Tag Archives: Anglican

The indiscretion of Rev Dr Peter Mullen

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Clearly, the Rev Dr Peter Mullen is not politically correct. Not only that, he has done something that the bishop of London, Rev Richard Chartres, finds highly offensive; that makes him OK in my book.

Sadly, he has caved in to the likes of Peter Tatchell and his blog is no more. All is not lost, however; it lives on in the dark and cobweb infested depths of Google cache! For your amusement here is the offending poem:

Gay wedding at St Bartholomew’s EC1
The Bishop of London is in a high huff
Because Dr Dudley has married a puff;
And not just one puff – he’s married another:
Two priests, two puffs and either to other.
“It isn’t a wedding, for that’s not allowed;
They’ve just come together and promised and vowed
To shack up and snug up, to have and to hold:
Ooh aren’t we radical! Ooh aren’t we bold!”
Now here’s a most queer and most wonderful thing:
He’s given his hand, he’s offered his ring;
And each to the other forever will bend,
After their troll in the coach up West End.
Not a flash wedding, no pics in Hello!
Just a honeymoon cottage, convenient so.
Of such Dr Dudley a goldmine has found,
From shaven-head puftas the nuptial pink pound.
The new Church of England embraces diversity,
A fresh modulation on ancient perversity:
“I’m C of E and PC so don’t think it odd of me
To offer a licence and blessing for sodomy.”

And more from the Telegraph

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen, who is rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, said in an internet blog that homosexuality was “clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease”.

He wrote: “Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.”

The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, said the posting, which has since been taken down, was “highly offensive”. The Rev Mullen, 66, was told on Friday that he could face disciplinary action.

Peter Tatchell of gay rights group OutRage! said he should resign.

The shrieks of OutRage! that this has engendered demonstrates that we have at last become a humourless society; roll down the curtain, it’s as good as over.

At last: A Church of England vicar who is honest about his priorities.

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When I was young I remember my parents struggling to scrape up enough money to buy the house they were renting; I think it cost around £600. It was a modest terraced house with 3 bedrooms overlooking a bus-stop on a rather shabby street: not much, perhaps, but it was theirs and they were pleased to call it their own.

Here we have the Rev. David Matthews – a pseudonym for Obadiah Demurral, perhaps – who is turning up his nose at what appears to be a rather charming 4 bedroom house – which he doesn’t have to pay for! How times have changed. From the Telegraph:

A country vicar has refused to move to a new parish because the four-bedroom home he was offered with the job was ‘not big enough’.

Rev David Matthews was all set to take up his new role as a team vicar in Suffok – only to lay eyes on the £275,000 home that came with the new posting, and declare that it was too small.

He announced that he was staying where he was, leaving a diocese scrambling around for a new team vicar and his would-be new parishioners bemused.

Rev Matthews is currently rector in the Box River parishes of five villages near Sudbury, Suffolk.

He was offered and accepted the role of team vicar with the Wilford Peninsula, based at the house 40 miles away in Hollesley. The Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich said it provided him with full details of the house that came with it, which also boasts a study, two bathrooms and a large conservatory.

But Rev Matthews said he didn’t actually see the house until just before he was due to move in, and declared it unsuitable.

Diocese of Niagara: hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

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The Diocese of Niagara’s Rev. Martha Tatarnic took over Brian Ruttan’s diocesan congregation at St. Hilda’s building this Sunday.

It’s good to see optimism and ambition at work: Martha has asked for her own phone line and would like the sign on the front lawn changed to include her name. And guess who she is expecting to pay for this? St. Hilda’s ANiC, of course, because the Diocese of Niagara is flat broke and has not given her any money.

Brings tears to the eyes, doesn’t it.

The Church of England monkeys with Darwin

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If you sit enough monkeys down with typewriters, eventually they will produce the latest theological meanderings of the Anglican Church. This experiment was successfully verified at Lambeth 2008.

In the never ending quest for its own destruction, the CofE is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’. It is a fitting tribute to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, since the Anglican Church in the West is a live demonstration of the theory’s application. The church, having adapted to its surrounding culture in all the wrong ways, has made itself irrelevant and incomprehensible (just listen to Rowan Williams) to all and sundry; very soon it will cease to exist – it will have adapted itself into extinction.

The CofE pays its homage here.

It is this need for humans to think, and love, that forms the centrepiece of a new retrospective by the Revd Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, called ‘Good Religion Needs Good Science’. After warning of the social misapplication of Darwin’s discoveries, where natural selection justifies racism and other forms of discrimination – perhaps predicted in the “misguided” over-reaction of the Church in the 1860s – Brown writes: “Christians will want to stress, instead, the human capacity for love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice.” He separates the biological and emotional further by pointing out the naivety of assuming a wholesale evolution of the human race: “Despite our vastly expanding technical knowledge, even a fairly cursory review of human history undermines any idea of constant moral progress.”

This is replete with the usual Anglican drivel. First, if natural selection is true, then of course it would engender ‘racism’: if one race is superior and stronger than another, the inferior will be selected out. If natural selection is true what incentive is there to indulge in the opposite – self-sacrifice. And as for ‘other forms of discrimination’, there is hardly any worse discrimination than that of the abortionist towards the unborn child; a fairly predictable result of adopting a theory which declares that the strong survive and the weak perish.

The very worst part of all this is the diabolically bad logic of attempting to believe in Christianity and natural selection simultaneously. Leaving aside the squabbling about whether the universe arrived in 6 days, minutes, millennia or a few septillion years, the fact is, natural selection depends on accident to work. This means that mankind is accidental: it would be quite possible – indeed likely –  for it not to have existed – ever. From a Christian perspective this is absurd: the Christian view is that God planned man’s existence, planned revealing himself through Jesus, planned to redeem us through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, and eventually plans to renew all of creation. The very opposite of an accident.

So, Church of England, you can have Christ or natural selection; you can’t have both. And it seems you have made your choice.

Corn Flake Anglicans. Plumbing the depths of banality.

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In case anyone is under the misapprehension that the average pew-warming Anglican possesses the theological insight to have an intelligent opinion on same sex blessings, read the letter below; the ‘featured letter’, no less, from the Anglican Journal.

These thoughts are the product of centuries of Anglican pew-pandiculation; eat your heart out Pascal.

Dear editor,
Come on, bishops. Get with the coming of the 21st century. While I am not gay, and married to a wonderful lady for 53 years, we both have friends who are gay. Not our way of life but it is theirs, and the Anglican Church and we are not going to change that. It is a way of life that is here and has been here for years and years so let’s get on with it and embrace everyone in the name of Jesus.

If the Anglican Church of Canada decides to endorse same-sex unions, so be it. That is not going to change our corn flakes in the morning.

As a church we need to get on with life and bring it into the 21st century. If we don’t, our membership will dwindle while other faiths churches increase. Just look around at some other faiths. They must be doing something to get the attendance they do.

We personally feel that the main problem with the Anglican Church of Canada is two prayer books. The BAS has been with us for something in the neighborhood of 25 years. Why not decide on one prayer book?

Eric and Joy Magill
North Bay, Ont.

George Pitcher and the Wright stuff

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Dr. Deborah Pitt, an evangelical from Penarth, Wales (around the corner from where I used to live in another era) had the effrontery to publish some letters to her from Rowan Williams when he was archbishop of Wales. The Friends of the ABC – most notably, Tom Wright leapt valiantly to Rowan’s defense. Rowan’s letters include statements like this: “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.”

Now I know Rowan doesn’t write or speak English the way a mere mortal would, but that seems pretty clear to me. Tom Wright and co. focus on the word “might” with a tenacity worthy of Bill Clinton’s obsession with the word “is”. Also, much is made of the absurd proposition that there is a difference between ‘thinking aloud’ as a theologian and the task of a bishop (let alone an Archbishop) to uphold the church’s teaching, as if the task of a bishop to uphold the church’s teaching is unaffected by what he is thinking. Which brings us to George Pitcher, who writes about Deborah Pitt’s attempt to explain herself:

A sad and dispiriting little letter in The Times today, from the woman who “leaked” 8-year-old letters from Dr Rowan Williams that “revealed” he was personally sympathetic to same-sex unions that were faithful and permanent.

He then mocks her grammar – something I would never do – and continues:

About the only thing clear here is that the Bishop of Durham’s letter, co-signed by 18 other Anglican bishops from across the ecclesiological spectrum, was articulate. It certainly put Ms Pitt in her place. Her letter, by contrast, is neither articulate nor clear.

Poor Ms. Pitt – actually, that’s Dr. Pitt to you George – already knows her place: it’s in Penarth being a medical doctor; not, unlike some, having interminable conversations with other doctors on what it really means to be a doctor.

George Pitcher’s article is at the Telegraph

Deborah Pitt’s response the the ABC is at SF. She seems to be a gracious lady.

What’s the difference between an original and a reflection?

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Here from East African Business Week is an article from Henry Luke Orombi who is unquestionably an original. He is explaining why he did not attend Lambeth; note that it is concise, unambiguous and clear:

So, why did the bishops of the Church of Uganda and I decide not to attend the present Lambeth Conference? Because we love the Lord Jesus Christ and because we love the Anglican Communion. St Francis of Assisi said: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary use words.” We believe that our absence at this Lambeth Conference is the only way that our voice will be heard. For more than ten years we have been speaking and have not been heard. So maybe our absence will speak louder than our words.
The crisis in the Communion is serious; our commitment to biblical and historic faith and mission are serious; and we want to be taken seriously. In 2003 the Episcopal Church in America consecrated as bishop a man living in an active homosexual relationship. This unilateral and unbiblical action was directly contrary to a resolution of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
I participated in that conference and we overwhelmingly resolved that “homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture” and the conference “cannot advise the legitimising of same-sex unions”. As a result, the 2003 action of the American Church plunged the Anglican Communion into a crisis that, as the primates of the Anglican Communion said in 2003, “tore the very fabric of our communion at its deepest level”. The crisis is about authority – biblical authority and ecclesiastical authority.

On the other hand, this is from Ephraim Radner at Fulcrum and is a self proclaimed reflection. As clear as the Ganges in monsoon season.

More specifically also, a number of concrete realities have been identified by the Conference that derive from these broader realities and that either inform them or point to a potential future:  the Communion may need a Faith and Order Commission with the training, energy, and focus necessary to engage expeditiously and unperturbedly in  common discernment over matters of teaching and witness on behalf of the Communion;  a Pastoral Forum has been proposed and will be set up that can act swiftly in the mediation of conflict among and even within Communion churches, for the preservation of the truth, the reconciliation of brethren, and the protection of mistreated members and “minorities”; associations and partnerships of Communion-committed dioceses and congregations has been encouraged;  the Archbishop himself clarified what a same-sex “blessing” involves, and it is far more basic and encompassing than the parsing of “public liturgy” that the North American churches have argued;   diocesan covenants were affirmed;  a quick succession of potentially important meetings was outlined;  a positive outreach to GAFCON was made, on the basis not only of good will but of shared evangelical commitments.   Although none of these added up to a “plan”, they pointed to the fact that the broad direction of the Communion’s bishops discussed above carries with it a logic that might be expected to involve practical action.

Ephraim, here is a lesson from Sir Humphrey Appleby:

[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8keZbZL2ero&feature=related]

Patience and Urgency Lambeth Conference 2008

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From Graham Kings at Fulcrum

This was a clear sign, very early on, that not all were likely to agree to the Covenant. Its content would not be just bland – there would be ‘teeth’ – and eventually a ‘two tier’ Communion would be likely to emerge, of those in the centre who will sign, and of those on the edge who will not. The Anglican Communion is involved in ‘intensifying’ its current relationships and those who do not wish to continue on that ‘intensifying’ trajectory may remain where they are – there is no force – while the centre of the Communion moves on. Not exclusion, but intensification and no group can veto this movement forward.

He mentions two categories: those who sign on to the Covenant and will be a full part of the Communion and those who don’t – and won’t. I can’t help thinking that there will be a third category: those who sign, but have no intention of living up to what they just signed.

And what is this obsession with the word ‘trajectory’; it makes it sound as if we are trying to hit the moon with a firework. Oh right, we are. This ‘trajectory’ abomination is scattered abroad by liberals and conservatives with equal abandon: it’s overused, overworked, half dead on its feet and I’m sick of reading it.

‘Intensify’  appears to be the latest euphemism for ‘exclude’. I admit, I can see potential here: orthodox parishes will belong to Intensified Provinces, while liberal parishes will have their Enervated Provinces.

Further down in the complete article, there is mention that  the ‘interventions’ were only ever intended to be temporary (true) and that they will be no longer needed once the Pastoral Forum is in force (highly unlikely to be true).

How can anything useful come of all this waffle?

c/p on Essentials blog

Have you heard the one about the Vicar, the Lapdancer, the Muslim and the Lesbian?

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No? Then the Telegraph will enlighten you. The gullible Rev. Joanna, the vicar in question, is Anglican, naturally.

The vicar starring in a new Channel Four reality show has accused the programme’s makers of deliberately making Christians appear obsessed with sex.
“There was clearly an agenda behind making the programme designed to make Christians look obsessed with people’s sex lives and intent on imposing Christian behaviour on everyone else,” she said. “Christian behaviour is only possible after a spiritual transformation. We were encouraged to take part on the understanding that we were dealing with a group of people who genuinely wanted to embrace Christianity. But that was clearly not the case.”

Making Anglicans appear obsessed with sex is hardly an innovation of Channel 4: the notion was clearly lifted straight from Lambeth.

One has to admit, though that the “intent on imposing Christian behaviour on everyone else” while a startlingly fresh idea, is one entirely foreign to Anglicans, who are even unwilling to impose Christian behaviour on themselves.