Lawyers awarded the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster

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The lawyers who conducted the litigation for the Diocese of New Westminster against the ANiC parishes which left the diocese, received an honorary Order of the Diocese of New Westminster.

Otherwise known as DOOM: Diabolic Order Of Mephistopheles.

From here:

In a ceremony on October 21, 2011, the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster (honorary) was conferred upon each of George Macintosh, Q.C., Ludmila Herbst and Tim Dickson in recognition of their work in defending the Anglican Diocese and the Bishop of New Westminster in property-related claims brought against those parties by the Anglican Network in Canada.  The Diocese and the Bishop were successful at trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, on appeal in the British Columbia Court of Appeal, and in opposing an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Little Mosque on the Prairie to be put out of its misery

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There is a time and a place for mercy killing and this one is long overdue:

CBC’s ground-breaking show Little Mosque on the Prairie draws to a close Monday night, remaining true to the “ordinary folks” portrayal of Muslims it has practised from the outset.

When the show debuted in 2007, it drew attention to the then-radical idea of showing Muslims living in a Western society in a TV sitcom. The show was created by a Muslim woman, Zarqa Nawaz, who spoke to the New York Times, the BBC and media outlets around the world about her concept for the show.

Little Mosque never managed to extricate itself from the mire of cringingly humourless political correctness and would not have been aired at all were not for the yearly $1.5 billion the CBC receives from taxpayers.

I understand that most of Little Mosque’s fan mail comes from Anglican clergy.

Fiat lux during Earth Hour

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From here:

On March 31, some people will be sitting in the dark to express their “vote” for action on global climate change. Instead, you can join CEI and the thousands of people around the world who will be celebrating Human Achievement Hour (HAH). Leave your lights on to express your appreciation for the inventions and innovations that make today the best time to be alive and the recognition that future solutions require individual freedom not government coercion.

HAH is an annual event meant to recognize and celebrate the fact that this is the greatest time to be alive, and that the reason we have come is that people have been free to use their minds and the resources in their environment to experiment, create, and innovate. Participants in HAH recognize the necessity to protect the individual persons from government coercion, so that we may continue innovating and improving our lives and the world around us.

Many Anglicans, on the other hand, will be turning off their lights and sitting in the dark for an hour, where, no doubt, they will encounter numerous bishops in their natural habitat.

What happens when Fresh Expressions goes bad?

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It becomes Jade Ministry Collective, the brainchild of Anglicans Rev. Shawn Beck and Emily Carr, a “ministry of presence” which concentrates on things like the Rainbow Tribe, an unholy concoction of paganism, Gaia worship, animism, pantheism and miscellaneous new-age superstitions.

As I pointed out here, when a church says it is using Fresh Expressions, it is worth asking: Fresh Expressions of what?

Clearly, in the case of Jade Ministry Collective, it is a fresh expression of just about anything except Christianity.

Anglicans in the bar

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Sorry, I meant indaba. Rowan Williams introduced indaba groups into Lambeth 2008. Indaba purports to be “a gathering for purposeful discussion”. What it is when practised by Anglicans is a gathering aimed at building relationships, particularly with those with whom one disagrees. In order to do this, you have, at all costs, to avoid “purposeful discussion” for fear of damaging the relationship.

Consequently, at Lambeth 2008, no-one really argued, nothing was decided and nothing was achieved. Moreover, the relationships that emerged were the emasculated affectations that you would expect from a gathering of people who lack the conviction that if a proposition is true, its negation must be false.

The Diocese of Toronto, undeterred by the fact that they don’t work, is still using indaba groups:

Anglicans from the Diocese of Toronto who participated in the Anglican Communion’s one-year indaba process believe it can have a transforming effect upon the church if it is used more broadly.

[….]

The Diocese of Toronto participated with Jamaica and Hong Kong in three eight-day meetings that took place in Toronto in May, 2011, Hong Kong last September and Jamaica this February. There were three topics for discussion: social justice and advocacy, youth alienation and homosexuality. An important part of the meetings was immersion in the life of the host diocese, so that participants could understand the context for decision-making.

[….]

Mr. Graves notes that it’s tempting when people think differently from the way we do to let them go their own way. When he has thoughts like that, he looks at a photograph in his office that was taken of all the indaba participants in Hong Kong.

“The easy answer is to have a divorce,” he says. “But when you’ve built relationships with people, that’s not so easy. I look at those people and ask, ‘Can I do without that person in my life?’ and I don’t believe I can.”

 

 

On global warming and exploding compost

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Yet more doubts are being cast on the reality of global warming by David Happer, professor of physics at Princeton:

During a fundraiser in Atlanta earlier this month, President Obama is reported to have said: “It gets you a little nervous about what is happening to global temperatures. When it is 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March, you start thinking. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed nice weather.”

What is happening to global temperatures in reality? The answer is: almost nothing for more than 10 years. Monthly values of the global temperature anomaly of the lower atmosphere, compiled at the University of Alabama from NASA satellite data, can be found at the website http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. The latest (February 2012) monthly global temperature anomaly for the lower atmosphere was minus 0.12 degrees Celsius, slightly less than the average since the satellite record of temperatures began in 1979.

I admit that I am disappointed by all this. My wife is a keen gardener and she keeps a number of compost piles in our yard. I had high hopes that they would very soon be exploding in spectacular showers of potato peelings and rotting parsnips. But no: most disconcerting.

Global warming could explode ‘compost bombs’ all over the planet.

When the compost pile in your backyard revs up, it starts producing heat, as the microbes in it do their work breaking down organic matter. On a small scale, that’s great for your garden. On a grand scale, though, this same process can create a “compost bomb” — a burst of carbon into the atmosphere. And as the planet warms up, this is going to happen more often.

 

Is Rowan Williams making marginally more sense after his retirement announcement?

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From here:

Is Rowan Williams doing a George Carey? It’s been noticeable how Dr Carey obviously felt more able to speak his mind on controversial issues once he had retired. Since Rowan announced his retirement last week, he too has lost no time in addressing matters in public life more firmly and certainly with more clarity than usual. In fact, in the space of a week, this self-confessed “hairy Lefty” seems to have ditched many of the Left’s shibboleths and prejudices – “diversity,” for one.

Dr Williams said yesterday that “identity” has become a “slippery” word. He added, “Identity politics, whether it is the politics of feminism, whether it is the politics of ethnic minorities or the politics of sexual minorities, has been a very important part of the last ten or twenty years.”

He now thinks, “We are beginning to see the pendulum swinging back… and we have to have some way of putting it all back together and discovering what is good for all of us.”

Rowan may say the opposite next week, of course and he is still sticking by his pronouncement that “adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion” in the UK, so one shouldn’t set one’s hopes too high.

How to avoid military service in Turkey

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Prove you are a homosexual.

From here:

Gay men in Turkey seeking exemption from the country’s mandatory military service must prove their homosexuality, the BBC reports, even though many army physicians realize it’s medically impossible to determine sexual orientation.

[….]

Lacking any valid “diagnostic tools,” a physician told the BBC World Service, potential gay draftees must prepare whatever evidence they can to convince a military health panel of their homosexuality, sometimes deemed as a “psychosexual disorder.”

“They asked me if I liked football, whether I wore women’s clothes or used women’s perfume,” said one gay conscript in his 20s.

Here are a group of conscripts trying to get out of military service: