An Anglican Church of Canada parish has a new Lenten series: studying World Faiths, including Wicca.

No perverse or grotesque villainy emerging from the ACoC or the ultra-liberal Diocese of Niagara should surprise anyone, but it is helpful to have the occasional reminder of just how far the blight has spread.

This is the Lenten series that is being offered by St. Simon’s Anglican Church, Diocese of Niagara, Oakville, as advertised in the local paper:

The inclusion – and inclusion is what it’s all about, after all – of Wicca is particularly significant since it is explicitly pagan and is a successor to or derivative of Witchcraft:

Wicca is a neopagan, nature-based religion popularised in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, who at the time called it Witchcraft and its adherents “the Wica”.

Wiccans, as followers of Wicca are now commonly known, typically worship a God (traditionally the Horned God) and a Goddess (traditionally the Triple Goddess), who are sometimes represented as being a part of a greater pantheistic Godhead, and as manifesting themselves as various polytheistic deities. Other characteristics of Wicca include the ritual use of magic, a liberal code of morality and the celebration of eight seasonal-based festivals.

The purpose of Lent is to prepare Christians – through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial – for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Apparently, St. Simon’s is unable to find any better way to prepare for the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection than by studying faiths that don’t believe in it; but then, for the most part, the ACoC leadership doesn’t believe in Jesus’ resurrection either.

In case anyone is naive enough to think that the series is designed to point out where other religions have erred, take note of the fact that individual speakers representing each religion have been invited to speak at each session. The intent is undoubtedly to find common ground between the parish of St. Simon’s and pagan religions.

This shouldn’t be difficult: there is a lot of common ground between the Diocese of Niagara and worship of the horned god.

Difficulties With Girls

It was quite a few years back that I read Kingsley Amis’s Difficulties With Girls. The hero, Patrick is preoccupied with sex and is an incurable philanderer. In fact, all the men in the book are preoccupied with sex: Patrick’s  boss Simon announces he’s unable to sexually satisfy his wife; Patrick gets through boring meetings at the office by thinking about women, and hides dirty magazines in his briefcase. The novel, in spite of having a resonance of truth, is fundamentally misogynistic: Amis claims that, at root, all woman are mad – a notion I would have subscribed to at one point in my life but eschew now.

Progress marches ever on: even the luridly fertile imagination of Kingsley Amis would not have come up with this:

Two women told Moscow police they bet Tuganov $US4300 that he wouldn’t be able to satisfy them during a non-stop half day sex marathon.

The mechanic died of a heart attack minutes after winning the wager, Moscow police said.

“We called emergency services but it was too late, there was nothing they could do,” said one of the female participants who identified herself only as Alina.

Medics said he most likely died from the quantity of Viagra he had ingested.

There are 30 pills in an average 100mg bottle of Viagra.

In spite of that, reality has a little way to go to match Anthony Powell’s Pamela in his brilliant A Dance to the Music of Time; she killed herself in order to simultaneously take revenge on the husband she hated and satisfy her necrophiliac lover. I’m still waiting for these headlines.

It’s a bum wrap

I have nothing against protecting the environment: I don’t like smog, smoke or choking yellow haze any more than the next person, but what I use on my rear for my business is –  my business, even if it results in a little extra landfill.

For the green fanatic, though, there is the Wallypop in a variety of colours and understated patterns:

“Alright,” you say, “You’ve convinced me about cloth diapers, and I understand using cloth gift bags and napkins. But toilet paper??” For some people, making the switch to cloth toilet wipes is a huge leap, that’s true. But it doesn’t need to be!

Using cloth toilet wipes actually has many advantages. For one, it’s a lot more comfortable and soft on your most delicate body parts. It’s also more economical, uses less paper, and saves you those late-night trips to the store. And cloth wipes can be used wet without any of the sopping disintegration that regular toilet paper is prone to. For a discussion of the practical aspects of using cloth toilet wipes, please check out our page detailing How to Use Cloth Wipes.

There is nothing new under the sun, of course; here are some much more interesting alternatives – not all of which I have tried – as expounded by Gargantua:

Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf’s skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney’s bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer’s lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus.

There is a lot more where this came from and the adventurous reader can find it all in Rabelais’ classic,  Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Destroying sex by being obsessed with it

In his youth, Leo Tolstoy was consumed with sex; it eventually resulted in his refusing to sleep in the same bed as his wife. Malcolm Muggeridge, an irrepressible roué in his youth, later in life wrote the essay, Down with Sex.

Today we have pills to uplift flagging appendages, pornography in every format to stimulate waning interest, children dressed as hookers, matrons undressed on calendars, alleged counsellors to advise on sexual positions, postures and predicaments, a sexual prophet embalmed in the wrinkled carcass of Hugh Hefner, sex toys, creams, licentious libido lotions, rubbers, diaphragms, morning after and before pills, gay sex education for five year-olds and – this:

Let’s talk about my sexless marriage

Four years into Diane’s marriage, her husband became “bothered” by the prospect of sleeping with her and moved into a room vacated by her grown daughter.

Fourteen years later, the Pennsylvania artist has still not had sex with her “emotionally closed off” husband, who has taken to masturbating to pornography in a separate building on their property.

“I can’t remember the last time I got a hug. It’s probably been a couple of years since I’ve even gotten any kind of a kiss,” says Diane, who did not want her full name used.

Marion Goertz, a registered sex therapist in Toronto, says that although 30 per cent of her female patients complain about low sexual desire and many of her male patients suffer from erectile dysfunction, “couples avoid being sexually intimate for reasons beyond the physical.

When people turn away from God in favour of transitory satisfaction, he eventually gives them what they want, usually in an unsatisfying form. It is a demonstration of William Blake’s Fearful Symmetry: a divine gift that has been humanly framed, sterilised and robbed of its intended purpose becomes empty, spent and finally withers away.

According to the Anglican Church of Canada, Jesus was a racist

The ACoC has published some Lenten Meditations.

Here is one of them:

“… a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the houseof Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ ” – Matthew 14:22-27

This not a story for people who need to think that Jesus always had it together, because it looks like we’ve caught him being mean to a lady because of her ethnicity. At first, he ignores her cries. Then he refuses to help her and compares her people to dogs.

But she challenges his prejudice. And he listens to her challenge and grows in response to it. He ends up healing her daughter. What we may have here is an important moment of self-discovery in Jesus’ life, an enlargement of what it will mean to be who he was. Maybe we are seeing Jesus understand his universality for the first time.

This meditation makes a number of important points:

Jesus did not “always have it together”. This is modern vernacular for saying Jesus was not sinless.

Jesus was prejudiced against a woman because of her race. The woman in question points out his error, Jesus becomes enlightened and understands his “universality for the first time.” Thus, Jesus was not God, made mistakes and had to be set straight. The reference to understanding his universality is undoubtedly an attempt to point out that, once the woman corrected him, Jesus came to the light as proscribed by 21st Century liberalism: inclusivity is all encompassing, paramount and – well, god.

This is an officially sanctioned document from the ACoC: it denies both Jesus’ divinity and the fact that he is sinless. The ACoC seems to be going out of its way to present itself as a non-Christian organisation; I think it has succeeded.

No Comfort for Dawkins

Richard Dawkins has declined an offer to debate Ray Comfort. Though Comfort offered him $10,000 to do so, this isn’t enough, apparently:

“It is not, therefore, a worthwhile inducement for me to travel all the way across the Atlantic to debate with an ignorant fool,” he wrote. “You can tell him that if he donates $100,000 to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (it’s a charitable donation, tax deductible) I’ll do it.”

Ray Comfort may not have the intellectual capacity of Ludwig Wittgenstein, but I doubt that he is merely an “ignorant fool”. Obviously Dawkins is free not to debate anyone he likes; what is interesting though, is that he was happy enough to debate Bishop Richard Harries, a liberal noted for his appointment of the gay canon Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading in 2003. Harries, as a liberal, has already discarded most of orthodox Christianity, so there wasn’t much to debate. Even Dawkins has spotted the transparently obvious fact that Harries no longer adheres to the scriptures he is supposed to read every Sunday.

As someone pointed out:

The good bishop reminds me very much of the Vicar who married me, and the sunday school Vicar I had as a child for that matter, both were/are Church of England of course. If all christians thought and behaved like these people, we’d have little to worry about!

In fact, from the friendly debates I’ve had over the years with CofE clergy, I’m convinced most of them are really Deists or Agnostic if truth be told, and just want to help out the local community, It seems to be more tradition than anything else. In fact even as an Athiest I find it hard to disagree with anything our local vicar says in Church, his sermons are mostly about bieng nice to each other etc, and never stray into any of that hell fire or sinner crap at all.

Once you have removed the “sinner crap” from Christianity, there isn’t much left.

So on the one hand, you have Bishop Richard diligently using the brains God gave him to wriggle out of the beliefs that are the foundation of his profession, and on the other, Ray Comfort still believing the “sinner crap” that has been part of the Christian faith for the last 2000 years.

Perhaps the real reason Dawkins wouldn’t debate Comfort is because the “sinner crap” touches a nerve.

Not invented here

In his address to congress Obama declared:

the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it. He said millions of jobs and scores of communities depend on saving the industry.

Does this mean he is going to be sending money to Germany to bolster its automotive industry?

Karl Friedrich Benz (1844-1929), Germany Patent DRP No. 37435: GASOLINE / First true automobile. Gasoline automobile powered by an internal combustion engine: three wheeled, Four cycle, engine and chassis form a single unit.

Did the rest of Obama’s speech make any more sense? Not really:

But I’m worried that it’s not just a matter of what he chooses to put in speeches, but what he knows. It looks very much as if the president is oblivious to everything we’ve learned about social programs and educational reforms in the last 40 years—and by “we” I include policy analysts on the left as well as right. The guy never indicates that he is aware that we’ve tried a whole bunch of the same stuff he wants to try and evaluated it repeatedly and—read my lips—it doesn’t work.

Youths vanquished by a 63 year old lady wielding a wad of paper

I’ve always wondered what use church meeting minutes were; no-one reads them, no-one is interested and they usually collect dust in an obscure part of the church secretary’s office.

But now, all that has changed. Alma Harding has shown us the way: they are a weapon to be wielded against unruly vandals.

Here we have yet another vivid demonstration of Mr. Bumble’s hypothesis by the aberrant British legal system, ever vigilant in its enduring quest to prosecute the innocent and exonerate the guilty:

Alma Harding was walking home after a church meeting when she saw three teenagers kicking a ball among the flower beds she had planted on the village green.

After months of petty vandalism in the area, it was the last straw for the arts and crafts teacher.

She called to the group, remonstrating with them, but was alarmed when they approached. One swore at her, calling her a ‘******* fatty’, magistrates heard.

In fear, the 63-year-old lashed out with the church minutes she was carrying, and caught one of the boys, a 13-year-old, on the cheek. She scurried home, upset, and that might have been the end of it.

But the boy and his mother went to police and yesterday Mrs Harding, who sings in the church choir, was convicted of battery.

If this happens again, in addition to swatting them Alma should sing at the malevolent louts.

Mangling the mother tongue

According to the Telegraph, the top ten misquotes by British people are as follows:

1) A damp squid (a damp squib)

2) On tender hooks (on tenter hooks)

3) Nip it in the butt (nip it in the bud)

4) Champing at the bit (chomping at the bit)

5) A mute point (a moot point)

6) One foul swoop (one fell swoop)

7) All that glitters is not gold (all that glisters is not gold)

8 ) Adverse to (averse to)

9) Batting down the hatches (batten down the hatches)

10) Find a penny pick it up (find a pin pick it up)

Arbitrary North American irritations:

I could care less (I couldn’t care less)

Money is the root of all evil (the love of money is the root of all evil)

I’ve got less faults than you (I’ve got fewer faults than you)

I should have went to my grammar classes (I should have gone to my grammar classes)

There is bats in my belfry (there are bats in my belfry)

I should of attended my grammar lessons (I should have attended my grammar lessons)

I’m doing good (I’m doing well)

On a daily basis (every day)

Every person should check their words (every person should check his words)

Visa-versa (vice versa)

Its got it’s apostrophe in the wrong place (It’s got its apostrophe in the wrong place)

The trajectory of the Anglican Church (the direction of the Anglican Church)

As well, misplacing words in a sentence can be annoying (misplacing words in a sentence can be annoying as well)

Gaza: The Anglican Church of Canada takes sides – against Israel as usual.

The ACoC is urging its members to write a letter:

In pressing for a lasting ceasefire, international leaders including Canada must recognize the recent violence as a symptom of decades-long failure of the international community, State of Israel, and leaders of the Palestinian community in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem to make difficult but necessary commitments to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Canada must publicly recognize that no lasting peace is possible without justice, and without the adherence of all parties to the rule of law, especially those on which the international community has agreed, including the Geneva Conventions and the protection of non-combatants in militarily occupied territories. Ending the siege of Gaza and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank are two critical steps toward achieving justice and toward adherence to the rule of law.

The first paragraph is the decoy to create an illusion of impartiality.

In the second paragraph we get down to business. The ‘injustices’ singled out for special mention are: Israel’s siege of Gaza, civilian loss of life – presumably civilians in Gaza killed by Israelis –  and the occupation of the West bank. No mention of the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza; no mention of the use of humans shields by Hamas;  no mention of Hamas murdering its own people; no mention of the fact that Israel attempts to protect non-combatants, while Hamas deliberately targets them.

In short, another biased, pompously self-righteous, anti-Israel  philippic from Fred Hiltz, the leftist interloper who has hijacked the Anglican church of Canada.

Diocese of Niagara: In Pursuit of Vindictiveness

A brief summary of the plot so far:

Attempts to negotiate outside the courts
The parishes that left the Diocese of Niagara to realign with the Province of the Southern Cone have been taken to court by the diocese. ANiC’s lawyers have repeatedly asked the diocese to negotiate outside the courts; they were refused. Bishop Don Harvey has repeatedly asked Fred Hiltz to have one of the conversations that Hiltz is so fond of; he was refused.

The judge at the last court appearance ordered ANiC and the diocese to share the buildings and the cost of maintaining the buildings. The diocese has yet to pay anything towards the upkeep of the buildings, while, in St. Hilda’s case, having no compunction about driving out 100 people who need it with 5 people who don’t. If the diocese and ANiC could not agree on respective costs, the court ruled that an independent arbitrator mediate a solution. ANiC proposed an arbitrator early on; the diocese refused.

It appears that the diocesan lawyer is not completely daft though: it has occurred to him that the diocese will look bad in the next court appearance if they have obviously refused mediation. Therefore, they have recently sent an email to ANiC asking why there is a holdup on mediation; and they suggested the same arbitrator that ANiC originally proposed.

How much his this costing
The last court appearance was an appeal by ANiC. ANiC lost the appeal, so the diocese were awarded costs. The diocesan lawyers had charged $70,000 for the appeal. The judge viewed this as excessive and awarded them $20,000.

At the next costs hearing, the diocese will be asking for around $240,000 in legal fees; these fees are just for the court appearances that were to decide on whether the buildings were to be shared. ANiC’s legal fees are about one quarter. To gain perspective on this: an example of what the diocese has achieved at St. Hilda’s by spending $240,000, is that every Sunday morning, Cheryl Fricker from St. Aidan’s, Oakville attracts between 4 and 5 people from her own congregation to show up at an 8:30 service in St. Hilda’s building. That’s $4,615 per service or, over the year, $48,000 per person.

Vandalism!
Oakville is not a particularly rough part of Canada and it isn’t full of vandals whose calling in life is to remove church signs; St. Hilda’s has only experienced vandalism twice in its entire history. Someone obviously doesn’t like the diocese very much and has pinched their sign. The diocese has retaliated: we received an email from them threatening criminal prosecution if there is a repeat performance. And the neighbours have been asked to keep an eye open for nefarious sign-destroying miscreants. Vandalism has never been a particularly alluring temptation for me, but now – Must. Resist.

A Profusion of Prosecutions
Not content with taking all the ANiC parishes to court, the Diocese of Niagara is also suing the wardens of the parishes – personally. Who cares what for? It’s all about inclusion, after all.

Who paid whom
When St. Hilda’s was built the Diocese of Niagara lent the parish $4,000 to get started. Since then, the parish has paid back over $1,000,000 to the diocese in assessments and offerings. A diocesan bishop promised, in writing, that if the parish completed their building, the diocese would pay to pave the parking lot. It didn’t.

Whoever ends up winning the buildings in court, one thing is clear: they belong to the ANiC parishioners who have a legitimate use for them, not to the suits with backwards collars or the odious allotheist with the oven mitt on his head.

B minor Mass Et in unum Dominum

From Bach’s B minor Mass, Karl Richter

Yes Minister

The secret diary of the Minister for Folding Deckchairs

Our private secretaries were waiting for us. Mine is a pleasant young woman called Jessica. I am also entitled to a car and a driver. Entirely pointless since the No159 and No3 buses run past my door.

Jessica explained the situation is complicated. Red boxes – lead-lined so that if the Minister is blown up, the Government’s papers will survive – cannot be carried on public transport. Second, there will be times when a vote is called without warning and we will need to get to the House quickly. Third, I might be glad of a lift home at 3am after an adjournment debate.

She also explained that the funding of the Government car pool is geared to encourage maximum use of the car. The drivers are on a low basic wage and dependent on overtime. Jessica said I will need a mobile phone, a pager and a fax at home. I offered mild resistance, but fear I shall have to give way. The first of what will no doubt be many little defeats at official hands.

While we were talking, in strolled JP. He made a little show of being pleased to see me.

‘Thank you for having me,’ I said. ‘Glad you decided to join us,’ he said drily. The sarcasm remained in the air long after he departed. Of course, he must know that I turned down the wretched job.

Outside, I ran into Labour MP Frank Field. He confirmed that the Government car service was a job creation scheme.

Life imitates art:

Raunchy RCs

h/t HolySmoke

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has come up with a list of exciting ideas to perk up your love life:

(1) Plan a picnic. If the weather is cold, spread a blanket on the living room floor. Romanticize the occasion by adding some wine, a rose, and mood music.

(2) “Tech-free” night. Turn off your cell phones, computer, the TV, and the lights. See what’s left to do without electricity. Sing old songs, have a pillow fight, recount stories of how you met, plan for the future.

(3) Be a tourist. Pretend you’re a tourist in your own town. Visit a museum, a scenic overlook, or a quaint neighborhood. Discover something new together!

(4) Midnight bowling. It’s more than just bowling! Some places have special music, lighting and gimmicks. Even without these, it can be a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

It goes on, but I might get too worked up if I display any more.

The really exciting stuff is going on in the comfort of the cloisters:

Indian nun claims sex is rife within Catholic Church.

The book by the former nun reveals how as a young novice she was propositioned in the confession box by a priest who cited biblical references to “divine kisses”. Later she was cornered by a lesbian nun at a college where they were teaching. “She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her,” she claims.

And apparently this is not only to be expected, but is perfectly normal:

Dr Paul Thelekkat, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Catholic church said he had some sympathy for sister Jesme, and respected her freedom to express her views, but he believed her claims were trivial. “How far what she says is well-founded I can’t say, but the issues are not very serious. We’re living with human beings in a community and she should realise this is part of human life

Now I know why so many Anglicans are converting to Rome.

An Islamic perspective on Harry Potter

Would Harry get past the Islamic Gestapo if we renamed him Muhammad Potter? Could the religion of peace bear it?

Some Muslim schools ‘make children despise the West’: Ban on cricket and Harry Potter

Some Islamic schools are promoting fundamentalist views and encouraging children to despise Western society, a report warns.

An investigation by the Civitas social policy think-tank found websites of some of the UK’s 166 Muslim schools are spreading extreme teachings, while a handful had links to sites promoting jihad, or holy war.

Examples include web forums forbidding Muslims from reading Harry Potter books, playing chess or cricket and listening to Western music.

In my early school-days, Lady Chatterley’s Lover was a banned book. As soon as the obscenity trial was over (E. M. Forster and his elite literary cronies had no idea what they were unleashing) and it became freely available, I saved up my pocket money and bought a copy. Naturally, along with thousands of other schoolboys whose hormones were out of control, I read it for its literary merit.

Thinking about it now, it is quite obvious that it doesn’t have much literary merit. And that brings me to Harry Potter: literary merit or not, I read the whole series with enjoyment.

I have a strong suspicion that J. K. Rowling has paid Muslims to ban Harry Potter in an attempt to increase sales.