Tag Archives: Anglican Church of Canada

The future of the family according to the Anglican Church of Canada

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This cartoon was published in the November edition of the Anglican Journal:

 

It refers to a report from Statistics Canada that claims a 42% increase in same-sex couples over the last five years. It seems the report is flawed, since room-mates who are married – not to each other – could have been counted as same-sex couples.

No matter: even if the report is accurate, the percentage of same-sex couples is still only at 0.69% of the total number of couples.

What is interesting about the Journal’s publishing of this cartoon is that, yet again, the compulsive obsession the church has with legitimising homosexual activity has blinded it to the transparently obvious fact that the future of the family does not reside – and can never reside – in people of the same sex being barrenly “married” to each other.

What is Occupying Bishop Dennis Drainville?

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Whenever I see Dennis Drainville mentioned I am overcome by an overwhelming desire to make an unkind play on words using his name and the direction his diocese (Quebec) is heading; so far my will of iron has helped me resist the urge.

It seems that the bishop has been a “lifelong social activist”, a phrase almost completely devoid of any meaning other than as a label for people who like wandering around carrying placards containing phrases equally devoid of meaning. Like this:

Speaking of phrases devoid of meaning, Bishop Dennis Drainville has decided that the Occupy movement has provided the cosmic illumination that: ‘They are the 1 per cent and we are the 99 per cent.’ It doesn’t get much deeper than that. The bishop himself, by virtue of being in the upper echelons of an elitist church hierarchy and earning a typical bishop’s salary of over $100,000 per year, is probably in the 0.001 per cent.

As the bishop notes, “the gulf between the rich and poor is widening”; it’s almost as wide as the chasm between Anglican bishops and normal people.

From here:

The Occupy movement has created a focused public debate on economic and political institutions and provided “a new and powerful critique” of them, says Bishop Dennis Drainville of the diocese of Quebec.

Invited to speak at various events Sept. 28-30 sponsored by Occupy Nova Scotia and churches in Halifax, Drainville noted that the anti-capitalist movement that spread around the world in 2011 has brought new awareness to the notion that ‘They are the 1 per cent and we are the 99 per cent,’ ” Drainville told those attending his lecture at the Atlantic School of Theology. “This formula underlines the structural inequalities of our political and economic system and highlights the collusion between the corporate and political elites,” he said.

 

Anglican Church of Canada: Justice Camp

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The Anglican Church of Canada’s Justice Camp is a place where Anglican priests are sent for decontamination and re-education after they have had a close encounter with the Gospel. This Church Gulag is also a place of incarceration for particularly troublesome laity; it was only through the most extreme subterfuge that I managed to avoid it during my sojourn in the Diocese of Niagara.

One of the tortures employed is being forced to sing songs like this one. Some victims have been known to bite off their own tongues during the refrain:

(Tune: My Favorite Things)

Meeting with Linda, with movers & shakers,
Activists, greenies, and health-and peace-makers,
MP’s and editors, right on the ball,
Help us respond to our fai-aithful call.

Postcards and letters and online petitions,
Rallies and sit-ins with local musicians,
Scripture reminds us to take care of all-
Working for justice can be such a ball!

Refrain:
When our greed strikes,
When our fears roar,
When we’re feeling proud,
We simply remember our fai-aithful call –
And then we can speak out loud!

Ruth & Amanda said, “MPs will hear ya,
But missing deadlines and dates won’t endear ya,
Start with small steps and do homework, you-all,
If you’d be faithful to Jesus Christ’s call.

Issues of justice and tools to affect them,
Singular voices connect good intentions,
Sacrifice, courage, the zeal of St. Paul,
Help us respond to our God’s faithful call

Refrain
Coming from churches both rural and urban,
We’ve heard of problems both dark & disturbin’,
But with the expertise here in this hall,
We’ll start the healing that answers God’s call.

h/t LSP

The Anglican Church of Canada suppresses free speech

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I used to leave comments on Anglican Journal articles but gave up doing so because they never appeared. I am not the only one: it seems that the ACoC can tolerate anything except disagreement.

The excruciatingly dull blog that exudes like a foetid ectoplasm from the Diocese of New Westminster expunged a dissenting view on St. Matthews Abbotsford:

Note on Another Matter:
nwanglicanblog received a lengthy response to a recent posting that comments on the move of the ANiC congregation in Abbotsford out of its former physical facilities. This response will not be posted on the blog as it reiterates familiar arguments and makes disparaging statements that do not contribute to the advancement of the Gospel.

Since the Diocese of New Westminster’s expertise lies mostly in the art of breaking up the Anglican Communion, it’s hard to see how it could harbour the conceit that it is, itself, in any way advancing the Gospel, especially since Michael Ingham went to some lengths to prevent one of the world’s foremost evangelical thinkers – J. I. Packer – from setting foot on any diocesan property.

I have been blocked from following the twitter feed from the Diocese of Niagara for fear, presumably, that I might make an unflattering remark about its contents.

Still, the Anglican Church of Canada does love conversation; just don’t question the tergiversations of its hierocracy.

The reason people are leaving the Anglican Church of Canada

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The Anglican Church of Canada is very shy about how many people attend its churches on a Sunday: there have been no attendance statistics since 2001. Even in 2001 or in prior years, the average Sunday attendance is not mentioned, rather the total members on the parish roll is given. Since I still receive a paper copy of the Niagara Anglican – a moment in the month that I have come to cherish – I have an uneasy suspicion that I am still on the “parish roll” of a Diocese of Niagara church.

The figures are almost certainly inflated, perhaps grossly inflated.

According to statistics published here, in 2001 there were 641,845 people on parish rolls. The total number of clergy was 3591.

In 1961, the church’s heyday, there were 1,320,649 on the parish rolls and 2380 clergy.

I’m surprised no-one has noticed this before, but, as the number of clergy increased by 150%, the number of laity decreased by 211%. Church membership is varying inversely to the number of clergy: far be it from me to concoct a spurious causal relationship, but it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the clergy are driving out the laity.

This isn’t as surprising as it first might seem. If orthodox faith is to be found in an Anglican Church of Canada parish, the last place I would expect to find it would be in the clergy; lay people in numerous parishes are busy praying for the conversion of their leaders. Seminaries churn out sceptics rather than Christians, bishops complete the process by weeding out candidates whose faith miraculously emerges intact from seminary and, of course, scour the continent for “married” gay candidates in order to solidify their credentials as non-homophobic.

What’s the solution? Fire all the clergy – beginning with the bishops – and start again with missionary priests from Africa.

Ottawa axes non-Christian prison chaplains

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As this article notes, “Prisoners of minority faiths in federal penitentiaries will have to turn to Christian ministers in 2013.”

Anglican priest, Rev. David Price is unhappy with that since, horror of horrors, wiccans could be converted to Christianity. Where is the diversity and inclusion in that?

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has announced the cancellation of the contracts of all part-time non-Christian chaplains ministering in federal prisons across Canada. The cuts take effect as of the end of March 2013.

After that date, penitentiary inmates of minority faiths, from Buddhists to Wiccans, will have to rely on full-time Christian chaplains for interfaith services, religious counsel and spiritual guidance.

“I could never pretend to be Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Sikh and tend to the spiritual needs of all these different people,” says the Rev. David Price, an Anglican priest in Agassiz, B.C., who spent many years as a prison chaplain in the west. In his view, prison chaplains are essential and cost-effective “midwives” who help offenders give birth to new selves and new lives before they are released back into society.

Anglican Church of Canada: $900k in debt, treasurer resigns, seeks new treasurer who “sees change as an opportunity”

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Looking for someone keen to see impending bankruptcy as an opportunity, to “pick up the challenge.” Anyone?

From here:

With the prospect of a 2012 budget deficit of $900,000 looming large, General Synod is on the hunt for a new treasurer to replace Michele George, who resigned Oct. 1.

According to Rob Dickson, chair of the search committee, the treasurer must be someone who sees change as an opportunity. “We’re in turbulent times and we need somebody who is keen to pick up that challenge,” Dickson told the Anglican Journal.

Diocese of Rupert’s Land supports healthcare for refugees

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The headline of this article from the Journal declares: “Rupert’s Land goes to bat for refugees”. Good for Rupert’s Land, you might think: they are paying the healthcare costs for some refugees.

Not at all. The Diocese of Rupert’s Land isn’t spending money to improve refugee healthcare, it’s spending it on suing the federal government to compel it to use everyone else’s money to pay for refugee healthcare. To rub salt in the wound, the healthcare is better than that enjoyed by the taxpayers from whom the federal government collects the money.

This is the Anglican Church of Canada’s charitable giving modus operandi: don’t spend money on helping people when you can sue someone else to make them do it instead.

Federal cuts to refugee health care will deter church groups from sponsoring refugees, Anglican Church of Canada officials have warned. “Clearly, it would cut down on the number of refugees that we are able to accept because church groups just don’t have the resources to pay [for medical care],” said Bishop Don Phillips of the diocese of Rupert’s Land, where more than 2,000 refugees have been sponsored.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and Adele Finney, executive director of the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, have expressed “deep concern” about the cuts to the Interim Federal Health program. Previously, private sponsors assumed the cost of food, shelter and transportation for a year, while the government provided health care. Under the revised rules, which took effect June 30, church-sponsored refugees will no longer have access to government-funded health care.

On June 26, the diocese of Rupert’s Land and the Hospitality House Refugee Ministry, which sponsors refugees with funds from the Anglican diocese of Rupert’s Land and the Roman Catholic Archepiscopal Corporation of Winnipeg, announced plans to file a lawsuit against the federal government.

 

Cracking Open White Identity towards Transformation: Canadian Ecumenical Anti-Racism Network Examines White Identity, Power and Privilege

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That’s the catchy little title of a new book published by the Canadian Council of Churches, whose president is – white. When the CCC’s Executive Committee is not busy Cracking Open the White Identity of its leader, it devotes its energies to social justice, climate change, wealth poverty and ecology, and ushering in a new world. Not a brave new world – really.

The contributors to the book have discovered that the church’s real problem is its “failure to address white power and privilege”. The Anglican Church of Canada is a member of the CCC and, funnily enough, all the ACoC’s bishops are – white! Perhaps the CCC is on to something: I’m eagerly awaiting the mass resignation of all ACoC bishops and their replacement by African bishops..

From here:

In his afterword, the United Church of Canada’s Michael Blair, who is of black Jamaican descent, argues that failure to address white power and privilege threatens the very core of the Christian church. “…I would say the very essence of what it means to be church is at stake…The traditional marks of the church—one holy, catholic and apostolic—are challenged,” Blair writes.

The example of Christ must always remain at the heart of the church’s work. “Certainly the model of the ministry of Jesus was the dismantling of systems of power and privilege—particularly within the context of institutionalized religion,” Blair writes.

Anglican Church of Canada $900,000 in the red mid 2012

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From here:

MONTREAL-Despite efforts to balance its budget the national synod of the Anglican Church of Canada was running about $900,000 in the red at the end of the second quarter of 2012, the primate of the church, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, says.

He told representatives of eastern Canada dioceses Friday that the shortfall was due mainly to revenues lower than anticipated from dioceses. This was despite impressive efforts by some diocese to grapple with their own financial challenges and the decision of some diocese able to do so to voluntarily increase their contributions to the national church.

“The General Synod is struggling financially and if the truth be known we have been on this trajectory for a long time,” he told the synod of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada, made up of seven dioceses in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. After slipping into “a dangerous tendency of deficit budgeting” it had been seeking to balance its budget through austerities including a 25 per cent reduction in national staff in the last three years, while at the same time seeking to re-focus its activities on mission.

Archbishop Claude Miller of Fredericton seems to have cottoned on to the idea that the financial plight of the Anglican Church of Canada is a result of following false gods. I think he has missed the mark on which false gods and who is following them, though. In his view, they are governments, money, possessions, knowledge, industry, commerce, even entertainment and sports. But they are the false gods of the unsaved; there is no real surprise in that. While it’s hard to keep up with the ever broadening plethora of false gods that the church has taken into its bosom, it seems clear that an, admittedly, non-exhaustive list would include: utopianism, socialism, homosexuality, gender ambiguity, inclusion, temporality rather than transcendence, diversity, eco-religion, aboriginal superstition and general new-age mumbo-jumbo.

 “We have put our faith in other gods for our security and salvation: governments, money, possessions, knowledge, industry, commerce, even entertainment and sports. Witness the Sabbath day and the parking lots of churches versus the parking lots of the shopping malls. Where our treasure is, we find our hearts.”

Fortunately, Primate Fred Hiltz has the situation under control and has issued a memo to calm nervous staff: apparently, the remedy for the church’s financial embarrassment is enshrined in “pruning” and “Vision 2019”.

I want to assure you that in my remarks I said nothing about cuts to programs or staff. I simply made reference to our obligation for careful attention to “pruning” that may need to be considered. In reality we find ourselves in a deficit position and the worry that comes with it at this time each year.

In my remarks I also said that by 2016 the structures of the General Synod will look “very different”. That friends is not breaking news! The need to do this work is enshrined in Vision 2019 (practice #1-Creating Structures that work now for God’s mission) General Synod Resolution A111, the resolution of the November 2011 meeting of CoGS and the focus of conversations at the Spring 2012 meeting of CoGS and those we will have at the upcoming meeting in November.