Category Archives: bishops gone wild

24

Posted on by
Reply

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (Season Opener)
Terrorists known cryptically as TEC-ACoC take hostages in Jamaica.

12:00 a.m. -1:00 a.m.
Hostages are identified: Truth; Gospel; Honesty; Integrity (the original one).

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Terrorists assail hostages with a newly developed mind-numbing bio-weapon: the Indaba. Civilians all over the Island are wailing and clutching at their heads.

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Counter-terrorists are dispatched from far flung reaches of Christendom with a single purpose: rescue the hostages.

3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Terrorists and Counter-terrorists do battle; Indabas are wielded to dreadful effect. The carnage is terrible.

4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Counter-terrorists wheel in the big gun: the Fourth Moratorium.

5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
The Fourth Moratorium suffers defeat through trickery and sleight of hand. One of the counter-terrorists, although he speaks 5 languages, didn’t know what “litigation” means and no-one bothered to explain it.

6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Counter-terrorists wheel in the other big gun: Section 4 of “The Covenant”.

7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Battle rages around Section 4; the Indabas go at it hammer and tongs decimating all in their path.

8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Section 4 falls.

9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Terrorists counter attack with Resolution A.

10:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. (Mid-Season Cliffhanger)
Resolution A suffers apparent defeat but is actually smuggled out of the room and secreted in Resolution C which has disguised itself as Resolution B.

1:00 a.m. – 2:00 a.m.
Resolution C calls for the hostages to remain in terrorist custody until they die from too much conversation.

2:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m.
Arch-terrorist Rowan the Enforcer deploys the ultimate weapon: he speaks.

3:00 a.m. – 4:00 a.m.
It is all too much after the Indaba attack: terrorists and counter-terrorists alike writhe on the floor in agony. Some bite off their own tongues. Rowan the enforcer smiles benignly

4:00 a.m. – 5:00 a.m.
A temporary truce is called while all descend on the local population to pillage their food supplies.

5:00 a.m. – 6:00 a.m.
Back at it. Stunned journalists try to make sense of the carnage.

6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m.
Truth; Gospel; Honesty; Integrity are battered and still hostage.

7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
The terrorists have won: the hostages will be subject to extreme interrogation techniques to break down their resistance – dialogue, group discernment and if all else fails, the Listening Process, said to be capable of boring the balls off a buffalo in 30 seconds.

8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. (Season Finale)
The terrorists begin to write accounts of the battle that make them appear like the good-guys. Everyone goes home wondering what just happened.

Did anyone understand that? It doesn’t matter: what is important is the violence, blood, gore, torture, screaming and the fact that 24 will be returning for another season next year.

Allow me to introduce my Church, the Entity

Posted on by
1

The  ACoC house of bishops loves, with gracious restraint, to take a dig at ANiC. Here is the first one, wherein ANiC is not only an Entity, but an Entity that is given to Self Identification. The intent of using the word entity is to emphasise that the ACoC views ANiC as separate from the Anglican Communion, even though it isn’t; and self identify implies an identity that is not recognised by others – whereas ANiC is recognised by the majority of the world’s Anglicans.

In response to a call for clarification of the status of entities who self identify as being Anglican, it was noted that the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated in writing that his office and the Anglican Communion Office recognize one ecclesial body in Canada as a constitutive member of the Communion, The Anglican Church of Canada. We affirm this statement. We cherish our Communion with the See of Canterbury and remain committed to the life and witness of the Anglican Communion in the service of the Gospel.

Dig number two is:

The House, responding to a question from the National Cursillo Secretariat, discussed the relationship with the Anglican Network in Canada, particularly as it related to leadership in Cursillo. It was noted that diocesan bishops have the authority to decide who may serve on Cursillo leadership teams. The House, with regret, is of the opinion that clergy and laity who are members of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANIC) should not be given permission to exercise a leadership role in the Cursillo Movement of the Anglican Church of Canada.

An act of pettiness odd in its particular singling out of Cursillo.  Although I am not too familiar with Cursillo, my understanding is that other denominations are routinely allowed lead Cursillo groups.

These messages brought to you by the Ministry of Inclusion at the Anglican Church of Canada.

Doing the Indaba in the Diocese of Toronto

Posted on by
Reply

In January 2009, Colin Johnson, bishop of Toronto decided to go ahead with same-sex blessings in some of the parishes in his diocese.

On the face of it, this seemed like an odd decision since the Toronto synod is coming up in May: why not wait for a decision on this from synod?

It seems that the May synod will be using the same contention-defusing technique that Rowan Williams pioneered at Lambeth: the Indaba group:

For the first time, synod will use the indaba process for its discussions. Indaba is a Zulu word meaning “one agenda meeting” or gathering for purposeful discussion. Groups of 35 to 40 people discuss a single issue. Everyone is given a chance to speak. There is an attempt to find a common mind or common story that everyone is able to tell when they leave.

Colin Johnson is not in the least ashamed of the fact that he has no intention of allowing a vote on the issue that is on everyone’s mind; he boasts:

My expectation for the May synod is that, except for a few formalities, there will be no motions. We’ll deal with legislative matters when synod meets again in November. This does not mean that the May synod will be insignificant!

So we’re not avoiding decisions at the May synod; rather, we’re expanding opportunities for people to participate in shaping the way we live together in the church.

True enough, Johnson is not avoiding decisions: they’ve already been made.

Rowan offers advice to the BBC: the pot calling the kettle black

Posted on by
Reply

Rowan on ignoring Christians:

Dr Rowan Williams had a meeting at Lambeth Palace with director general Mark Thompson in which he said the corporation should not ignore its Christian audience.

The talks came at a time when some senior figures are worried about signs that the BBC is more interested in promoting minority faiths than in broadcasting Christian programming or teachings.

Rowan is an expert in this area: he himself is well versed in ignoring his Christian audience, preferring, instead, to pontificate on the virtues of sharia law, the evils of global warming and who to blame for the financial crisis.

Clearly what is needed at the BBC is a series of Indaba groups to continue the conversation and listening. As they discern their way forward. Rowan could lead it.

Rowan Williams doesn't trust God for Happy Endings

Posted on by
1

Rowan Williams wades into environment ideology:

The Archbishop of Canterbury said last night that God cannot be trusted to save the world from the environmental depredations of humanity.

Dr Rowan Williams did not say there was no God. But he said that God is not a “safety net that guarantees a happy ending in this world.”

“There is no way of manipulating our environment that is without cost or consequence … we are inextricably bound up with the destiny of our world,” he said.

He said that any who regarded the powers of nature as “a threat to be overcome” were simply illustrating the fallen nature of humanity.

An unintelligent approach to the environment meant that the extinction of species, the end of fossil fuels and other catastrophes were just some of the consequences that awaited us.

“There is no guarantee that the world we live in will tolerate us indefinitely if we prove ourselves unable to live within its constraints,” he said, warning that God will not intervene to protect us from “the corporate folly of our practices.”

The excerpts above are taken from Rowan’s speech, Renewing the Face of the Earth: Human Responsibility and the Environment and, although isolating them from the context of the whole encourages misinterpretation, nevertheless, there are reasons to be uneasy:

Rowan takes for granted the current environmental dogma in spite of convincing evidence that it is motivated more by ideology than science.

By saying “[the] world we live in will tolerate us indefinitely”, he appears to be at ease with the anthropomorphic idea that the world or nature has intention; he does not go as far as deifying nature, but he seems to approach it.

By saying that, “God is not a safety net that guarantees a happy ending in this world”, he implies a limit to God’s sovereignty in the natural order: it is undoubtedly true that we should not carelessly defile our world on the assumption that God will clean it up for us, but to imply that God will not or cannot seems to me to be a less than Christian view of God. What is more, God does indeed guarantee a happy ending for this world since he has promised to remake it 2 Pet 3:13.

Since science can’t reverse entropy and God can, if we can’t rely on God for a happy ending, ultimately we’re screwed however carefully we treat the environment.

Canadian Primate, Fred Hiltz, immanentising the eschaton

Posted on by
1

There are a couple of significant things about this clip from Fred Hiltz:

First, he tells us that mission for Anglicans is not just about personal salvation. Having been a Canadian Anglican for over 30 years, were it not for the fact that I am a member of an evangelical parish, I could easily have missed the point that the Anglican mission is about personal salvation in any way whatsoever.

Second, Fred goes on to tell us that the Anglican mission is about much more than personal salvation and a relationship with Jesus: it is about transforming society to come under the just reign of God – a similar kind of theocratic utopianism to which Islam aspires.

I think Fred has neatly summed up one of the quintessential errors of the Anglican Church of Canada: for years the church has been focussing most of its energy on the “much more than that” rather than the apparently lesser issue of a person’s salvation. The perfect, just reign of God is going to come when Jesus returns but not before; it is a Christian’s duty to try to do what is right and to work justly in society, but placing this above salvation means setting the temporal above the eternal and making an idol of it.

As C. S. Lewis said in his wonderful essay, The Weight of Glory:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

There isn’t much more than that.

Anglicans win Demented Priest Award

Posted on by
3

The informative Muslims Against Sharia site has a variety of awards it bestows upon deserving contenders. One is the Demented Priest Award; Anglicans will be proud to know that two of their own are the latest recipients of this prestigious accolade.

Rowan Williams for his groundbreaking work on explaining to Britons why Sharia law is inevitable in the land of the Crusaders and Katherine Jefferts-Schori for her tireless support of Islamofascism.

The only disappointment here is the sad lack of recognition for the efforts of Canadian Fred Hiltz;  never mind Fred, with a bit of work and a lot of concentration, I’m sure you will do better next time.

Diocese of Niagara: what are the "priests in charge" in charge of exactly?

Posted on by
1

The diocese of Niagara has appointed “priests in charge” of the three ANiC parishes that have left the diocese. But, since there are almost no people left in the diocesan version of the parishes, just what are the priests in charge of?

Bruce Willis provides the clue:

The Diocese of Niagara, Desperately Seeking Someone to Sue

Posted on by
3

On March 11th, the three ANiC parishes that used to be in the Diocese of Niagara were once again in court. The diocese is seeking the legal expenses squandered by the extravagant pettifogging of the diocesan lawyer, John Page.

The only problem is, the diocese can’t decide who to sue! It could be the parishes or it could be the wardens of the parishes; in the courtroom, after a period of diocesan dithering, the judge finally lost patience and told everyone to submit more documentation once the diocese has made up its mind.

Of course, if the diocese does decide to sue the wardens, the “priests in charge” at the three parishes also become fair game: a fact that may explain the high turnover of “priests in charge“.

The question is, why would the diocese even consider a suit against the wardens, considering they don’t have any money to speak of? The only explanation is as an act of intimidation and object lesson to the wardens of other parishes who may be considering a move to ANiC.

In the Diocese of Niagara, All You Need is Love.

Diocese of Niagara: A tribute to bishop Michael Bird

Posted on by
2

Michael, I realise that you are under the misapprehension that the deviant, maniacal,  hyper-liberal, neo-pagan, sub-Christian clap-trap which you are foisting upon your unwilling victims in the Niagara diocese is courageous, but I beg to differ.

This is how courageous I think it is. I will not be surprised or offended If you don’t get it: