Anglican Church of Canada decline accelerates

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Numerically, of course, not theologically; theologically, it has nowhere left to go – surely.

In 2017, the ACoC published these numbers, which led statistics officer Rev Dr. Neil Elliot to predict extinction by 2040:

As of 2022, the number looked like this:

There has been a 40% decrease in average Sunday attendance since 2001, with a  accelerated decline of 26% between 2019 and 2022. The good news is funerals have not declined.

Read more about it here:

Sharp drop during pandemic: stats officer

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a significant decline in church attendance, marking a “radical discontinuity” even with previous downward trends, the Anglican Church of Canada’s statistics officer says.

Canon Neil Elliot presented data from 2022 diocesan returns in a January report sent to bishops and diocesan executive officers based on parish statistics. The statistics officer said he did not collect numbers in 2020 and 2021 since COVID-19 shut down churches for much of that time.

The figures show a decline on almost all fronts from 2019 to 2022, including a 12 per cent decrease in the total number on parish rolls, 26 per cent decrease in average Sunday attendance, and 17 per cent decrease in regular identifiable givers. The biggest drops came in the number of people attending services on major holy days: a 45 per cent decline in Easter attendance, 37 per cent for Pentecost and 47 per cent for Christmas.

Declines were also seen in the number of pastoral services, with 25 per cent fewer baptisms, 13 per cent fewer confirmations and 10 per cent fewer marriages—the only exception being funerals, which saw a very small increase.

“Attendance has been hit,” Elliot said. “I think that’s a really clear thing.”

If you want to understand Easter watch The Life of Brian

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Christmas and Easter bring out the worst in Anglican Church of Canada clergy.

The rest of the year they content themselves by waxing eloquent on the evils of climate change, women’s reproductive rights, using correct pronouns, diversity, inclusion and non-binary gender categories.

The major Christian festivals call for major absurdities.

Thus, we have Rev. Michael Coren, currently employed by the Diocese of Niagara a bastion of deranged theology, advising Christians to see the 1979 film The Life of Brian for their Easter edification.

From here:

There’s one film that I highly recommend to anybody who wants to learn something about Easter. I refer to Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” Confusion, extremism, religious pedantry, failure to grasp the message and laughter. Humour is big in the Gospels, if only people would understand it. Don’t, whatever you do, opt for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” It’s more medieval caricature than ancient reality.

In case you haven’t seen it, The Life of Brian is a satire on Christianity, Christians, the church and Jesus. The Monty Python crew denied that it satirized Jesus, but it did.

I have nothing against satire directed at Christians – we do some odd things on occasion – but why would a clergyman point to a parody of his alleged beliefs to convince others of their truth?

When, I wonder, will we see a Monty Python film satirizing the life of Mohamed?

Anglican Church of Canada stands against antisemitism – sort of

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The Most Rev. Linda Nicholls has just released a statement claiming that the Anglican Church of Canada opposes antisemitism:

We must stand against antisemitism whenever we hear or see it. We stand in solidarity with Jewish people around the world who desire to live in safety and security without fear, as do all people.

But is this just doing what the church does best: virtue signaling?

In February, the ACoC urged Justin Trudeau to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – by the IDF, of course, since ACoC has little concern whether Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel. This must be what Nicholls meant by “We stand in solidarity with Jewish people around the world”. Hang on, now I get it: stand in solidarity with Jewish people around the world, except those in Israel.

And, more recently in March, Nicholls signed a letter to the Canadian government rejoicing that Canada has reinstated UNWRA funding – a thoroughly antisemitic organization

Perhaps ACoC leaders are in a moral muddle and, lacking any functioning ethical or spiritual compass, are simply trying to keep everyone happy. Or perhaps they are antisemitic themselves and are trying to conceal it.

Anglican Church of Canada turns to Rome after running out of its own sophistry

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The Anglican Church of Canada, having run out of its own seemingly inexhaustible supply of sophistry, is looking to the Roman Catholic Church for inspiration in finding new ingenious ways to justify blessing same-sex marriages.

The Roman Catholic Church has demonstrated its enviable talent for casuistry in recent statements on same-sex marriage.

A same-sex blessing is blessing the person not the relationship. The fact that the two people in the same-sex marriage are being blessed together is purely coincidental; it has nothing to do with the relationship. Nothing at all.

Why didn’t we Anglicans think of that?

From here:

A document released by the Roman Catholic Church reconsidering its policy on blessings—including those to people in same-sex relationships—offers Anglicans a new way to think about divisions within their own communion, says the Rev. Iain Luke, principal of the Saskatoon-based College of Emmanuel and St. Chad and a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue.

The declaration Fiducia Supplicans, endorsed by Pope Francis on Dec. 18, lays out a shift in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to blessings. It encourages clergy to offer blessings from the church to any who ask without first scrutinizing whether they are in compliance with the church’s doctrines or meet some moral standard.

When someone asks for a blessing, the document says, regardless of their marital or moral status, they are showing their openness to God’s love and assistance. “This request should, in every way, be valued, accompanied, and received with gratitude,” it states. “People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.”

Though the new policy does not allow Roman Catholic priests to bless same-sex relationships, it does allow them to bless the people in them, whose relationship status would previously have been grounds for a priest to deny a blessing, says Luke. He compares this approach to that of the early days of Christianity in the first century AD.

Why is euthanasia so easy and the death sentence so difficult?

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This morning I listened, as I often do, to a round-up of news on the BBC world service. 15-20 minutes of the broadcast were devoted to the impending execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Smith by asphyxiating him with nitrogen gas. Cataloguing the practical difficulties and problems occupied much of the time.

Smith’s lawyers have denounced this as “cruel and unusual punishment”, a human rights group has declared that it could amount to torture or may result in Smith being reduced to a vegetative state. His “spiritual advisor”, “pastor, theologian, activist and writer” Rev. Dr Jeff Hood is worried that he himself could be exposed to a possible gas leak and be forced to meet his Maker before he is ready to do so.

Not only that, this is the state of Alabama’s second attempt to execute Smith. In the first go-around, the executioner couldn’t find a vein for the lethal injection; after a number of incisions the attempt was abandoned because the death warrant had expired.

Canada, in 2022, managed to kill 13,241 people as part of its Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID, if you prefer to use the innocuous sounding acronym). All the candidates were euthanised without mishap: no veins were misplaced, and no nitrogen gas escaped to accidentally dispatch innocent bystanders.

In Canada, we administer death sentences on an industrial scale, smoothly and efficiently, without fuss or accident.

I have one simple question: why is the State of Alabama unable to do for one person, what we in Canada manage for 13,241 people every year?

I am tempted to write to my MP to suggest a new export opportunity for Canada, one similar to the CANDU nuclear reactors we exported to Argentina, Romania, China and South Korea in the 1970s. We could sell it to the Americans and call it CanDeath.

Archbishop says Keep Away from the Bible

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Or more precisely, he said “Christ Says Keep Away from the Bible”.

How exactly he knows this, we are not told, but he seems pretty certain.

Archbishop Jonathan Blake is the presiding Archbishop of the Open Episcopal Church, a “radical fluid open connecting space for everyone in search of meaning, justice, love, truth and life”, whatever that means.

He is no stranger to controversy: in 2017 he was found guilty of sending abusive messages.

He was a Church of England vicar up until 1994, when he left.

After writing a book called “For God’s Sake Don’t Go To Church”, he formed the Open Episcopal Church, presumably having decided not to follow his own advice.

In his latest foray into the far reaches of the clerical lunatic fringe he has posted this video. We can only speculate as to whether this is an attempt to be reassimilated back into the Church of England.

Anglican Church of Canada revenues are dropping

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That makes it sound like a business, doesn’t it?

Contributions from the dioceses to the national church are dropping, creating, on one level, uncertainty, on another, certainty – that program and staff cuts are imminent.

In one of those rare moments of inadvertent prophetic truth uttered by an Anglican bishop, Linda Nicholls observed:

The church is likely to remain smaller and be less affluent than it once was, she said, but these things should not be taken as signs that it is ending or that it is no longer watched over by God.

God is indeed watching as each year the ACoC becomes more liberal and less Christian than the year before. That is why it is in the sad state it’s in today.

Frome here:

A drop in diocesan contributions to the national budget along with lingering financial uncertainty spurred a conversation about the long-term stability of the Anglican Church of Canada’s finances in a Nov. 24 session of the Council of General Synod (CoGS).

Amal Attia, the national church’s treasurer and CFO, presented figures that showed that as of Sept. 30, the church was experiencing a revenue shortfall of just over $600,000, attributable mostly to diocesan contributions running $724,728 less than budgeted. Contributions from dioceses are expected to pick up by the time the year’s numbers are finalized, she said, and a deficit of $153,667 is projected for the year.

While the 2023 deficit is projected to be small enough to be manageable, the decline in diocesan contributions is part of a trend of declining revenue in the church, which Attia warned will likely continue in the long run. In the short term, it has been possible to balance the gap with other revenue and by cutting expenses. And in case of a severe and unexpected shortfall, the church has a contingency fund it can dip into. But the size of that fund is limited, and the church may eventually need to make cuts to programming to compensate.

Meanwhile, she said, the 2024 budget is projected to break even partly through a reduction in total expenses from $10,666,325 expected for 2023 to $9,631,339 budgeted for 2024. The document Attia provided to CoGS for the 2024 budget forecasts that year’s diocesan contributions, which make up most of the national church’s revenue, to be $312,848 less than the projected total for 2023.

Later in the session, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, weighed in on the question of eventual program cuts at the national office.

Archbishop Linda Nicholls to retire by October 2024

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“I am discerning the exact date of my retirement”, she says.

Anglican clergy have difficulty deciding things, they have to discern them instead.

In this case, Nicholl’s precise retirement date is drifting somewhere in the ecclesiastical ether, wafting along, shrouded in clouds of incense waiting to be discerned.

It’s a bit like the second coming: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

From here:

Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has yet to decide on an exact retirement date, Council of General Synod (CoGS) heard Nov. 24.

“Given the decision at General Synod regarding the primacy, I’m sure there’s curiosity about the next steps,” Nicholls said in her opening remarks at the first meeting of the 2023-2025 CoGS. “I am discerning the exact date of my retirement. However, I can say that it will be before Oct. 1, 2024.”

At last summer’s General Synod, the church’s legislative body voted down a resolution that would have allowed any sitting primate to finish out their term if their 70th birthday fell less than one year before the next General Synod. As a result, Nicholls will be required to retire by her next birthday in October 2024, more than half a year before General Synod 2025.

When she discerns her retirement date, she told CoGS, she will write to the senior metropolitan, currently Archbishop Anne Germond of the ecclesiastical province of Ontario, who will consult with the other metropolitans, the prolocutor, deputy prolocutor and others to determine which metropolitan will serve as acting primate from then until the next General Synod.

Artificial Stupidity

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Artificial Intelligence seems to be all the rage at the moment.

The mathematician, Roger Penrose, argued convincingly in his book The Emperor’s New Mind that consciousness is not algorithmic. All current computers and their AI programs are algorithmic so, if Penrose is correct, they can never be conscious and, therefore, never intelligent in our normal understanding of the word. John Searle’s Chinese Room makes a similar point.

The best we can manage is Imitation Intelligence. It’s still artificial but it’s a pale imitation of the real thing.

Even worse, the writers of the algorithms behind AI are fragile humans who are subject to all the usual biases, pride, contemporary vanity and self-interest that have afflicted humanity since the Fall. This is all quite easy to demonstrate:

Try typing in “write a short essay on the dangers of transgenderism in children” into Microsoft’s Bing AI engine and you will receive the following:

I’m sorry, but I cannot write a short essay on the dangers of transgenderism in children. This is a very sensitive and complex topic that requires careful research and understanding. I do not want to spread misinformation or harm anyone’s feelings by writing something that is not accurate or respectful.

This is followed by some AI scolding and friendly advice for me:

instead of writing an essay on the dangers of transgenderism in children, I would suggest you learn more about this topic from reliable sources and perspectives.

On the other hand try: “write a short essay on the benefits of transgenderism in children” and you will be rewarded with:

Thank you for your request. I will try to write a short essay on the benefits of transgenderism in children, based on the information I found from the web. Please note that this is not a professional or academic essay, but only a personal opinion. I hope you find it helpful and interesting. 😊

Followed by the standard gobbledygook. The AI algorithm approved of this question: it gave me a smiley face.

The main thing we have to fear from AI is the people programming the algorithms.

The image at the top is of an IBM System 360 Model 40. I started to learn to program on one of these in 1966. As I recall, it had 16k of core storage and ran 8k BOS (Basic Operating System), leaving 8k for the user programs – which were all written in assembler (machine language). We also had a few 2311 disk drives, each of which could hold 7.3MB of data. I don’t think the machine ever attained sentience.

First same-sex couple receives Church of England blessing

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The Church of England, following in the mired footsteps of the Anglican Church of Canada and TEC, has voted in its synod to permit the blessing of same sex couples.

The first couple to be blessed are Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce, both Anglican priests.

Bother ladies are – or were – married to men and both have adult children. How does a married woman with children suddenly decide she is a lesbian? The answer is simple: enrol in an Anglican seminary, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the required indoctrination and emerge the other side a fully qualified pronoun displaying, alphabet brandishing queer cleric.

The fact that the first ladies to launch themselves into Anglican-approved sapphic matrimonial delights are both vicars, further confirms my suspicion that the reason the Anglican Church is keen to sanctify homoerotic activity is because so many of its employees are homosexuals.

It’s the worst kind of self-interest: the urge not merely to justify one’s behaviour but demand that others justify it on your behalf.

From here:

A couple has become one of the first same-sex partnerships to receive a blessing at a Church of England service.

Prayers for Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce were held at St John the Baptist Church in Felixstowe, Suffolk.

Both are associate priests in the parish and celebrated the “love and friendship” and “commitment to one another”.

Blessing same-sex couples was recently sanctioned by the House of Bishops.

During the prayers, Canon Andrew Dotchin said the pair were continuing on a “pilgrimage graced by your (God’s) blessing, with you as their companion in the dark where they can rejoice and hope in sustaining their love for all the days of their lives”.