Tag Archives: bishops gone wild

Cymru Am Byth!

Posted on by
Reply

Gay priest Dr Jeffrey John could become a bishop in Wales.
It just goes to show that the Church in Wales is definitely not the same as the Church of England. As Tom Wright says – with conviction that even the most credulous would find difficulty in swallowing – the US Episcopal church’s problems, caused by their ordaining of a homosexual bishop, are not in any way representative of those in the CofE. And anyway, this is the Church in Wales; hang on, where did Rowan Williams come from?

Which brings us to the obvious question: which Dr. John would make the best bishop? I’m for the hip one in the hat and his own hair.

From the Times

The gay clergyman whose abortive appointment as Bishop of Reading came close to splitting the Church of England could soon become Britain’s first openly gay diocesan bishop.

Dr Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, who two years ago celebrated a civil partnership ceremony with another priest, is to be nominated as Bishop of Bangor in North Wales.

Liberals welcomed the news, but conservatives gave warning that it would aggravate the tensions over sexuality that are threatening to rend the Anglican Communion in two and revive the rancour that followed the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire in the US five years ago. Since then, the 38 provinces of the Church have agreed to observe a moratorium on such consecrations.
Several candidates are likely to be nominated for the Bangor post, but Dr John has the support of senior figures in the Church in Wales, according to informed sources. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, whose authority does not extend beyond England, would have no power to prevent such an appointment.

Evangelism CofE style. Hic!

Posted on by
Reply

From the Telegraph

The first “director of hospitality and welcome” at an English cathedral has unveiled far-reaching plans to make its operations more business-like.
Mark Hope-Urwin, a former executive with the John Lewis deparment stores chain, has been recruited by Birmingham Cathedral to oversee a radical change to its image and branding.
His plans, revealed today, include a chain of city-centre wine bars and “loyalty cards” for regular worshippers to obtain discounts at the cathedral’s shops.
The new approach to attracting and retaining worshippers could become a blueprint for dioceses across the country
The wine bars would feature stained-glass windows, pictures on a religious theme and be decorated in “episcopal purple”.
They would be intended to raise the cathedral’s profile around the city, and would represent a significant departure from current practice, which is limited to bookshops and cafes in some cathedrals and churches.
The plan comes after the Association of English Cathedrals accused the Government of having a secular agenda – as it fails to provide “proper” financial support to cathedrals, despite providing large grants to museums.

In vino veritas.

It’s good to see the Church of England getting down to its core business at last. Forget all the nonsense about heaven, hell, sin, atonement, resurrection and redemption. It’s really all about the wine – after all Jesus turned water into wine – and the good old CofE, after 500 benighted years, has seen the light.

The children are not returning to their wicked step-parents

Posted on by
Reply

From the Telegraph.

Clergy who have defected from their liberal national churches to join traditionalist provinces overseas said the scheme to put them in a “holding bay” before returning them home was “demeaning and unacceptable”.

Meanwhile orthodox Anglican leaders have pledged to press ahead with the creation of their rival movement, claiming that it is an “illusion” to believe that the damage caused by the election of an openly gay bishop can be undone.

It comes just days after Dr Rowan Williams said that the Lambeth Conference gathering of Anglican bishops last month had exceeded expectations and showed that most wanted the 80 million-strong worldwide Communion to stay together despite deep divisions over sexuality.

A letter written by five bishops who have defected from the ultra-liberal Episcopal Church of the USA to conservative churches in Africa and South America was highly critical of the plan announced at Lambeth to create a “pastoral forum”, headed by Dr Williams, that would try to resolve new crises in the Communion and act as a “holding bay” for parishes that have left their home countries.

It said: “We note that the pastoral forum proposal has been developed without any consultation with those most directly affected in North America. This had led to a number of serious misunderstandings with regard to the situation at the local level and the relationship between the bishops, clergy and congregations and their sponsoring provinces.

“We would also observe that the various analogies offered, for example, that we are disaffected children being reunited with our parents or that we are being placed in a holding bay before being restored to our proper province are both demeaning and unacceptable.”

The Communiqué is here.

Poor old Rowan still has his head in the clouds – perhaps he is suffering from the delusion that he never left Swansea. How could be possibly think that the parishes in North America who have risked losing everything but their integrity, would be willing to sit in a ‘holding bay’ until they were ready to return – suitably chastened – to the dioceses who abused them. The same dioceses that turfed them out of their buildings, froze their bank accounts, fired their priests, took them to court and have repeatedly refused to talk – in spite of being pathologically addicted to ‘conversation’ with everyone else about anything at all.

It is about as likely as Rowan saying something clear and straightforward.

Just when I thought that Michael Ingham was the worst advertisement for Christianity since Jimmy Swaggart

Posted on by
Reply

This came along. Eat your heart out Mikey, you have a lot to learn from the RCs in the art of ecclesiastical buffoonery.

Italian priest to organize `beauty contest’ for nuns

ROME–An Italian priest says he has decided to organize an online beauty pageant for nuns.

Rev. Antonio Rungi, a theologian and schoolteacher from the Naples area, says he wants to fight the stereotype that nuns are all old and dour.

The “Miss Sister 2008” contest will start in September on a blog run by Rungi. Visitors to the site will have a month to “vote for the nun they consider a model.”

Nuns will fill out a profile, including information about their life and vocation, and provide the website with a photograph.

It will be up to them to choose whether to pose with the traditional veil or with their heads uncovered.

But Rungi says web surfers can forget it if they think they’ll be finding any bikini-clad nuns.

“We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits,” Rungi said by telephone from his town of Mondragone. “But being ugly is not a requirement for becoming a nun. External beauty is gift from God, and we mustn’t hide it.”

Rungi said the idea was first suggested to him by nuns with whom he regularly prays and works. He hopes there will be dozens of submissions once the web site is started.

The contest drew criticism from the association of Catholic teachers.

“It’s an initiative that belittles the role of nuns who have dedicated themselves to God,” the group’s president, Alberto Giannino, told Italy’s ANSA news agency Sunday.

Fake Olympics

Posted on by
Reply

We know that the fireworks were faked, the little girl singing actually wasn’t and the ethnic minorities on display weren’t – ethnic minorities, that is. The smiles are fake, the ages of the Chinese athletes are fake, the audience is fake, freedom of reporting is fake and the Internet access is fake.

I am half expecting to wake up to the morning headline that the whole thing was computer generated; no such luck, I fear. Instead, we have given one of the most repressive, societies on earth a means of trumpeting forth its sordid and transparently ridiculous propaganda.

Much of the government hatred is directed against Christians:

China’s human rights record is one of the worst in the world, with a system of “re-education through labour” which detains hundreds of thousands each year in work camps without even a court hearing. There are more Christians in prison in China than any other country in the world. The only legal churches are those strictly controlled by the government of China. Those who do not wish to follow government policies on religious practice and beliefs must meet in homes and risk being labeled as “evil cults.” Such a designation can result in closing down the church, confiscation of property, and charges against the leadership, often resulting in torture, imprisonment and death.

When was the last time you heard one of our illustrious Western Anglican bishops express his concern over this? Do they find it Deeply Troubling™, I wonder? We will probably never know.

Hip-hop style diplomacy

Posted on by
Reply

What I want to know is, how many of the bishop’s wives bonk their beloved over the head with a frying pan on his returning home late after too much partying and too many martinis.

From Here

The career of Bishop Catherine Roskam of the Diocese of New York has been built on her skills as a cross-cultural ambassador for the modern Episcopal Church.

She led the International Concerns Committee of her denomination’s executive council, helped create her diocese’s Global Women’s Fund and has worked as a consultant on issues of cultural sensitivity. In some circles, she is known as the bishop who dared to rap during a “Hip-Hop Mass” a few years ago in the Bronx.

“My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up — keep your head up, holla back and go forth and tell it like it is,” proclaimed the bishop, in her benediction.

“We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do,” argued Roskam, in The Lambeth Witness, a daily newsletter for gay-rights supporters in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.

“The most devout Christians beat their wives. … Many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife (an excellent illustration from Catherine on how to demonstrate cultural sensitivity). In that regard, it makes conversation quite difficult (I might add that this is the only known example of a bishop – while still living – having difficulty in conducting a conversation).”

Desmond Tutu is confused

Posted on by
Reply

Desmond Tutu weighs in on the Gene Robinson fiasco (be warned, this is a link to a pro-gay site). By saying “I could not stand by while people were being penalised again for something about which they could do nothing – their sexual orientation” he is confusing – using standard Anglican obfuscation – sexual orientation with sexual practice. The fact is, it is not Gene’s sexual orientation that is the problem: the problem is his acting on it by leaving his wife, setting up house with his gay partner and proclaiming to the world that this is not only socially acceptable (which it may be), but fully in line with Christian teaching – which it isn’t.

Also of note is that fact that Obama has met with Gene 3 times already! What more can one ask.

Influential figures within the church, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, strongly support Robinson. Tutu even penned the foreword in Robinson’s book.

“Apartheid, crassly racist, sought to penalise people for something about which they could do nothing,” he wrote. “I could not stand by while people were being penalised again for something about which they could do nothing – their sexual orientation … Gene Robinson is a wonderful person and I am proud to belong to the same church as he.”

Robinson also enjoys powerful support in the wider community. While the Archbishop of Canterbury has only acceded to one meeting with him – and then under such secrecy that he was told the venue at the last possible moment – Robinson has already had three one-on-one meetings with US presidential candidate Barack Obama, the man many believe will be the next President of the United States.

What people like Obama and Tutu realise, says Robinson, is that far from being dependent on texts from thousands of years ago for God’s word, the human relationship with God is a living, breathing, ever-evolving one.

Or, to put that last sentence another way: “since the Bible is really, really old, we might as well ignore it and make this up as we go along.”

The Lambeth Walk

Posted on by
Reply

The song goes like this:

Hello Dalida!
Hello

What are you doing?
I’m dancing
Dancing the fox-trot, the polka?
No, no, i’m dancing the lambeth walk

What?

The lambeth walk!

Which makes a lot more sense than the escapades of a bunch of ponced up in purple, middle-aged, ersatz hippy pseuds.

I would be marginally more convinced of the good intentions of the the illustrious enpurpled participants if, after exerting themselves (well most of them – Ralph Spence had to be carried in a rickshaw) on behalf of the world’s starving, they had not settled down at a marquee at Lambeth Place to gorge themselves on cold lemon and thyme scented breast of chicken with fresh asparagus and porcini mushroom relish, summer bean and coriander, tomato, basil and mozzarella served with hot minted new potatoes. To follow: dark chocolate and raspberry tart with raspberry ripple ice cream, topped off with coffee and white chocolate raspberries. To drink: Pino Grigio or Shiraz, or cranberry and elderflower fruit punch.

It’s hard being a bishop, especially when you are trying to convince the government of a secular society to spend more of their taxpayers’ money on the poor. Burp.