Canada's image lies in tatters

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According to the Guardian

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I’ve broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world’s 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

Makes me feel proud to be Canadian.

The climate buffoonery of mainline churches

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They’ve all – Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Baptist – fallen for climate change chicanery; and the power-mongers of worldly and – in the case of Rome – corrupt churches have chosen a climategate moment to redouble their efforts at sinking into irrelevancy.

A total of 16 leaders of Christian Churches in the UK, including the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, will join in a service to call on world leaders to act against climate change.

The ecumenical service that will be held in London this Saturday, December 5 aims to urge political leaders meeting in Copenhagen to ‘Act Now To Stop Climate Change’, Independent Catholic News reports.

Among others slated to attend are Bishop Declan Lang of Clifton, Head of the International Department of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference; Bishop John Rawsthorne of Hallam, Chair of CAFOD, Revd David Gamble, Chair of the Methodist Conference; Reverend Pat Took, Chair, London Baptist Association; Steve Clifford, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance; Colonel Brian Peddle, Chief Secretary for The Salvation Army UK and Republic of Ireland, the report said.

Rev. Ian Dingwall talking to himself

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In C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, a clergyman in Hell wanders in circles muttering banalities to an audience that does not exist. In this life, the Niagara Anglican is a training ground for such a perpetuity of solipsism. The Rev. Ian Dingwall is an acolyte in the peddling of meaningless drivel masquerading as Christianity; the medium is the Niagara Anglican paper, the audience is almost all gone and the message is a swirling feculence making its way down the plug-hole of eternity:

Hospitality is the main business of the Church wherever it is. And that is so because it is the chief work of God. God is the Host of the Universe and God’s family encompasses all of life: human, animal, environment, the whole of Creation.

We are not a factory whose goal is to “Make Christians” and stamp them with the mark of Religion or Church. It is to welcome all people as Guests who deserve the best hospitality we can offer. Inclusive of all: no fences or walls or barriers of separation. All this is because God is the Great Host of the Universe and we are all one in his Home of Hospitality.

Diocese of Niagara: Who needs a building anyway?

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Andy Kalbfleisch from the Diocese of Niagara’s mission strategy committee is pretending that buildings aren’t important:

The status quo is no longer good enough. How many times have we heard or read that phrase? Perhaps so often that it is now a snoozer. If it has become that, then it is indeed time to wake up and move out of our comfort zones and look at things with new eyes and hear them with new ears.

Did you know that in September 2009 the Hamilton Meeting Houses had an average attendance of 843 per Sunday— Ancaster with 565 and East Mountain 278? How many of our ‘real’ churches can boast this level of attendance? Wake up folks it’s not about the building. The status quo is no longer good enough.

I’ve got news for you Andy; have a little chat with your bishop, Michael Bird and see how important buildings are to him. Try and convince him to give the 4 ANiC parishes the buildings they paid for, worship in and use for ministry. Good luck.

Five British sailors taken hostage in Iran

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From the Daily Mail:

Five British sailors are being held hostage after their racing yacht may have inadvertently strayed into Iranian waters.

Foreign Office officials “immediately contacted the Iranian authorities in London and in Tehran on the evening of 25 November, both to seek clarification and to try and resolve the matter swiftly,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said today.

And beg for their return.

However, an Iranian Foreign Ministry official said he was not aware of reports a British yacht had been stopped. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry official mysteriously disappeared shortly after making this statement.

Fears were growing that the detention of the British sailors will dramatically increase tensions between Iran and the West.

Surely not.

The country has come under increasing pressure in response to its plans to build 10 new nuclear fuel plants.

Why don’t we offer to build them for Ahmadinejad in exchange for the return of the hostages?

In March 2007 HMS Cornwall made headlines around the world in March when seven Royal Marines and eight sailors were arrested at gunpoint.

The humiliation was compounded as the Iranians gleefully exploited the propaganda opportunities in the following days, broadcasting footage of the hostages apologising for straying into Iranian waters, and warmly thanking president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for releasing them.

After thanking Ahmadinejad for letting us build his nuclear plants we should accessorise them with a few intercontinental ballistic missiles. Perhaps he’d start to like us then.

Diocese of Ottawa: please get married here

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The Diocese of Ottawa is “testing” same sex blessings:

Bishop John Chapman has given a church in the diocese of Ottawa permission to begin offering a rite of blessing to same-gender couples who are civilly married.

The Church of St. John the Evangelist could offer its first blessing as soon as a married couple asks. At least one person in the couple needs to be baptized.

Bishop John Chapman is now scouring Canada trying to find a homosexual couple who want to get their marriage blessed in his church. I understand that he did find one couple but lost them to Bishop Michael Bird after a brief scuffle.

Interfaith dialogue for wets

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Interfaith dialogue: the curse of our time.

NASHVILLE — It sounds like the start of a joke: a rabbi, a minister and a Muslim sheik walk into a restaurant.

But there they were, Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie and Sheik Jamal Rahman, walking into an Indian restaurant, and afterward a Presbyterian church. The sanctuary was full of 250 people who came to hear them talk about how they had wrestled with their religious differences and emerged as friends.

They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding in a country reeling after a Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood, Tex., was charged with opening fire on his fellow soldiers, killing 13.

The room then grew quiet as each stood and recited what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith. The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

“It is a verse taken out of context,” Sheik Rahman said, pointing out that the previous verse says that God has no love for aggressors. “But we have to acknowledge that ‘kill the unbelievers’ is an awkward verse,’ ” the sheik said as the crowd laughed. “Some verses are literal, some are metaphorical, but the Koran doesn’t say which is which.”

Here’s the problem: when Christians take the bible at face value (Rev. Don Mackenzie doesn’t) they run around trying to convert people because they believe that Christ is the only way to God the Father (Rev. Don Mackenzie is embarrassed by this). When Muslims take the Koran at face value they run around killing non-Muslims. Notice any difference?

Don't you dare!

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This is what people usually look like when they are telling me not to put their photo on my blog.

From St. Hilda’s 50th Anniversary Celebration. More photos to follow.

This particular person tells me that she prays for me a lot.