{"id":24679,"date":"2017-01-17T08:46:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T13:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=24679"},"modified":"2017-01-17T15:25:04","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T20:25:04","slug":"diocese-of-montreal-evicts-witches-from-rectory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/diocese-of-montreal-evicts-witches-from-rectory\/","title":{"rendered":"Diocese of Montreal evicts witches from rectory"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned here<\/a>, a Diocese of Montreal parish is renting space in its rectory to witches. The original article, published in a pagan news site, The Wild Hunt, was taken down but has now been reinstated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The diocese\u00a0has now asked the two witches to leave the rectory belonging to St. Thomas\u2019 Anglican Church<\/a>, a parish which declares itself to be a welcoming, inclusive church<\/em>. This can only mean that, even in Canadian Anglicanism, there is such a thing as too much inclusion. This<\/a> is from the original article:<\/p>\n

It is uncommon for Pagan groups to be operating out of an Anglican church facility, which begs the question: how are the Pagans and Anglicans getting along as neighbours?<\/p>\n

Jory cannot say enough about how accommodating and cooperative the relationship has been. \u201cThey are fine with us doing our Pagan stuff indoors, they just say please don\u2019t do rituals outside, because not everybody will understand. So, that\u2019s our respect for them, we are on their ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

This relationship has provided opportunity for both sides to work together on interfaith projects. \u201cThey do a bunch of interfaith stuff. They wanted to do something that would help build community,\u201d Jory explains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here<\/a> is the update:<\/p>\n

MONTREAL \u2014 \u00a0On Jan. 11, T. Scarlet Jory, co-founder of Crescent Moon School of Magic and Paganism<\/a>, announced that The Rectory would be closing down as of February 2017. \u201cThis past Friday, January 6, 2017, we were given notice that we will need to leave our stay at the Rectory, due to some very awful miscommunications that led to a lot of anger on the part of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Jan 5., TWH<\/em> reported on a story about the birth of The Rectory, a new facility serving the Montreal Pagan community. According to the founders, Robyn and T. Scarlet Jory, the space was imagined as a place of inclusivity for a\u00a0very diverse Pagan world, as a well as a proponent of interfaith community support. They had a successful soft opening in the fall, and were preparing for the full launch in January. What happened?<\/p>\n

The trouble began after the TWH<\/em> article was published and members of the greater Anglican community alerted the Diocese to the activities going on in the church. The Diocese and the church were under the impression that the space\u00a0was being rented for a tutoring program<\/a>, and neither organization knew of The Rectory founders\u2019 full plans.\u00a0After\u00a0the Diocese learned about the scope of programming through internet reports, it immediately contacted the Reverend, who then called Robyn and Jory.\u00a0In response, the two women\u00a0asked us to\u00a0temporarily remove our article<\/a>\u00a0in order to allow them to ascertain what exactly was happening. We agreed to do so, but the information was already public. Within hours, the founders had to remove all references to The Rectory in social media, as well as take down the new Rectory website.<\/p>\n

In her Jan. 11 announcement Jory states that, after consideration, the Diocese asked them to leave, but\u00a0it was not the church\u2019s decision. Jory added, \u201cWe would like to be clear that the matter of our leaving is not a case of Christians vs Pagans. It is a matter of human error. [\u2026]. Rather than fight to stay where we are not welcome, we would like to move forward peacefully, with dignity, and respect for our present hosts who have been perfectly lovely with us to this point.\u201d \u00a0Robyn agreed, saying that they are not blaming anyone for what has happened and that they are trying to just move forward.<\/p>\n

Our article is available again, and we are currently in touch with the founders\u00a0to learn more specifically where and how the communication broke down, as well as where the two women are going from here. Tomorrow, we\u2019ll bring you their candid responses and what they have learned from this incident.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And there is yet more information here<\/a>. One comment in particular from the witch who contacted me caught my eye. The rector of the church is her mother-in-law and knows her daughter-in-law is a \u201cPagan and deeply spiritual.\u201d The rector ought to know better – much better: being “deeply spiritual” can easily be a recipe for disaster if the spirits in question are less than wholesome. But, as is so often the case with watered down Anglicanism, spirituality<\/em> seems to have replaced truth.<\/p>\n

We spoke with founders T. Scarlet Jory and Robyn about what happened in order to clarify the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrior\u00a0to [publication of T<\/a><\/em>he Wild Hunt<\/em> article], there was nothing to suggest that we needed to hide who and what we were. We were not concerned about the diocese finding out that we were renting the rectory space,\u201d said Robyn, who is co-founder and the daughter-in-law of the church\u2019s reverend.<\/p>\n

The women originally located\u00a0the available church space through this family connection, and Robyn added that her mother-in-law is open-minded and knows that she and Jory \u201care Pagan and deeply spiritual.\u201d However, the reverend reportedly did not know the full plans for the rectory space, nor did the diocese.<\/p>\n

Robyn explained, \u201cWhen we signed our rental agreement with the church, to rent space within their rectory, it was with the understanding that we were opening and running a tutoring centre, and that we would also run some workshops on the side.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why they didn\u2019t reveal the full scope of the project from the get-go, she said, \u201cWe didn\u2019t know that things would take the direction that they did, or that the workshops and community events would become such a focus for us, until suddenly there was no tutoring happening, but lots of very excited Pagans and others who were interested in coming out.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we noted yesterday, it was a\u00a0TWH<\/em> article<\/a>, which is published and available unedited<\/a>, that led to confusion among the organizations involved. Members read\u00a0our article and alerted the Anglican Diocese of Montreal, who reportedly became angry and immediately contacted the church.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reverend, who was at the time on her way to India, contacted Robyn and Jory about the news. The very next day, the women contacted us about misinformation and the anger\u00a0coming from the church community. Additionally, Robyn reported to an Anglican blog site<\/a> that we had taken quotes \u201cout of context,\u201d reiterating that the space was only for tutoring. She said:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Yes, I am a witch by faith, and yes, I rent an office space at the Rectory. What I do there is tutoring, and offer some small spiritual services to a small group of people. We are an interfaith group. The Church itself is Anglican, and friendly, but not involved in my personal activities, or that of my business partner Scarlet. Further, a lot of what Scarlet is quoted as saying in the original article, was taken out of context from a conversation between her and the writer.”<\/p>\n

When we recently asked exactly what was out of context and wrong in our report, Robyn simply said, \u201cThat is difficult to answer. I think Scarlet said some things casually that she did not realize would go on the record. She was also distracted and caring for her baby while doing the interview, which I was also told.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned here, a Diocese of Montreal parish is renting space in its rectory to witches. The original article, published in a pagan news site, The Wild Hunt, was taken down but has now been reinstated. The diocese\u00a0has now … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2219,2420],"class_list":["post-24679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diocese-of-montreal","tag-paganism","tag-st-thomas-anglican-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}