Open rebellion in the Diocese of BC

Before we get started, I’d like to point out that Bishop James Cowan found time to hobnob with Prince Charles today, so he probably doesn’t much care that his parishioner-peasants don’t trust him; after all the important thing is keeping up appearances – and he is wearing a lovely hat.

The Diocese of BC is in trouble financially as its members flee to churches that are less diverse and inclusive. Because of this, when he’s not schmoozing with Royalty, James Cowan is planning on “restructuring” the diocese – and as everyone who works in business knows, that means someone is for the chop.

Thus, a team of hit-men cleverly concealed behind some randomly chosen acronyms – DMRT/DMIRT/DCDT – are visiting parishes to determine whether to terminate them. It seems that parishioners have caught wind of what is afoot, though:

First we have Indaba Resistance:

He then distributed five questions, and suggested we break into small groups and discuss the questions. A number of people objected to “more small-group stuff.” There was strong resistance to small-group discussion. (Comment: “We’re small-grouped to death and nothing ever comes of it.”) There was anger expressed by people who did not want to discuss “another bunch of irrelevant questions.”

Followed by Process Resistance:

The Rev. Michael Wimmer suggested we be given the opportunity to talk about our emotions and responses to the material that had been sent out to us. He suggested that “We ought to have been consulted about the process in which we are asked to participate.” Mrs. Doreen Huston said we have all been talking in small groups amongst ourselves, ever since this information was circulated, “but at least let us get those big things out in the open, first” so that once we have expressed our feelings, we can then go and talk about the process.

Garnished with Listening Process Resistance

Someone got up and asked that the DCDT listen to the complaints about what is going on in the diocese with regard to all these papers that tell us we aren’t doing enough. The general feeling was that we were not listened to.

And after a Forced Indaba session, Outright Rebellion:

When the small groups reported back, there was a great deal of dissatisfaction expressed about the DCDT process. Comments were made such as “We don’t trust anyone at the Synod Office any more. We’re sorry to say this, but we don’t trust the Bishop any more, either.”

I wonder what Prince Charles would make of it all.

Crucifix ban in Italy a victory for Muslims

Before Soile Lautsi appealed to European Court of Human Rights, Muslims in Italy had been working hard to have the “small body on two wooden sticks” removed from classrooms. A victory for Muslims and Soile Lautsi and a sad defeat for Western Civilisation:

In 2003, the Union of the Muslims of Italy (UOMII), led by a radical convert to Islam named Adel Smith, brought a court action to have the crucifix removed from all public schools in that predominantly Catholic country. Calling the crucifix a “small body on two wooden sticks,” and “a miniature cadaver,” Smith and UOMII lobbied hard for their removal. Also on their agenda was the removal of an “offensive” 15th century Giovanni di Modena fresco in the Bologna cathedral and the deletion of Dante’s Divine Comedy from the school syllabus. Smith said both showed the prophet Mohammed cast into hell and were blasphemous against Islam.

The local Italian Court ruled in favor of the Smith and the Muslims. The schools appealed.

The matter was taken up by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France (along with a similar action by a different plaintiff), and in a stunning decision, which has gone almost entirely unreported by most major news outlets and cable programs (with the exception of a small, peripheral mention on Fox News) in this country, that Court also ruled last week that displaying crucifixes in the Italian schools violated Europe’s principle of “secular education,” and “might be intimidating for children from other faiths.

The abortion doctor who admits to killing babies

More on this:

Prince Charles in Canada

Prince Charles is in Canada and apparently, some Canadians think he is irrelevant:

Prince Charles arrived in Canada on Monday for a 11-day cross-country visit that comes at a time when many Canadians say the royal family is no longer relevant to them.

I’m not against the monarchy, but try as I might to push the thought from my mind, every time I see Charles I am reminded of this:

Shadowmancer author, G P Taylor to become Roman Catholic

From the Telegraph:

Children’s author G P Taylor to leave ’sinking ship’ Church of England and become Catholic

Vicar-turned-author Rev G P Taylor says he will desert the “sinking ship” Church of England, which he said was the “spiritual arm of New Labour”, for Roman Catholicism.

The Rev Taylor, whose children’s book Shadowmancer became an international best-seller, said he was turning instead to the Roman Catholic church, which he believes is less afraid to stand up for important moral issues.

Writing in the Yorkshire Post, he said the Church of England had ‘’sunk into a liberal pit that was no earthly use and offered no hope, no love and no grace”.

He added: ”It was going through the motions of faith and was largely irrelevant to the people it once thought it served.

”Like so many other Anglicans, I am at that place where I feel I must desert a sinking ship.”

Rev Taylor said: ”The Church I once loved has become the spiritual arm of New Labour.”

The author said many bishops ‘’spend more time preaching about climate change or dressing up as Druidic bards than preaching a gospel of salvation that would cure the ills of society overnight if properly embraced”.

This isn’t too surprising, I suppose, since Demurral, the arch-villain in Shadowmancer, is an Anglican vicar who is more interested in gaining power in this world through the occult than he is in the heavenly power of the next. This resonates strongly with the shenanigans of bishops in Canada – a resonance made all the stronger for me by the fact that Taylor drew from the exploits of St. Hilda for inspiration:

Well yeah. Yorkshire is a place that I heavily speak to paganism and the occults. It’s one of those areas that for centuries has been a battle between the principalities and powers of heaven or hell. And St. Hilda herself came to Whitby and very famously she cast out the serpents into the sea. And everybody says that she cast out the snakes. But wherever you see the word serpent, you’ve got to always think, you know, what is the spiritual context behind this? And there was some sort of spiritual warfare going on there that she took command over and cleared the place. But there is, there’s always been this tension between good and evil. There’s lots of folklore, and we have lots of ghosts and demons and all sorts of legends, et cetera. So you know, it’s a place that we just carry on ministering in.

I am sure Mr. Taylor would be happy to know that, in the spirit of St. Hilda, here in Canada we are still casting serpents out – of the church in our case; of course, today, the serpents have access to lawyers.

Fort Hood Massacre

On Remembrance Day, the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund remembers refugees

The PWRDF is not particularly comfortable with the idea of fighting for freedom – after all, that might involve violence – so in its article for Remembrance Day, it has one sentence about remembering and fourteen paragraphs about refugees, including this:

Unfortunately, for too many people in the world today, November 11 is not a day to remember; it’s another day lived in fear, desperation and fleeing for safety. There are still wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; conflict in Congo and Somalia, Sudan and Sri Lanka.

And every conflict produces refugees – people who are no longer safe in their own lands.

In Pakistan, because of recent attacks by Taliban insurgents and the subsequent military operation, three million people have fled their homes in the mountainous north, including Waziristan and the Swat Valley, for relative peace in the central plains. They are internally displaced peoples (IDPs), or “refugees in their own country,” says Shama Mall, deputy director for Church World Service–Pakistan/Afghanistan.

I have a great deal of sympathy for innocent refugees, but there would be far fewer of them if the wars that the PWRDF bedwetters bemoan were successful at defeating barbarians like the Taliban.

The impending extinction of Darwinians

From the BBC:

Europe is facing a population crisis because of attacks on religion by secular writers, Britain’s chief rabbi has said.

Lord Sacks blamed Europe’s falling birth rate on a culture of “consumerism and instant gratification”.

He said the continent was “dying” and accused its citizens of not being prepared for parenthood’s “sacrifices”.

He made his comments in a lecture for Christian think tank Theos in central London on Wednesday.

The 61-year-old, who took his seat in the Lords last week, said: “Wherever you turn today – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.

“The major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians.”

There is a message here: secularists believe in evolution, so if evolution is true, it programs those who believe in it to stop reproducing; they have been naturally selected out and are not fit to survive.

If evolution is not true, those who believe in it are deluded. The delusion leads to the conclusion, as Richard Dawkins says, that the universe has “no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference”; this is sufficiently depressing to cause Darwinians to abort and birth-control themselves into extinction.

Either way, evolutionists lose.

The Anglican Church of Canada has priests in active homosexual relationships

I know that isn’t exactly a startling revelation – which, in itself speaks volumes on the state of the ACoC.

A letter in the November Anglican Journal illustrates that – at least in the near future – there is little likelihood of slowing the gay agenda juggernaut. Here is the letter (emphasis mine):

It’s hard to know exactly why Harold Munn’s article made us so angry (Let’s talk about sex, Sept, 2009). We share his position on the issue of same-sex blessings. We also share his desire to remain in communion with those who don’t and find his story of unlikely friendship endearing.

Perhaps it is because his “two straight guys talking about same-sex blessings” falls into the same category as “two white guys talking about reconciliation with First Nations people” and “two men talking about the ordination of women.” Perhaps it’s because after a few meetings, Canon Munn and his colleague found there was little left to say. We don’t have that luxury and neither do clergy in same-sex relationships in the diocese of British Columbia (Canon Munn’s home). We long for the day we don’t have to constantly defend our position on the issue of same-sex blessings.

Rev. Andrew Halladay
Rev Davis Taylor.

There are a number of things one can surmise from this letter:

• The Reverend gentleman who wrote the letter are in a same-sex “relationship”;
• There are other priests, possibly many other priests, in same-sex relationships;
• The assumption going in to any debate on this issue is that priests in this kind of relationship are entitled to live out – or indulge – their sexual proclivities;
• Priests who have a same-sex paramour, rather than hide the fact, wish to “come out” and, in doing so need to justify their behaviour in order to keep doing what they are doing while remaining priests in the ACoC;
• Priests who are not homosexual almost certainly know other priests who are and, as a fellow priest, feel an obligation to defend them.

I attended a meeting held by the Diocese of Niagara a few years back when the issue of same-sex blessings had come to a head. One of the speakers was a young homosexual priest whose argument boiled down to, “I’m gay; I want to be in a stable sexual relationship with another man. If that doesn’t happen, I am doomed to a life of frustration. I am entitled to sexual fulfilment”. In the room, there was a lot of sympathy for him.

Abortionist admits he is killing babies

I used to labour under the misapprehension that if one could convince an abortionist that he is murdering babies, the battle would be won and he would stop; apparently not:

Dallas, TX (LifeNews.com) — The late-term abortion practitioner at the new abortion center in Dallas has admitted in a shocking interview that he kills unborn children during abortions. Curtis Boyd is one of the few abortion practitioners to admit what he is doing, but he has no qualms with his job.

Boyd opened the first abortion center in Dallas in 1973 after the Supreme Court handed down the roe v. Wade decision allowing virtually unlimited abortions.

In an interview with WFAA yesterday after news surfaced that he re-opened his late-term abortion center, Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center, in the huge metro area last week after more than a year following the closure of the Aaron’s abortion facility, he makes a startling admission.

“Am I killing?” Boyd said. “Yes, I am. I know that.”

He told WFAA that he is a former Baptist ordained minister who is now a part of the pro-abortion Unitarian Universalist church who says he prays often about the abortions he does.

“I’ll ask that the spirit of this pregnancy be returned to God with love and understanding,” he said.

I really don’t know what that last sentence means, other than a being euphemism for baby returned to sender – like an unwanted parcel.

Morality is more about what you should do than what you actually do

And this is why an evolutionist’s attempts to lay claim to a moral framework – as Dawkins and Hitchens are fond of doing – fail. Atheistic morality does not distinguish “is” from “ought” and without cosmic justice, there is no “ought” and no morality.

This article by Dinesh D’Souza is most illuminating on the subject; the whole thing is well worth a read here:

Cosmic Justice
If evolution cannot explain how humans became moral primates, what can?

By Dinesh D’Souza
All evolutionary attempts to explain morality ultimately miss the point. They seek to explain morality, but even at their best what they explain is not morality at all. Imagine a shopkeeper who routinely increases his profits by cheating his customers. So smoothly does he do this that he is never exposed and his reputation remains unimpeached. Even though the man is successful in the game of survival, if he has a conscience it will be nagging at him from the inside. It may not be strong enough to make him change his ways, but it will at least make him feel bad and perhaps ultimately despise himself. Now where have our evolutionary explanations accounted for morality in this sense?

In fact, they haven’t accounted for it at all. These explanations all seek to reduce morality to self-interest, but if you think about it, genuine morality cannot be brought down to this level. Morality is not the voice that says, “Be truthful when it benefits you,” or “Be kind to those who are in a position to help you later.” Rather, it operates without regard to such calculations. Far from being an extension of self-interest, the voice of the impartial spectator is typically a restriction of self-interest. Think about it: If morality were simply an extension of selfishness, we wouldn’t need it. We don’t need moral prescriptions to tell people to act for their own benefit; they do that anyway. The whole point of moral prescriptions and injunctions is to get people to subordinate and curb their selfish interests.

[……]

Now let’s make the supposition that there is cosmic justice after death and ask, Does this help to explain the great mystery of human morality? It seems clear that it does. Humans recognize that there is no ultimate goodness and justice in this world, but they continue to uphold those ideals. In their interior conscience, humans judge themselves not by the standard of the shrewd self-aggrandizer but by that of the impartial spectator. We admire the good man, even when he comes to a bad end, and revile the successful scoundrel who got away with it. Evolutionary theories predict the reverse: If morality were merely a product of crafty and successful calculation, we should cherish and aspire to be crafty calculators. But we don’t. Rather, we act as if there is a moral law to which we are accountable.

An ACNA church disturbs the peace

From ABC News:

The fight, pitting religious freedom against the right to be comfortable in one’s own home, started in March 2008 — on Palm Sunday.

After opening in a new location in Phoenix, Ariz., The Cathedral of Christ the King started playing a recording of church bells every half hour — every day — from morning to night.
“To me, it is one of the ways that we express praise and worship to God. And it is also one of the ways that God speaks out and says to the community that there is somebody here that cares,” said Bishop Rick Painter, rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King, a local Charismatic church affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America.

To neighbors like Sam Jensen and Al Brooks, it was a rude shock.

“I didn’t know where it came from. It was six in the morning,” said Brooks. “I had no idea what it was. And then they were playing every half hour, so it woke me up and I came out into the back yard and then I heard them again every half hour all day long — 31 times that day,” said Jensen.

After calling the cops, they had a heated meeting with Painter, who offered to reduce the ringing to once an hour.

“I can’t imagine that God in heaven would look down and say that’s a good thing to do to your neighbors,” said Jensen.

“We all celebrate God, but we don’t disturb our neighbors doing it,” Brooks said.

The neighbors felt the church was inflexible, and inevitably the case landed in court, where the judge sided with the neighbors.

She ordered the bells silenced, except on Sundays and church holidays. For the first time anyone can remember, a religious leader was convicted of disturbing the peace. The bishop was given a 10-day jail sentence, which was suspended, and three years probation — a misdemeanor for ringing church bells.

I’ve always liked the idea that a church should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, but you can’t do that in Phoenix, it seems – at least, not aurally. I grew up hearing church bells ring all day; they were rather restful compared to the ungodly racket that assaults the sensibilities today. The constant roar of traffic, punctuated by the pounding that emanates from the cars of pimply teenagers. The abomination of muzak, ubiquitous and soul-numbing: Pachelbel’s canon, even if I am not hearing it in an elevator or at a wedding, reliably induces a near-coma trance followed by acute nausea. And the full might of the law descends on a bell-ringer.

A 10-day suspended jail sentence and three years probation is a first for an ACNA pastor – and all for ringing a few bells. I expect there is worse to come.

Bankers loving themselves

From Bloomberg:

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) — Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London’s Trafalgar Square last night and told the packed pews of the church that “profit is not satanic.”

The 53-year-old head of Britain’s second-biggest bank said banks are the “backbone” of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn’t conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.

“Talent is highly mobile,” Varley, a Catholic, said. “If we fail to pay or are constrained from paying competitive rates then that talent will move to another employer.”

“Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes,” he said in an interview after the speech in the 283-year-old church. “And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes.”

Varley joins Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths and Lazard International Chairman Ken Costa as London bankers who’ve gone into London churches in recent weeks and invoked Christianity to defend a banking system that critics say has created wealth and inequality in the U.K.

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

While I agree with this maybe-I-have-an-axe-to-grind banker that making a profit is not Satanic, it isn’t particularly virtuous either. I have nothing against capitalism, but once it loses its ethical footing – and just like most other things in the West, I think it has – its power is just like any other power: subject to corruption.

This piece of pop-psychology enlightenment alone is an ample demonstration of why bankers should stick to banking and leave the pulpit to priests (who, admittedly, tend to use the pulpit to decry the evils of banking):

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,”

When Jesus told us to love others as we love our selves, it was hardly an endorsement of self-interest or loving ourselves; it was simply recognition of the fact that we do love ourselves. Even people who are miserable and consumed with apparent self-loathing are only in that state because they feel hard-done-by and wish for better things – because they love themselves. A person does not become suicidal through a lack of self-love, but by an over-indulgence in it; he loves himself enough to do anything to escape from his misery.

Let’s hope that John Varley takes some other sayings of Jesus to heart, too. Like:

“And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”

and

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?

Transsexual Jesus sparks protests

From the BBC:

About 300 protesters held a candlelit protest outside a Glasgow theatre over the staging of a play which portrays Jesus as a transsexual.

The protest was held outside the Tron Theatre, where Jesus Queen of Heaven, in which Christ is a man who wants to become a woman, is being staged.

It is part of the Glasgay! arts festival, a celebration of Scotland’s gay, bi-sexual and transsexual culture.

Festival organisers said it had not intended to incite or offend anyone.

The Christian protesters gathered outside the theatre ahead of the opening night of the production on Tuesday.

Jesus Queen of Heaven, which runs until Saturday, is written and performed by transsexual playwright Jo Clifford.

The demonstrators sang hymns and waved placards.

One read: “Jesus, King of Kings, Not Queen of Heaven.”

Another said: “God: My Son Is Not A Pervert.”

Festival organisers described the banners as “fairly provocative” and said they could be viewed as inciting homophobia.

Glasgay! producer Steven Thomson said: “Jesus Queen of Heaven is a literary work of fiction exploring the artists own personal journey of faith as a transgendered person.

“Glasgay! supports the right to freedom of expression and offers audiences a diverse view of LGBT life.

Let me see if I have this right: the festival organisers object to demonstrators exercising freedom of expression, calling it homophobia, while at the same time proclaiming their right to portray the person whom 2 billion people believe to be God incarnate as a sexual pervert – in the name of freedom of expression.

More on this here.

Rowan Williams’ Ginger Biscuits

Or as we used to call them, Ginger Nuts; a particularly appropriate epithet in this case.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has revealed his recipe for ginger biscuits which forms part of a new cookbook bringing together dishes from a range of Christian groups.

Dr Rowan Williams’s tasty treats are the Church of England’s contribution to Loaves, Fishes and More – a 70-recipe collection which aims to raise funds for Christian Aid.