The Anglican Church of Canada can\u2019t afford to maintain its buildings: they are crumbling around the clergy and bishops are collecting plaster dust in their rainbow mitres.<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s cathedral has buttress woes<\/a>:<\/p>\n One of the most critical areas are buttresses located on the west wall of the cloister garden, also known as the Garth, where mortar is crumbling and cracks are appearing.<\/p>\n \u201cNot far in the future, the gaps and cracking could cause individual stones to fall, leading to the collapse of the walls,\u201d says Blair Seaborn, who is chair of Restoration 120, a fundraising campaign to raise $120,000 for repairs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been told over and over by engineers that they\u2019re not decorative,\u201d said Seaborn. \u201cThe buttresses are rather critical in holding up the roof and walls.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even though Huron\u2019s St. Paul\u2019s cathedral is raising money by inviting<\/a> the Pride Men’s Chorus to sing, it still can\u2019t seem to find the cash to fix the roof<\/a> and the rot in the cathedral trusses<\/a> is exceeded only by the rot in the diocesan theology.<\/p>\n Owen Sound is closing churches<\/a>, \u00a0Niagara is closing churches<\/a>, or \u201ccelebrating mergers\u201d to quote the preferred euphemism, as is Peterborough<\/a> and Brantford<\/a>, while the Diocese of Niagara continues to endear itself to the residents of Guelph by pressing ahead with the sale of St. Matthias<\/a> in spite of vigorous opposition. The list goes on.<\/p>\n VOL has more here<\/a>:<\/p>\n By any measurable standard, the Anglican Church of Canada is in serious decline with little hope that the numbers can or will be reversed in the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n In one diocese after another the third largest denomination in Canada is declining, its demise now almost certain as it focuses on a host of social justice issues to the neglect of evangelism, discipleship and church planting.<\/p>\n The Anglican Church of Canada which is squeamishly shy about publicizing how many people attend its churches, has published no complete statistics for membership and average Sunday attendance since 2001, although the ACoC did claim a membership of 545,957 in 2007.<\/p>\n Today, by all measurable standards the average Sunday attendance in the Anglican Church of Canada is around 320,000. If this is correct, in 40 years the average attendance will be 19,200 or less. As there is no wave of Millennials aching to fill Anglican pews this figure is probably exaggerated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ironically, the vitriolic battles that the Anglican Church of Canada launched against ANiC churches in 2008 was over the ownership of buildings. The ACoC won the battle in 2008 only to lose it in 2017: it doesn’t have the income for the upkeep of the buildings it claimed were so essential to its ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Anglican Church of Canada can\u2019t afford to maintain its buildings: they are crumbling around the clergy and bishops are collecting plaster dust in their rainbow mitres. Ottawa\u2019s cathedral has buttress woes: One of the most critical areas are buttresses … Continue reading