The national church is “being called by God into a bunch of new futures, not just one,” said Thompson, adding the goal is to discover what ministries it is being called to develop.

 

Anglican Church of Canada’s third quarter deficit is $680,000

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Not even sitting in a sacred circle could console members of the Council of General Synod as they pondered their growing deficit: there was even talk of layoffs. Compassionate layoffs. A layoff that is “done with compassion, understanding, kindness and thankfulness” is one where the person being laid off has the compassion not to swear at his superior, the understanding that there is nothing he can do, the kindness not to sue the church for wrongful dismissal and the thankfulness that his impending unemployment is contributing to the financial well-being of his former employer.

Luckily for CoGS the Rev. Dr. Christopher Duraisingh, professor at Episcopal Divinity School, was on hand to explain that:

Jesus’s baptism was not baptism for forgiveness of sins, but an identity marker as being enlisted in the kingdom of God’s movement. We’ve turned baptism into sin-management rite. We need to put our baptism in line with Jesus’s baptism.

Perhaps it’s my not being a Rev. Dr. professor that prevents from me seeing this as anything other than a restatement of Pelagianism – the heresy that Man is born without original sin. To “put our baptism in line with Jesus’s baptism”, we would have to be sinless as he was.

Duraisingh went on to opine that “COGS must be like a midwife as this movement is born”. I fear that the only movement being born in the Anglican Church of Canada, is one that bears less resemblance to a movement of the Spirit than it does to a movement of the bowels.

The Anglican Church of Canada is going broke, Primate calls it a teaching moment

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But what is it trying to teach? Fred Hiltz seems to think that structural changes are the answer, while Dennis Drainville wants to “focus on mission” – although by “mission”, he means more vigorous leftist political agitation rather than the saving of souls.

James Cowan wants to “view the challenges as an opportunity”, a sure sign that he was asleep for most of the meeting.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that perhaps the malady is a consequence of the beliefs of the Anglican Church of Canada not the inadequacy of its structures, programs or bogus “missions”.

If what most of the church leadership believes is nonsense – and it is – why would God bless the church, why would people give it money and why does it deserve to survive?

From here:

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, kicked off the fall meeting (Nov. 15-18) of the Council of General Synod (CoGS) in Mississauga, Ont. by urging members to view declining revenues and a looming budget shortfall as a “teaching moment handed to us by God.”

What’s needed now, said Hiltz is “transformational change.” He called on members to find “the courage to let go of our deep attachments to old ways and structures” and to “dare to imagine new scenarios.” In recent years, the church has attempted to effect change but “the structures don’t really look very different,” Hiltz noted.

CoGS members are being asked to discuss ideas that support priorities set out in the church’s 10-year strategic plan, Vision 2019. These priorities include envisioning a more streamlined structure for General Synod. The work being done at CoGS is part of a series of discussions that will take place over the next eight months leading up to General Synod 2013 in July. In January, Hiltz is convening a national consultation in Toronto to look at the future of church.

In its written report to CoGS, the financial management committee (FMC) has stressed that “revenues have been declining more rapidly than expected” and as a result, anticipated deficits for 2013 and beyond “have materialized much earlier than expected.”  This weekend, CoGS will be asked to approve a 2013 budget with a proposed deficit of $513,000.

Rob Dickson, FMC chair, cited declining membership as a factor for the deficit. Diocesan giving has been declining annually at an average rate of 3%, said Dickson, adding that capital fundraising initiatives undertaken by the national office in partnership with dioceses are “not a quick fix.”

 

More cutbacks in the Anglican Church of Canada

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Due to its continuing financial embarrassment, the Anglican Church of Canada is cutting back:  the Five Marks of Mission have been reduced to two.

Of the first three:

“To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom” was the first to go because no-one in the ageing ecclesial hierarchy could actually remember what the Good News is, so there seemed little point in continuing to pretend to proclaim it.

“To teach, baptise and nurture new believers” was the next to fall since all extant Anglican seminaries are dedicated to squeezing any vestige of belief out of new seminarians, rendering them, by the time they emerge, incapable of nurturing anything but doubt.

“To respond to human need by loving service” was finally removed too, since Anglican clergy are simply too busy nurturing the doubt in new doubters.

The two survivors are:
“To seek to transform unjust structures of society”
“To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”

The Anglican Church can throw its full weight behind these because both are the responsibility of government.

The future of the family according to the Anglican Church of Canada

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This cartoon was published in the November edition of the Anglican Journal:

 

It refers to a report from Statistics Canada that claims a 42% increase in same-sex couples over the last five years. It seems the report is flawed, since room-mates who are married – not to each other – could have been counted as same-sex couples.

No matter: even if the report is accurate, the percentage of same-sex couples is still only at 0.69% of the total number of couples.

What is interesting about the Journal’s publishing of this cartoon is that, yet again, the compulsive obsession the church has with legitimising homosexual activity has blinded it to the transparently obvious fact that the future of the family does not reside – and can never reside – in people of the same sex being barrenly “married” to each other.

Anglican Church of Canada: Justice Camp

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The Anglican Church of Canada’s Justice Camp is a place where Anglican priests are sent for decontamination and re-education after they have had a close encounter with the Gospel. This Church Gulag is also a place of incarceration for particularly troublesome laity; it was only through the most extreme subterfuge that I managed to avoid it during my sojourn in the Diocese of Niagara.

One of the tortures employed is being forced to sing songs like this one. Some victims have been known to bite off their own tongues during the refrain:

(Tune: My Favorite Things)

Meeting with Linda, with movers & shakers,
Activists, greenies, and health-and peace-makers,
MP’s and editors, right on the ball,
Help us respond to our fai-aithful call.

Postcards and letters and online petitions,
Rallies and sit-ins with local musicians,
Scripture reminds us to take care of all-
Working for justice can be such a ball!

Refrain:
When our greed strikes,
When our fears roar,
When we’re feeling proud,
We simply remember our fai-aithful call –
And then we can speak out loud!

Ruth & Amanda said, “MPs will hear ya,
But missing deadlines and dates won’t endear ya,
Start with small steps and do homework, you-all,
If you’d be faithful to Jesus Christ’s call.

Issues of justice and tools to affect them,
Singular voices connect good intentions,
Sacrifice, courage, the zeal of St. Paul,
Help us respond to our God’s faithful call

Refrain
Coming from churches both rural and urban,
We’ve heard of problems both dark & disturbin’,
But with the expertise here in this hall,
We’ll start the healing that answers God’s call.

h/t LSP

Toronto’s Anglican Book Centre to close

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From here:

It is with sadness that the Anglican Church of Canada and Augsburg Fortress Canada announce that the Anglican Book Centre at 80 Hayden Street will close on Jan. 18, 2013. Canadian Anglicans will still be able to order resources online and by phone through Augsburg Fortress Canada.

“Religious book and gift stores across Canada have faced significant challenges resulting in the closure of over 120 stores in the past 10 years,” said Andy Seal, Director of Augsburg Fortress Canada/Anglican Book Centre.

“Sales at our Hayden St. store have decreased each year since 2009. By 2011 Toronto sales were 28% below the break-even level. In spite of hard work and innovation, the trend has continued in 2012.”

I am rather sorry to see this since I have spent many hours browsing its shelves – although, not recently – and met a very congenial chap hawking ABC wares at the ACoC synod in 2010. He let me recharge my laptop battery at his stall even after I told him I belonged to an ANiC church.

Although I find myself somewhat dolorous at the prospect of entering an era of paperless books – almost all my books I now buy are for my Kindle – I don’t miss the overweight charges when I fly with too many books in my suitcase.

As this headline has it, “Modern technology catches up with Toronto’s Anglican Book Centre causing it to close”. I would have been happier with keeping the bookstore and seeing: “Modern technology catches up with the Anglican Church of Canada causing it to close.”

The Anglican Church of Canada suppresses free speech

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I used to leave comments on Anglican Journal articles but gave up doing so because they never appeared. I am not the only one: it seems that the ACoC can tolerate anything except disagreement.

The excruciatingly dull blog that exudes like a foetid ectoplasm from the Diocese of New Westminster expunged a dissenting view on St. Matthews Abbotsford:

Note on Another Matter:
nwanglicanblog received a lengthy response to a recent posting that comments on the move of the ANiC congregation in Abbotsford out of its former physical facilities. This response will not be posted on the blog as it reiterates familiar arguments and makes disparaging statements that do not contribute to the advancement of the Gospel.

Since the Diocese of New Westminster’s expertise lies mostly in the art of breaking up the Anglican Communion, it’s hard to see how it could harbour the conceit that it is, itself, in any way advancing the Gospel, especially since Michael Ingham went to some lengths to prevent one of the world’s foremost evangelical thinkers – J. I. Packer – from setting foot on any diocesan property.

I have been blocked from following the twitter feed from the Diocese of Niagara for fear, presumably, that I might make an unflattering remark about its contents.

Still, the Anglican Church of Canada does love conversation; just don’t question the tergiversations of its hierocracy.