The Anglican Church of Canada is asking:
Will you be joining nearly a billion people around the world in turning off the lights on Sat., March 27, at 8:30 p.m.?
Here’s my plan for March 27th, 8:30 p.m.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5a0OAtzrXE]
Update: I see others have the same idea. I’m considering buying a couple of 2KW floodlights to illuminate the sky above my house during Earth Hour.
The Times is suggesting that Roman Catholic children might be safer from child rapists in the Anglican Church:
Has the time come for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to open the door to the many millions of British Roman Catholic worshippers who may be worried that their children are likely to be interfered with by priests? I think it’s correct that young children are slightly less at risk from the Anglican clergy, although it would be unwise of Rowan to offer any cast-iron promises, just in case.
A reciprocal arrangement could be made with the many Anglican clergy who want a male priest to interfere with them. A perfect arrangement: Anglicans send Rome all their pathicus clergy in exchange for Rome’s children.
Yes! You’ve guessed it! Not the person who has won the most souls for Christ, but the Diocese of New – we have a heretical bishop – Westminster’s Business Administrator.
Diocesan Business Administrator and St. Christopher, West Vancouver parishioner Rob Dickson will be one of five recipients of this year’s Anglican Award of Merit. The award is the Anglican Church of Canada’s highest award available to laity and is presented to those who have contributed with distinction and dedication to the work and life of the church at the national and international level.
I’m sure Rob is a lovely bloke and has done a fine job administering the…. er… business.
A weekend away at Port Stanley: great weather; no Internet; books; music; walking and wet dog – what more could one ask.
Bishop Michael Ingham reported that New Westminster diocesan council expressed concern that the Covenant could be used in a punitive way against member churches who have taken actions to which other provinces object.
Ingham is more than happy to exercise punitive measures against his own clergy – the most notable being J. I. Packer – but doesn’t seem to be too keen on being on the receiving end of such measures.
With Rowan in charge this isn’t particularly likely, but Ingham still plays the aggrieved victim just in case. Bishop Michael Ingham, bully and poltroon.
A selection of today’s outré articles.
Only the BBC could report this with a straight face:
A man who assaulted a female police officer with his penis has been fined.
Marium Varinauskas, 28, tried to strike the officer on the head with his penis when she was called out to his flat, but she got out of the way.
Fiscal depute Elaine Lynch said: “The accused got to his feet and was standing over the police officer exposing his penis and thrusting it in her face, forcing her to take evasive action to avoid getting struck.”
One-year-old McDonald’s Happy Meal – still delicious:
It smelled delicious for a few days. I’d get a whiff of those yummy French fries every time I walked into my office. After a week or so, you could hardly smell it. My husband worried that when the food began to decompose, there would be a terrible odor in our home. He also worried the food would attract ants and mice. He questioned my sanity.
NOPE, no worries at all. My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. The food did NOT decompose. It did NOT get mouldy, at all.
The Catholic Church is considering sainthood for this happy meal.
Mother dressed her baby as Hitler for exhibit:
Ms. Kleivan’s exhibit, Potency, also featured photos of her daughter dressed as Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic. In the 10th and final photo of the series, Faustina — depicted as a boy throughout — was naked, revealing her gender and, according to the artist, her innate innocence.
“We are all born as a blank slate, who knows who we will become,” Ms. Kleivan said. “I wanted people to think about where tremendous evil comes from.”
Ms. Kleivan in this case.
Read the gory details here.
True love can take many forms. In this case, it has taken the form of a Korean man falling in love with, and eventually marrying, a large pillow with a picture of a woman on it.
Lee Jin-gyu fell for his ‘dakimakura’ – a kind of large, huggable pillow from Japan, often with a picture of a popular anime character printed on the side.
In Lee’s case, his beloved pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the ‘magical girl’ anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.
Now the 28-year-old otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between ‘obsessive’ and ‘nerd’) has wed the pillow in a special ceremony, after fitting it out with a wedding dress for the service in front of a local priest. Their nuptials were eagerly chronicled by the local media.
‘He is completely obsessed with this pillow and takes it everywhere,’ said one friend.
‘They go out to the park or the funfair where it will go on all the rides with him. Then when he goes out to eat he takes it with him and it gets its own seat and its own meal,’ they added.
After a period of experiential pillow-talk, the Diocese of Huron has called for appropriate liturgies to bolster the love, mutual fidelity and support that Anglican pillows model every day for the church and wider community. A liturgical resource is approved for use in the Diocese of Huron. These celebrations are understood to be a pastoral response to pillow-sex in our communities. The rite is to be part of a Celebration of Holy Eucharist. It is noted that there is to be no exchange of vows, no exchange of pillow-cases and no nuptial bedding.
According to an Anglican peace advocate, the solution to our Anglican credibility crisis is more ecumenism. Credibility crisis? What credibility crisis?
Ecumenism is antidote to credibility crisis, Anglican peace advocate says
“We need to emphasize time and again the sense of mutuality and interdependence as the basis of relationships between Christians”, said Dr Jenny Plane Te Paa, convener of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN). This is especially important at a time when “denominations are increasingly worried with internal, identity-centred issues and therefore risk a credibility crisis”, she added.
“We all tend to claim our differences in ways that prevent us from acknowledging our commonalities, so that within the churches, the fidelity to our denominations becomes more important than our higher fidelity to our oneness in Christ”, said Te Paa. “Only a theology of mutuality can help us to transcend this through a truly ecumenical attitude”, she concluded.
Speaking of credibility, the APJN is a supporter of International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC)
The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) will be a “harvest festival” celebrating the achievements of the Decade to Overcome Violence which began in 2001.
And we can all see how well that has worked.
Well, one way.
Bertrand Russell, mathematician, philosopher and atheist, when asked what he would say to God if he met him after death, answered “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!” Although he continued to call himself an atheist, Russell acknowledged that, technically, he was an agnostic, since he didn’t believe in the non-existence of God.
Richard Dawkins, when asked the same question, not only didn’t answer it, but mocked the questioner. Today’s coterie of atheists really do give atheism a bad name and would undoubtedly make atheists of the past wince; even though I still disagreed with them, at least they had a modicum of wit, finesse, decency and understood the philosophical difficulties that hard atheism presents.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg]
From the BBC:
A Catholic adoption society has won a High Court battle over laws forcing it to consider gay couples as parents.
Leeds-based Catholic Care had warned it would be forced to give up its work finding homes for children if it had to comply with the legislation.
Its plea to be allowed an exemption was opposed by the Charity Commission.
However, Mr Justice Briggs has allowed Catholic Care’s appeal and ordered the commission to reconsider the case in the light of his judgement.
Predictably, the gay rights group, Stonewall wasn’t too happy:
Jonathan Finney, head of external affairs at Stonewall, said: “It’s unthinkable that anyone engaged in delivering any kind of public or publicly funded service should be given licence to pick and choose service users on the basis of individual prejudice.
“It’s clearly in the best interests of children in care to encourage as wide a pool of potential adopters as possible.”
Is it in the best interests of children to consider placing them with a same-sex couple? Not according to Baroness Deech, family lawyer and chairman of the Bar Standards Board:
Same sex parents are bad for children if they deprive them of the influence of a father or mother, she said.
She warned that gay or lesbian parents cannot be best for the welfare of children if there is no contact with adults of another sex.
Lady Deech spoke of her ‘unease’ about the laws on homosexual couples. The former chief of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority criticised recent laws on in vitro fertilisation that have given new rights to gay partners……
‘There is a wealth of research showing that children need fathers, not just two parents. Children need to see complementary roles, the relationship between the sexes, a microcosm of society, as they grow up.’