The disorder of the Diocese of New Westminster

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The Diocese of New Westminster has launched its Order of the Diocese of New Westminster.

The Inaugural Investiture Eucharist of The Order of the Diocese of New Westminster was celebrated in Christ Church Cathedral at 4:30pm on November 1st, 2009.

53 individuals representing 41 different parishes accepted nomination to be the first recipients of the order and 49 of those were present at the worship service to receive the medallion from the Venerable Ronald Harrison, personal congratulations from the Right Reverend Michael Ingham and the official certificate from the Very Reverend Peter Elliott while Judge Robert Watt, Warden of the Order read the citations.

The Right Reverend Ralph Spence retired Bishop of Niagara was the guest preacher and Bishop Michael presided at the Eucharist.

The Diocese of Niagara has been awarding The Order of Niagara for some years now; it was started by John Bothwell – as indeed were many other things that now trouble the diocese. A number of parishioners in St. Hilda’s, ANiC were awarded the Order of Niagara; they don’t wear them much, though.

There is significance in the fact that Ralph Spence preached at the New West inauguration, since he sought inspiration from Michael Ingham for much of his tenure. Spence preceded Michael Bird in Niagara both in chronology and heresy; Michael Bird was left to deal with the legacy of his predecessor’s excursions into apostasy, and from this:

Certainly the four departing churches and the attending legal costs have brought forth courage and caused stress at the top level of the diocese.

it is clear that recent events have taken their toll on Bird.

I suspect Spence had no idea of the storm he was unwittingly unleashing when he encouraged the gay agenda in Niagara. While he was still bishop, my wife was unfortunate enough to hear a snippet of an address he gave to a group of Anglican ladies. The question of same-sex-blessings was raised and Spence pooh-poohed any idea that trouble would follow a decision to go ahead. “The fuss will blow over” he said; for him it did, since he retired, leaving Bird to summon the courage to continue the direction set by Spence and pioneered by Ingham. Of course, this does not exonerate Bird since he is forging ahead along the course set by Spence with maniacal enthusiasm; still, he can’t be happy that Ralph did not warn him about the troublemakers just waiting to cause[d] stress at the top level of the diocese.

Perhaps that’s why Spence is pontificating in Vancouver and not Niagara.

Anglican Church of Canada is selling rare artefacts to raise cash

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On ebay:Tormorrows Anglicans

Anglican Church Of Canada” Past & Future Video VHS. Starting bid: $4.99.

The description reassures us that with:

“This Canadian Import Video You Get PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE Of The ANGLICAN CHURCH”

That’s right, the entire history of the Anglican Church of Canada on one VHS tape; I understand that the “future” section is fairly brief.

H1N1 vaccination dogma

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I must admit when I see every major newspaper carrying full-page advertisements exhorting me to do something, a sense of inner rebellion wells up making me not want to do it. In the ad, Dr. Arlene King, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health implores:

I hear it all the time – various reasons for people not getting their H1N1 flu shot. The fact is H1N1 flu is now circulating in our communities and resulting in illness, even among young healthy people. It’s new, it’s different and it spreads quickly.

Here is something else that is new and different: the H1N1 vaccine:

The federal government insists that the new H1N1 swine flu vaccine is perfectly safe. But it has agreed to cover the cost of any lawsuits launched against manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline should something go wrong.

And it admits that it approved the vaccine, known as Arepanrix, before Glaxo finished conducting any clinical trials on it.

The problem, it seems, is that Ottawa ran out of time to test the vaccine properly.

With the flu season starting and no clinical results from the Canadian vaccine yet in, the government decided to rely instead on tests of what Health Canada’s website calls “a closely similar” H1N1 vaccine manufactured for the European market by Glaxo and known as Pandemrix.

The European Medicines Agency approved Pandemrix a month ago following clinical trials involving 129 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 60.

But so far, according to the Health Canada website, there have been no tests on children or those over 60 – for either vaccine.

Instead, the federal government is relying largely on results from what Health Canada calls a “mock” vaccine based on an entirely different strain of flu.

Yet even there, according to information posted on the Health Canada website, testing is spotty.

In particular, there are no clinical data available on how any kind of flu vaccine using so-called adjuvants (materials mixed in to make a dose go farther) affects children from ages 3 to 6 and 10 to 17.

For weeks, the federal government has refused to say whether it would follow Washington’s lead and somehow shield Canada’s sole H1N1 vaccine maker from lawsuits.

“Subject to some restrictions, Canada has agreed to indemnify GSK (Glaxo) for the H1N1 vaccine,” a company spokeswoman said in an email.

Strange that the same government that is beseeching us to receive an injection of something that is so safe was initially unwilling to shield the drug company that is producing it.

Altogether I’m rather glad about the ads, even though I helped pay for them: I now have a few extra reasons for not getting the H1N1 flu shot:

The redoubtable Dr. King sounds as if she is protesting too much;

When someone insists that they know what’s good for me, I am immediately suspicious;

There is every likelihood that those who refuse the H1N1 shot will be demoted to the rank of social pariah – a category in which I feel quite at home.

And – I almost forgot – the last flu shot I had gave me the flu.

A group of climate experts call for……

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Well, actually, make that a group of ecclesiastical political correctness apparatchiks who know nothing whatsoever about science, climate or normal life, led and hosted by the Anglican Ken Dodd impersonator:

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At a meeting hosting by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha’i, Jain and Zoroastrian faiths called on the UK and G20 governments to fight for an ambitious deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions at UN-led talks in Copenhagen in December.

A statement issued by the groups meeting at Lambeth Palace, London, said catastrophic climate change posed a ”very real threat to the world’s poor and to our fragile creation”.

Every time a bell rings an Angel inhales CO2

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According to ZuZu Bailey in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

Not exactly biblical, but everyone enjoys a sentimental film at Christmas and no-one takes it very seriously – although these days, perhaps some do.

Here is the contemporary equivalent from the Green Team at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Uxbridge; as is the case with much that is modern, twice as silly and four times as superstitious as the original.

The Green Team at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Uxbridge, Ont. rang their church bell 350 times as part of the 350.org climate change campaign on Oct. 24. The team was part of an international demonstration involving 182 nations. The goal: send a message to world leaders about the need for action on global warming. “CO2 in the atmosphere has to be reduced to less than 350 parts per million and quickly, if we are to save many life forms on this planet, including ourselves,” said the team in a press release issued today. “The holy spirit was working throughout the world this past weekend, we won’t fail.”

Dawkins Delirium

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h/t Damian Thompson

Richard Dawkins, has made buckets of money saying things like “The universe we observe has … no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”. Yet, when it suits him,  this champion of reason has no qualms in using the concepts – good and evil – that he claims don’t exist:

What major institution most deserves the title of greatest force for evil in the world? In a field of stiff competition, the Roman Catholic Church is surely up there among the leaders. The Anglican church has at least a few shreds of decency, traces of kindness and humanity with which Jesus himself might have connected, however tenuously: a generosity of spirit, of respect for women, and of Christ-like compassion for the less fortunate. The Anglican church does not cleave to the dotty idea that a priest, by blessing bread and wine, can transform it literally into a cannibal feast; nor to the nastier idea that possession of testicles is an essential qualification to perform the rite. It does not send its missionaries out to tell deliberate lies to AIDS-weakened Africans, about the alleged ineffectiveness of condoms in protecting against HIV. Whether one agrees with him or not, there is a saintly quality in the Archbishop of Canterbury, a benignity of countenance, a well-meaning sincerity. How does Pope Ratzinger measure up? The comparison is almost embarrassing.

In a bleak Dawkins universe of “blind pitiless indifference” the above ravings don’t have to make sense: they are merely the random firing of neurons in Dawkins’ fevered – I was going to say imagination, but in a materialist universe, that doesn’t exist – brain. In the real universe where good and evil do exist, a brief search of Catholic charities is all that is needed to see what a fool Dawkins makes of himself when he pontificates outside of his field.

The most disturbing part of this incoherence is the fact that Dawkins thinks Rowan is saintly. It’s hard to know what Dawkins means by that since a saint is a Christian – a person whom Dawkins enjoys hurling inane schoolboy insults at; whatever he means, Rowan Williams doesn’t need a friend like Richard Dawkins.

Beware of the Anglo-Catholics

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In Brideshead Revisited, when Charles’s cousin Jasper advises him to “Beware of the Anglo-Catholics—they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents. In fact, steer clear of all the religious groups; they do nothing but harm.”, I thought Evelyn Waugh was exercising poetic license, or at least exaggerating.

But perhaps not:

But property matters and theology are not the only stumbling blocks on the road to Rome. There is another elephant in the vestry. It is one that is not spoken about openly; it is suppressed by a potent mixture of political correctness and traditional church hypocrisy. But it’s high time it was aired. It is this: a very significant proportion, perhaps even a majority in some dioceses, of Anglo-Catholic clergy are homosexual men. Everyone with a ministry in the Church of England knows this.

Just what the Roman Catholic Church needs: more homosexual priests.