Category Archives: Anglican Church of Canada

A History of the Anglican Journal

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Can be found here.

Some interesting tidbits:

1959
A new distribution concept benefitting dioceses and the national church is forged. All identifiable givers to the church receive the newspaper along with their diocesan publication. Circulation skyrockets to more than 200,000.

Since I still receive the Journal, I must be viewed as an “identifiable giver”: believe it or not, I don’t actually give the Anglican Church of Canada any money, so my identifiable giving must be all  the free publicity the ACoC receives on this blog. It’s gratifying to be appreciated.

Come to think of it, though, the Journal receives a yearly subsidy of $596,627 from Canadian Heritage, so, as a taxpayer, I am still contributing to the Anglican Church of Canada. Very reluctantly.

1968-1975
Hugh McCullum, a well-respected journalist and activist, is the first editor to hire professional reporters rather than clergy to produce stories on poverty, aboriginal land claims, pollution, abortion law reform and apartheid. A fierce advocate of editorial independence, he believes that an open, transparent church is a stronger church.

And now, 40 years later, the ACoC is such an “open, transparent” church that its membership has strengthened from around 1.36 million to 320,000, many of whom are septuagenarians.

1977
The newspaper’s editorial policy is revised. While the Canadian Churchman remains the national newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada, its’ [sic] position as an independent voice rather than the official voice of the church, is made clear.

The supposed editorial independence of the Journal is frequently reiterated, largely to avoid losing its substantial grant from Heritage Canada. In reality, it has about the same amount of independence as Pravda had from the U.S.S.R.

Even with the yearly grant, the Journal has been shrinking – it must be getting stronger – and has had to appeal to members for money:

1994
With funding from General Synod slashed by 38 per cent, the Journal seeks donations from readers for the first time. Proceeds from the Anglican Journal Appeal are shared 50/50 with the diocesan newspapers.

Rest assured, though, that it has not abandoned its liberal blinkers: instead it now oozes reader friendliness:

2010
A re-design of the Anglican Journal, the first in a decade, is launched with the April issue, offering a bold new reader-friendly look.

 

Anglicans have a liturgy for everything

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According to the WHO:

  • HIV/AIDS kills 1.78 million people per year.
  • Diarrhoeal disease kills 2.46 million people per year, many of them children and is easily treatable.

Guess which gets a day dedicated to it? The former: World Aids Day is coming up on December 1st.

Guess which disease the Anglican Church of Canada has taken upon itself to enshrine in liturgy? I know, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel: Aids.

Guess the reason for this – choose one of the following:

  • The Anglican Church of Canada is more interested in sexually transmitted diseases than other diseases that kill more people, especially if the other diseases involve diarrhoea. That is because sex is a part of the Anglican spiritual journey and diarrhoea is just yucky.
  • The Anglican Church of Canada is obsessed with the Anglican spiritual journey, therefore it is obsessed with sex. At the outer reaches of the Anglican spiritual journey we find homosexual sex. So it is particularly obsessed with that.
  • The Anglican Church of Canada has so many homosexual priests that their interest in Aids is really the expression of a desire for self-preservation: homosexual sex is still the preferred way to contract Aids.
  • All of the above.

 

 

 

Anglican motorbikes to Cuba

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From here:

Hitchhiking priests are common in Cuba. Cars are expensive and hard to acquire, so ministers must get creative with parish visits. Some spend hours on local transit. Some spend precious pesos on taxis. Others hitch rides and some just walk.

[….]

Motorcycles are a great help to these travelling ministers. That’s why the outgoing General Secretary, Archdeacon Michael Pollesel, decided to raise money to buy one  instead of accepting a retirement gift when he left General Synod this fall.

That was very decent of Archdeacon Michael Pollesel. It’s a shame, though, that it probably won’t make him ponder the question why, in the Cuban socialist paradise, most people can’t afford to buy a car and why the Anglican Church of Canada is working so strenuously to turn Canada into an equally impoverished Arcadian collective.

And who will buy Fred Hiltz a motorbike if they succeed?

The Anglican Church of Canada is working to prevent suicide

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From here:

The Anglican Church of Canada is making progress toward overcoming a longstanding negative stereotype and becoming an effective partner in preventing suicide.

It’s about time the ACoC did something to reduce the existential angst afflicting the ranks of Canadian Anglicans.

Unfortunately, the article fails to mention exactly when the ACoC will be firing its bishops, closing its doors and turning the lights out.

Fresh Expressions in the Anglican Church of Canada

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From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has expressed hope that the Fresh Expressions initiative will flourish in the Anglican Church of Canada as it has in the Church of England.

[….]

Fresh Expressions “encourages new forms of church for a fast changing world, working with Christians from a variety of denominations and traditions,” according to the Fresh Expressions U.K. website.

The question is, fresh expressions of what? The fact that heretical dioceses like Niagara and New Westminster have launched into Fresh Expressions is hardly reassuring.  Both dioceses are willing to try anything to boost their flagging numbers but a fresh expression of diocesan baloney isn’t likely to help.

While on the subject of baloney, here is Rowan Williams explaining what Fresh Expressions is all about. Among other things it invites us “to explore one another” – anything to get people in the door.

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.

September the 25th is Back to Church Sunday

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And the Anglican Church is vigorously promoting it, so is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada:

Back to Church Sunday (B2CS) is the largest single local-church invitational initiative in the world. It is based on the simplest and shortest step in evangelism – that we should invite someone we already know to some-thing we love – inviting a friend to our church.

[….]

In Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada has been part of the B2CS initiative for two years. Last year, hundreds of Anglican congregations in Canada contributed to the more than 80,000 people globally that came back to church for B2CS. This year, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is joining the initiative, as are congregations from other Christian traditions.

The week after, both churches will hold services of repentance for Back to Christ Sunday.

Actually, they won’t, that was just my fevered imagination working overtime.

 

 

Anglicans playing poor me

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From here:

The Rev. Sean Krausert is feeling grubby. He has been sleeping in a tent in his backyard for 19 days and bathing every four days.

An ordained deacon from St. Michael’s Church in Canmore, Alta., Krausert isn’t preparing an audition tape for Survivor. He’s been participating in “That Poverty Project,” a reality show of his own to raise awareness about poverty.

I don’t know about you, but I had no idea that there were poor people in the world until Rev. Sean started living in his tent. I consider my awareness now fully raised; I am sure the poor feel so much better because of it.

That is a very posh looking tent, though and, now I come to think of it, when I was growing up we only used to bath once every seven days – in a tin bath with water heated in a kettle. Since we all did it (not all at once) we didn’t know we smelt – or that we were poor. In fact, in spite of the fact that I grew up with little decent food because of post-war rationing, with no car, no phone, no TV, no central heating, no vacuum cleaner, no indoor toilet, (my alcoholic grandfather – whom I loved dearly – used to urinate in the kitchen sink), a coal fired stove for cooking and no spare money at all, my parents loved me very much and I had a deliriously happy childhood.

Of course, I had no idea I wasn’t supposed to be happy – my awareness had yet to be raised.

Anglicans deal with heretical bishops by waiting for them to die

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That seems to be Rev. Gary Nicolosi’s approach in this article. While waiting for wayward bishops to die might appear to be gentler than summarily defrocking them – assuming the process isn’t artificially hastened – it doesn’t work particularly well in a church like the Anglican Church of Canada which is producing new heretical bishops at a greater rate than it is burying them.

Bishop Paul Moore of New York told a story several years ago about an incident that occurred in his junior year at General Theological Seminary. Some of the students were upset by a headline in The New York Times stating that the bishop of Birmingham (England) did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The students rushed to their theology professor, Dr. Marshall Boyer Stewart. “Dr. Stewart, Dr. Stewart,” said the students, “what are we going to do? The bishop of Birmingham, a real English bishop, does not believe in the resurrection!” Dr. Stewart put his face in his hands, sighed and said, “Well, the bishop of Birmingham will die someday, and the next bishop of Birmingham probably will believe in the resurrection.” That, Bishop Moore said, is how Anglicans deal with heresy!

Nicolisi’s article deliberately muddles the necessity for confronting heresy by quoting Matthew 13:24-30, the parable of the weeds: in his view, heresy is a weed that, if uprooted, might also uproot the wheat. This, of course is a typically devious liberal misapplication of a parable. While we are not to uproot possible unbelievers from the church, allowing teachers – bishops – to spout anti-Christian nonsense is an entirely different issue.

2 Peter 2:1-3 puts pay to the idea of  tolerance  for false teachers; unsurprisingly, Nicolosi doesn’t quote from it.