Canadian bishops oppose bill C-389

Posted on by
6

Canadian Catholic bishops, that is. Bishops from the Anglican Church of the Transgender Clothing Cupboard, are probably having great difficulty concealing their glee at the prospect of indoctrinating kindergarteners into the joys of sex change operations.

From here:

As the Canadian ‘transgender’ bill faces a final vote in the House of Commons Wednesday, the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) has condemned the legislation for seeking to impose “new social norms” of “gender ideology” on society.

“Defending certain people from discrimination is one thing and it is a good thing,” said Michelle Boulva, director of the organization, which was founded by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.  “But using very exceptional cases to promote and impose new social norms is quite another and it is unacceptable.”

Bill C-389, which seeks to add “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the Canada Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code’s hate crimes section, has been dubbed a ‘bathroom bill’ by pro-family leaders who warn that it would allow men who say they are women to use women’s washrooms.

The important thing is unity

Posted on by
Reply

Some interesting observations on ARCIC, the ecumenical gabfest between Anglicans and Catholics from the Catholic side here (my bold):

The trouble with ARCIC always was (as a former Catholic member of it once explained to me) that on the Catholic side of the table you have a body of men (mostly bishops) who represent a more or less coherent view, being members of a Church which has established means of knowing and declaring what it believes. On the Anglican side of the table you have a body of men (and it was only men, on both sides, in those days) the divisions between whom are just fundamental as, and sometimes a lot more fundamental than, those between any one of them and the Catholic representatives they faced: they all represented only themselves.

And they all, Catholics and Anglicans, quite simply belonged to very different kinds of institution. It isn’t just that Catholics and Anglicans believe different doctrines: it’s that there is between them a fundamental difference over their attitude to the entire doctrinal enterprise. I remember very vividly, in my days as an (Anglican) clergy member of the Chelmsford Diocesan Synod, a debate on one of the ARCIC documents followed by a vote on whether to recommend to the General Synod in London that it should be accepted. The document was accepted overwhelmingly. At lunchtime, standing at the bar with a number of clergy, I asked how they had voted; they had all voted affirmatively. I then asked them if they had read the document. None of them had; and most of them, it became clear, had little idea of what it contained. “Well”, I asked, puzzled, “why did you vote for it, then?”  “The point is,” one of them replied, “the important thing is unity. The RCs are frightfully keen on doctrine. You have to encourage them: so I voted for their document”. There you have it: what the late Mgr Graham Leonard, when he was still an Anglican bishop, once called “the doctrinal levity of the Church of England”.

And there you do have it: the important thing is the illusion of unity. The same affliction assails orthodox Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church of Canada or TEC for the sake of supposed unity – the ACA, the ACI, the Wycliffe College bunch et al.: they are actually sacrificing their principles to an illusion.

The blind leading the benighted

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

The heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and The Episcopal Church are among those newly named to President Barack Obama’s faith advisory council.

Obama announced on Friday his intent to appoint a dozen religious and secular leaders, including NAE president Leith Anderson and Episcopal Presiding Bishop the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to be of service to the larger community in this way,” Jefferts Schori said in a statement. “The ability to build partnerships between civic and religious bodies can only expand our capacity to heal a broken world.”

The question is, will Jefferts Schori – in just one year- manage to accomplish for Obama what she has wrought in four in the Anglican Communion: schism, mayhem, blight, litigation and omnipresent lamentation?

St. Bacchus Anglican Church, Durban

Posted on by
Reply

The church I attend has a bell which, when I started attending in the last millennium, was rung vigorously every Sunday morning – until the neighbours started complaining. St Columba Anglican Church in Durban, Southern Africa has found a different way to annoy the neighbours. As Canadian Anglican Churches devolve into community centres, perhaps this is a harbinger of something we can look forward to in Canada.

From here:

Homeowners in Greenwood Park have now started a petition to silence the church, which hires out a function room as a party venue.

The St Columba Anglican Church reverberates to the beat of pounding music and drunken revellers until the early hours of the morning, keeping frustrated neighbours awake.

The Rev James Wylie this week declined to comment on the complaints until he had an opportunity to discuss the matter with members of the church council.

But he said he hoped the matter would be settled ”amicably”.

Keith van Wyk, who lives next door to the church, said he was “sick and tired” of the blaring music and drunken partygoers.

”It’s every weekend. These parties go on until at least 4am. I have a family, and the loud music keeps my children and wife awake,” he said.

He said numerous complaints to the church authorities had fallen on deaf ears.

”They advertise for free in the local newspaper, promoting drunken parties indicating that people should bring their own booze. I feel this is deceptive and immoral. Nightclubs need to pay for advertising, why not them?”

Some Muslim families coming to Canada don’t want to be Canadian

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

WINNIPEG — A dozen Muslim families who recently arrived in Canada have told Winnipeg’s Louis Riel School Division that they want their children excused from compulsory elementary school music and coed physical education programs for religious and cultural reasons.

“This is one of our realities in Manitoba now, as a result of immigration,” said superintendent Terry Borys. “We were faced with some families who were really adamant about this. Music was not part of the cultural reality.”

Britain is finally waking up to the fact that living in Britain entails becoming British:

The Prime Minister also hit out at Labour’s experiment with multiculturalism – calling it a failure. He says society has failed to provide a strong sense of what it means to be British, making it easier for extremists to prey on youngsters seeking something to identify with.

He added: ‘We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values.

Canada should do the same.

You can’t do much in public any more

Posted on by
1

For anyone who thinks this is extreme:

The NYC smoking ban strikes 1,700 parks and 14 miles of city beaches where smoking would be banned. On Wednesday, the City Council approved the New York smoking ban bill by a vote of 36-to-12.

Take heart, it could be worse: Malawi is about to criminalise farting:

Two of Malawi’s most senior judicial officials are arguing over whether a new bill includes a provision that outlaws breaking wind in public.

Justice Minister George Chaponda says the new bill would criminalise flatulence to promote “public decency”…….

The Local Courts Bill, to be introduced next week reads: “Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public to the health of persons in general dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.”

The good news is that one can still vitiate the atmosphere in the privacy of one’s own home; probably not while driving with children in the car, though.

Man in UK is prohibited from having sex by High Court judge because he isn’t clever enough

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

A man with an IQ of 48 has been ordered to stop having sex by a High Court judge.

Known only as Alan, the 41-year-old was in a relationship with a man he lived with and said he wanted it to continue.

However, his local council said his ‘vigorous sex drive’ was inappropriate so started legal proceedings to restrict the relationship.

The authority said that his moderate learning disability and IQ of just 48 – the average is 100 – meant he did not understand what he was doing.

One psychiatrist said that he would be confused if sex education was given to him.

A special convening of the Anglican Church of Canada’s House of Bishops was called to assess the personal implications of the judicial ruling were it to catch on in Canada. Bishop Michael Bird was visibly moved to tears and many bishops’ wives have privately expressed their support for an equivalent Canadian ruling.

Lethal injections: cruel for murderers, fine for babies

Posted on by
2

From here:

For the second time in three years, executions have been stopped in Tennessee as judges ponder whether supposedly benign lethal injections actually can cause excruciating pain…….

In lethal injections, a series of three chemicals is used — a barbiturate to make the inmate unconscious, a paralyzing agent to prevent seizures and involuntary gasps of pain, and finally a poison to stop the prisoner’s heart.

Sad to say, judges are not extending their agonising on the humanity of executing murderers by lethal injection to the similar execution of unborn babies – who don’t even merit the benefit of anaesthesia – by the ghouls of the abortion industry.

From here:

The abortion industry is certainly prolific in its ability to find new ways to destroy human life.  And each “innovation” puts more women at risk.

Notorious abortionist, James Pendergraft, now performs a new method of late-term abortion in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. The procedure is called a “fetal intra-cardiac injection.” Using a sonogram, the abortionist guides a spinal nettle through the woman’s abdomen into the unborn child’s heart and injects poison or air to stop the baby’s heart from beating. Once the abortionist kills the baby, he leaves the woman on her own to visit her personal doctor or a hospital emergency room to have the now-dead child delivered.

Even Borat has better Internet access than Canadians

Posted on by
Reply

It appears that the CRTC’s ruling to enforce usage based billing for Internet access is to be overturned. Canadian geeks are rejoicing.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that Canada’s ISPs are providing particularly good service to their Internet customers – particularly on upload speeds. I subscribe to an online backup service which constantly sends the contents of my hard drives to an online server; the only problem is, Canadian upload speeds are so slow, it can take months for new files to be uploaded: in fact, Canada’s upload speeds are even slower than Kazakhstan’s. Of course, Kazakhstan doesn’t have the CRTC playing nanny.
From here:

Average upload speeds available to Canadians are even more striking in the netindex.com rankings. Canada is in 64th spot globally, at 1.35Mbps, behind smaller countries with less developed infrastructures, including:

  • Mozambique, ranked 62nd, at 1.41Mbps.
  • Swaziland, ranked 61st, at 1.43Mbps.
  • Kenya, ranked 58th, at 1.52 Mbps.
  • Kazakhstan, ranked 40th, at 2.10Mbps.

New Dean installed in Diocese of Montreal’s Christ Church Cathedral

Posted on by
9

From here (page 4):

THE NEW DEAN of Christ Church Cathedral, Very Rev. Paul Kennington, right is joined by Bishop Barry Clarke and Rev. Canon Alan Perry, who served as the bishop’s chaplain, as the new dean is applauded after his installation.

The diocese had to go all the way to the UK to find a Dean who is in a same-sex civil partnership. The Very Rev. Paul Kennington is hitched to Jonathan Bailey and they both were at St. Mary’s Battersea which proclaims, “Open Church, Open Heart, Open Mind” – one of the lesser known sayings of Jesus.

Jonathan wrote back to their former church:

You will note Paul’s cassock, with scarlet piping courtesy of Stephen Miles (thanks!) and 39 scarlet buttons sewn on lovingly by Tim, Marie-Ca and Philippa all had a fabulous time in Montreal, and it was wonderful for Paul to have them with him at this big change in his life. It was also lovely for the children to see where Daddy will be working and living

It’s all about the cassock with its 39 darling buttons.