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Dear friends in Christ,
Thanks to your prayers, we were able to complete the evacuation of St. Simon's North Vancouver(ACiC) from the blue building and move our '9am Traditional BCP service' people in unity to Lions Gate Christian Academy (420 Seymour River Place, by Maplewood Farms) where our 10:30am contemporary service has been worshipping for the past half year. We are so grateful to the Toronto Prayer Book Society who generously donated 70 new BCP Prayer Books to us.
Feel free to join us this Sunday (if close enough) at 9am or 10:30am when the Rev. Peter Falk, a gifted Anglican/Episcopal priest from the Diocese of Rio Grande, will be preaching. It is great to be free, and reconnected to the Anglican Communion through our five African and Asian Primates.
Blessings, Ed Hird+
http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/
1a) http://anglicanjournal.com/extra/news.php?newsItem=2005-06-07_mns.news New West gains possession of contested church properties
MARITES N. SISON STAFF WRITER June 7, 2005 - Two congregations, which left the diocese of New Westminster following disagreements over same-sex blessings in 2002, have vacated the church buildings they used to occupy to avoid a long and costly litigation.
Diocesan officials took possession of St. Simon's, Deep Cove, in North Vancouver, and St. Andrew's, Pender Harbour, on May 31.
"The premises were delivered in good, clean condition," said Neale Adams, diocesan spokesperson.
Last March, George Cadman, diocesan chief legal officer, had served legal notices to the parishes through their lawyer, Bob Kuhn, asking them to "deliver up possession" of the buildings by April 1 or be faced with court proceedings. The diocese has maintained that the church buildings "historically" belong to the Anglican Church of Canada for its ministry in New Westminster.
The congregations said, however, that not only do they hold the title deed to the properties but they also have "beneficial ownership" of them since they had bought, paid for, and maintained the buildings.
"Despite our holding title deed to the property and building, despite our being legally incorporated, despite our 'beneficial ownership' through having bought, paid for, and maintained the building, we have been evicted by a draconian ecclesiastical law (Canon 15), which allows our ex-diocese to allegedly remove our top leadership, replacing them with people that don't even attend our congregation," said Rev. Ed Hird, former rector of the church in a statement.
"It was like walking through the grief of Good Friday, being unjustly mistreated and abused," said Mr. Hird following a decision made during Holy Week by members of his congregation to evacuate the 55-year-old building by May 31, and move subsequent services to Lions Gate Christian Academy, in Maple Wood. "But the miracle is that when we voted in unity to move forward, there was a tremendous sense of joy and freedom released."
The congregation was not prepared for a drawn-out legal battle because of the prohibitive cost, said Mr. Hird. "Our former diocese has very deep pockets. With the B.C. Supreme Court cost being $10,000 a day, we decided that this would not be a good use of our resources," he said. "We would rather focus on telling people about the love of Jesus."
Diocesan bishop Michael Ingham said earlier that Mr. Hird and Mr. Mayo had already "abandoned" their ministry and had formed "privately incorporated societies." The two priests and members of their parishes were among those who walked out of a diocesan synod after it voted to allow same-sex blessings in 2002. They later formed a group called the Anglican Communion in Canada (ACiC).
Summer Sunday services are now scheduled at St. Andrew's and officiants include Rev. Mark Lemon, regional dean for Capilano-Kingcome and Archdeacon Dennis Popple, said Mr. Adams. Rev. Sarah Tweedale, regional dean for North Vancouver, is priest-in-charge of St. Simon's.
June 07, 2005
1b) http://anglicanjournal.com//extra/news.html?newsItem=2005-06-10_mns.news Arctic Diocese Denounces Gay Relationships
MARITES N. SISON STAFF WRITER June 10, 2005 - The Anglican diocese of the Arctic has given notice that it will not employ the following: anyone having pre-marital sex, homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals, those who willingly engage in sexual activities with a minor and with those whom they are counseling or supervising (excluding spouse), and those who fail to disclose a prior conviction on child sexual abuse.
Anyone who "supports and promotes such behavior, lifestyle or teaching" is likewise not eligible for employment, according to the diocesan synod, which voted on the issue during a meeting in Iqaluit May 25 to June 2.
The conditions apply not just to clergy who are licensed or seeking a license to minister in the diocese but also to current as well as prospective lay workers.
"We are a religious organization that has a moral code that we abide by," said Larry Robertson, suffragan bishop of Mackenzie and Kitikmeot, explaining the synod's decision to amend its canon on the order and eligibility for licensing (Canon 18) by setting the same conditions for clergy and lay employees. "We don't condemn others but this is what we believe and how we behave according to God's word. There was concern that people who represent the church abide by the lifestyle expected of them."
In separate interviews with Anglican Journal, Arctic diocesan bishop Andrew Atagotaaluk and Bishop Robertson said they did not think the diocese was being discriminatory or that it violated the Canadian Human Rights Act by banning gays from employment and lumping them in the same category as pedophiles, who are considered criminal offenders.
"We are being honest and upfront. If we're honest how can we be discriminatory? This is what we believe in," said Bishop Robertson.
"We recognize the Human Rights Act and we respect it," said Bishop Atagotaaluk. "But those we hire have to also comply with and abide by our constitution."
(The Canadian Human Rights Act provides that "all individuals should have an equal opportunity with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.")
Questions were raised on the floor of synod, however, on how the employment conditions would be enforced. Bishop Atagotaaluk said that prospective employees would not be directly asked about their sexual orientation but whether they could comply with the conditions set forth in Canon 18.
Canon Linda Nicholls, co-ordinator for dialogue at the national church's faith, worship and ministry department, who attended part of the synod as an observer, said it was unclear what the clause, "supports and promotes such behavior, lifestyle or teaching," meant. "What if you have gay friends or relatives?" she asked.
Bishop Atagotaaluk acknowledged that this clause gives way to a number of interpretations but said that offhand, it meant those who support and promote the blessing of same-sex unions.
Bishop Robertson said that the ban extends only to the matter of employment and not to church attendance. "We are not going to refuse people communion. There will be none of that," he said.
Steve Schuh, president of the Vancouver chapter of Integrity, a support group for gay and lesbian Canadian Anglicans, said the synod's move to ban gays, lesbians and bisexuals as well as those who support them was discriminatory(...)
Synod delegates also voted unanimously to adopt the Montreal Declaration, a statement of belief issued by three conservative Anglican groups during a meeting in 1994, as "reflective of the true values and foundation of our Anglican faith." The declaration, which led to the formation of Essentials (a group of Anglicans devoted to traditional biblical teachings), states, in part, that "the only sexual relations that biblical theology deems good and holy" are between husband and wife and that "adultery, fornication and homosexual unions are intimacies contrary to God's design."
The Nunatsiaq News quoted Haydn Schofield, archdeacon of the western Arctic, as having said that he initiated the motion to affirm the principles of the Montreal Declaration to make the northern churches' stance consonant with "a worldwide call to orthodoxy." In his motion, Mr. Schofield stated that there was a need "for a clear statement of faith in confusing times," particularly as the Anglican Church of Canada debates on issues "including the blessing of same-sex marriages and/or same-sex unions."
Archbishop John Clarke, bishop of Athabasca and metropolitan of Rupert's Land, also told the newspaper that the adoption of the declaration was necessary to protect the churches' right to refuse same-sex marriages, which the federal government wants to legalize. "What better way to protect yourself from future litigation than to have a clear statement of principles?" he said(...)
2a) http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2584 (David Virtue, Virtueonline) (...)On a brighter note, GEORGE GALLUP, the distinguished American pollster and evangelical Episcopalian, spoke to an ALPHA fund-raising breakfast near Valley Forge, Pa., recently, and said that despite a broken world, broken lives, broken marriages, and feelings of desolation, he had found strong feelings of hope in small groups that he and his wife, Kinny, had been in for more than 20 years.
"In this country people need to go deeper, searching for meaning in their lives," Gallup said. Eighty percent of Americans say they are Christina but only 10 percent have a transforming faith, a truly deep knowledge of Jesus Christ, he told more than 500 gathered to support ALPHA, the basic Christianity series sweeping the West.
Gallup cited former TIME magazine journalist David Aikman in his book "Jesus in Beijing" as saying that China will reach a critical mass with 30 percent of the population saying they are Christians. For the moment the Chinese have very little knowledge of God, preferring materialism with vestiges of Christianity still remaining. But all that is changing. Gallup predicted the Chinese will take the gospel West over the Silk Road and back to the Middle East. Gallup also cited what he calls an "explosion of faith in the Southern Cone." The 75-year old pollster praised ALPHA, saying that some 250 ALPHA groups now exist in the Philadelphia area with 25,000 people having heard the message in greater Philadelphia.
"If 80 percent of people became believers with 25,000 every year brought to ALPHA in 5 years ... in 20 years the entire world would be converted," Gallup said. It is the beauty of geometrical projection, he said(...)
2b) http://www.alphacanada.org/nationalinitiative2005/ 3rd National Canadian Alpha Initiative 40 Day Prayer Blitz, Aug 6--Sept 15
This summer's Alpha Invitation is all about inviting God to change hearts. Alpha teams across Canada will be encouraged to participate in focused prayer activities in support of fall courses. The Alpha Prayer Blitz!
For the past two summers churches in Canada have sent "An Invitation to the Nation" through a combination of national billboard advertising, lawn signs, church banners, community events and personal invitations. The campaigns have resulted in more and younger guests, many with little or no church background.
Alpha's National Initiative 2005 includes some of the previous elements, but the main focus this year is Prayer(...) To order the Initiative kit, click on http://www.alphacanada.org/nationalinitiative2005/resources.html
3) http://andrewcarey.classicalanglican.net/?p=43 Andrew Carey The effect of civil partnerships
On the subject of Civil Partnerships and the Church of England's future policy when they come into effect at the end of this year, there is a strenuous debate(...)
Our capacity for self-deception in the Church is unrivalled. To avoid the appearance of a breakdown of unity we are prepared to jump through contrived hoops that would give an accomplished gymnast severe backache(...)
Although the reports have said that couples will have to give assurances to diocesan bishops that they will abstain from sex, it is unlikely in reality that most Bishops will ask for anything more than the most generalised commitment to Church teaching. Given the Anglican ability to jump through hoops, it will be easy for practising homosexual clergy to assent to church teaching which they believe is not fully agreed upon without even crossing their fingers behind their backs.
In reality, anything but an absolute ban on civil partnerships for clergy will introduce homosexual marriage to the Church of England without any proper theological discussion and debate in the councils of the Church whatsoever. It will no longer be possible to pretend that clergy in sexually active gay relationships are in an anomalous position, like those who cannot say the creed with any integrity. In future the Church of England will have effectively changed its policy and its teaching on marriage without even admitting it.
In the 1990s, an attempt was made by evangelical and catholic Bishops in the Episcopal Church of the USA to halt the widespread practice of the ordination of practising homosexuals by bringing heresy charges against Bishop Spong's assistant Bishop, Walter Righter. The court of Bishops threw out the charges on the technicality that ECUSA had no 'core doctrine' on such ordinations. Although the court said that its opinion was not a policy change for the Episcopal Church of the USA, this proved to be the case. Civil Partnerships are the far-reaching equivalent for the Church of England.
There will be no pretence on the part of some clergy entering publicly into Civil Partnerships that they are doing anything other than embracing a form of marriage. Bishops who support a change in teaching will be able to bring it into effect and will thus be exposed.
Under these circumstances I cannot see how the Church of England can do anything other than fragment and divide. I'm not suggesting for a moment that such splits will be irreparable or amount to immediate schisms, but will be more akin to constant running warfare, skirmishes and the gradual separation of networks of parishes from the diocese and the national church.
3a) http://www.defendmarriage.ca/dM/release/05.06.07.htm News Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tues., June 7, 2005 MARTIN MAKES IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE TO PRO-MARRIAGE LIBERAL MPS
Ottawa , ON - Prime Minister Martin is apparently willing to promise anything to remain in power. His latest deception according to news reports, is to promise a group of his own MPs that he is willing to amend Bill C-38 (same-sex marriage), but his proposed amendments relate only to matters of provincial jurisdiction and therefore are "useless and of no effect" said Brian Rushfeldt, Canada Family Action Coalition, a member of the Defend Marriage Coalition(...)
3b) http://www.defendmarriage.ca/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=259&Itemid=1 Cotler doesn't guarantee religious protections The Kingston Whig-Standard - June 9, 2005 Cotler doesn't guarantee religious protections: Minister says same-sex bill ties his hands By Sue Bailey, The Canadian Press OTTAWA - Liberals will tweak their contentious same-sex marriage bill but can't guarantee ironclad religious protections, admits Justice Minister Irwin Cotler(...)
4a) http://www.cathedral.vancouver.bc.ca/ Note from Ed+: Christ Church Cathedral Vancouver was where my grandmother attended for years, where I was ordained in 1980, and where two of my sons were confirmed. It was an orthodox evangelical congregation until the 1960's, even founding an evangelical Anglican theological college 'Latimer Hall' in 1910. -------- Original Message --------
Subject: [parish-mail] Parish Mail - June 10, 2005 (Diocese of New Westminster) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 17:21:32 -0700 (PDT) ------------------------------------------------ Index ------------------------------------------------ ADMINISTRATION -Facts from 401 (...)
------------------------------------------------ EARTH REVIVAL: A Cosmic Mass with Matthew Fox Thursday, July 7th Christ Church Cathedral Burrard & Georgia Doors Open 7:15 pm Ceremony Begins 8 pm Spirit Dance 10:30 pm
Minimum Donation $20 For more information, www.cosmicmass.ca
The Cosmic Mass An Interactive Experience of the Sacred through Ritual, Dance, Music & Story
Revive our Earth-Spirit Connection Dance our Divine Spark into Flames
4b) http://www.stmaryskerrisdale.ca/cosmicmass/ Matthew Fox Prophet of Creation Spirituality is coming to Vancouver!
July 3-8, 2005
Schedule of Events Sunday July 3 10am-11:30 Keynote Address at InVision Dance Festival, Roberts Creek www.invisionfestival.com
July 4-8 8:30-11:30am Vancouver School of Theology's Chalmers Summer School Course Science, Mysticism & Faith: The Cosmic Christ in Post-Modern Times (Requires Registration) www.vst.edu
Tuesday July 5 7:30pm Free Public Lecture CREATIVITY: Where the Divine and the Human Meet Canadian Memorial United Church www.canadianmemorial.org
Thursday July 7 Doors Open 7:15pm Earth Revival: A Cosmic Mass www.cosmicmass.ca
(...)In August of 2004, Matthew Fox was hosted in Vancouver by St. Mary's Kerrisdale (a parish of the Anglican Church of Canada) and explored the potential of bringing the Cosmic Mass to Canada. As a result of that meeting, Philip Murray (Youth Ministry Director at St. Mary's Kerrisdale) and Maureen Jack-Lacroix (Jack of Heart's Productions) have attended the Cosmic Mass and courses in Oakland, and have received the training and permission to celebrate the Cosmic Mass in Canada.
4d) http://www.dci.dk/?artikel=215&emne=New%20Age Heresy or Hope? Part I A Critique of Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality
by Lawrence Osborn B.Sc, M.Sc, B.D, Ph.D
In the past decade the Dominican priest Matthew Fox has achieved a remarkable degree of popularity or, at least, notoriety. He has been variously described as 'one of the best-loved Catholic theologians in the United States' (Newman 1992, 5), dismissed as 'an entertainer, not a serious theologian' (Goodall & Reader 1992, 105) and accused of providing 'an ideological preparation for . . . a potential new Holocaust' (Brearley 1989, 48)(...)
However, as Fox's popularity increased so did doubts about his orthodoxy. Matters came to a head in 1984 when a conservative Catholic pressure group began picketing his lectures and complained to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In July 1984, the head of the congregation, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the new Pope Benedict), responded by ordering the Dominicans to investigate Fox.
A commission of enquiry was duly set up and its report, published in May 1985, found in Fox's favour. In December of that year Cardinal Ratzinger rejected the commission's findings. Fox's Provincial responded by defending him against the cardinal's accusations.
In September 1987 Cardinal Ratzinger again went on the offensive with a document summarising his objections to Fox's theology. Again his Provincial leapt to Fox's defence. But this time he was ordered to take disciplinary action: a move which led to the silencing of Fox during 1989.
Ironically (but predictably), far from stifling Fox's creation spirituality this had the effect of making Fox more popular than ever. At a stroke Cardinal Ratzinger had elevated Fox to a hall of fame containing such worthies as Teilhard de Chardin and Leonardo Boff.
For years the Dominican Order has been supportive of Fox. However he was finally expelled from the Order early in 1993 as a result of his persistent refusal to obey an order to return to the provincial mother house. Earlier this year he cut his remaining ties with Rome when he was welcomed in the Episcopalian Church by Bishop Swing of San Francisco(...)
4e) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7280/Fox.html PLEASE DON'T LET THE VATICAN SEE THIS: A Pagan Perspective On Matthew Fox by Mike Nichols [circa 1988] Only last month I picked up a current Christian periodical with a review -- mostly favorable -- of Starhawk's "The Spiral Dance", now eight years old!) But Pagans who study their own sources closely may already know about Matthew Fox. Starhawk, for example, often mentions Fox in her public appearances, and for good reason. She has been a lecturer on his staff at Holy Names College in Oakland, CA. And Fox has often quoted Starhawk in public, as well as in his book, "Original Blessing".
What's this, you say? A Dominican priest asking a Witch to lecture at his university?!(...)
(One point of contention for Cardinal Ratzinger is that Starhawk is on Fox's teaching staff. That she be removed from the staff is one of Ratzinger's conditions for the lifting of the imposition of silence.)
4f) http://www.equip.org/free/DF105.pdf http://www.equip.org/free/DF105.htm STATEMENT DF105 Catholicism for the New Age: Matthew Fox and Creation-Centered Spirituality by Mitchell Pacwa, S. J.
Father Matthew Timothy Fox, O.P. (Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans), has placed himself at the center of a storm inside the Catholic church. What gave rise to the conflict between Fox and Catholic leadership? Is Fox a danger to the Christian church? These are questions we shall seek to answer in this article.(...)
His first popular book on prayer, On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear (1972), created the impetus which eventually led to his establishing the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS) in 1977 at Mundelein College, a small Catholic women's college in Chicago. He moved the ICCS to Holy Names College, another small Catholic college in Oakland, California in 1983, where it has remained to the present day.
The ICCS teaching staff includes Starhawk the witch (alias Miriam Simos); Buck Ghost Horse, a shaman (mystic guide healer); Luish Teish, a Yoruba (West African) voodoo priestess; and Robert Frager, representing Sufism (Islamic mysticism). Typical of New Age approaches to spirituality, some psychology is thrown in: John Giannini, a Jungian analyst, and Jean Lanier, a Gestalt therapist. Brian Swimme is the resident cosmologist, and "geologian" (i.e., exponent of environmental wisdom) Fr. (Father) Thomas Berry teaches on occasion(...)
Fox's problems with the Catholic hierarchy began in 1984 when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's department for protecting orthodoxy, asked the Dominican Order to investigate Fox's writings. Three Dominican theologians examined his books in 1985 and concluded they were not heretical. One of them, Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P., reported at a 1991 lecture that Fox's work did not seem worth condemning because it was too superficial and did not appear to be a danger to the faithful. He was wrong, as he now admits.
The Vatican continued to object to Fox's teachings, such as his diminishing or even denial of original sin, refusal to deny belief in pantheism (the belief that God is all and all is God), endorsing homosexual unions in the church, identifying humans as "mothers of God," and calling God "our Mother." The presence of the witch, Starhawk, on the ICCS staff caused another scandal. For these and other reasons, the Vatican in 1986 asked the Dominican Master General to stop Fox. But the Chicago Dominican superior, Fr. Donald Goergen, O.P., wrote a detailed defense on Fox's behalf and let him go on.
In September, 1987 Ratzinger's Vatican office began its own investigation of Fox and his teachings. Fr. Goergen received charges against Fox in April, 1988, but claimed that Fox's theological views had not been disproven. At this point the Vatican insisted that the Dominicans prevent Fox from further teaching and writing. Accordingly, the Master General asked Fox to take a one year sabbatical to calm the situation. In a "Pastoral Letter to Cardinal Ratzinger and the Whole Church," Fox responded by publicly calling the Catholic church a dysfunctional family because "power, not theology, is the real issue." Still, he began a year-long silence on December 15, 1988.
On December 15, 1989, Fox resumed his busy teaching, lecturing, and writing schedule - including appearances at John Denver's (New Age) Windstar Foundation and an Easter retreat at Findhorn, Scotland (a prototype New Age community)(...)
Fox also identifies Christ with Mother Earth. For him, Christ's redemption takes on new meaning and power in the Cosmic Christ context if people see it as the "passion, resurrection, and ascension of Mother Earth conceived as Jesus Christ crucified, resurrected, and ascended."8 Holy Communion is "intimate," "local," and "erotic" when it becomes "the eating and drinking of the wounded earth."9
A key aspect of the new paradigm is Fox's idealization of feminist theology and rejection of patriarchal (father oriented) religion. He advocates a return to maternal (mother oriented) religion, like that of native peoples throughout the world. Their "matrifocal [mother-centered] religion" helps them reverence God as a mother, the earth as our mother, the universe as our grandmother. They care for earth, he declares, and seek justice, compassion, creativity, and harmony among people and within the ecology. He preaches this religious ideal as the new paradigm of "deep ecumenism," which will allow people of all religions to come together at a mystical level(...)
Commending witchcraft and shamanism (primitive spiritism) in his Institute encourages disciples to investigate the occult in the guise of learning the ways of "matrifocal" (mother-centered) primitive religions in order to awaken the compassionate and creative mother in everyone.
In Scripture, God calls us to be compassionate, loving, and thirsty for justice. At the same time, however, He condemns the occult practices of native Canaanite religion, its mother goddesses Anath and Ashtarte, and its demand for human sacrifices (Deut. 18:9-14). Furthermore, Starhawk's wiccan religion of the goddess is explicitly pantheistic (all is God) and monistic (all is one).13 This causes one to wonder whether Fox's frequent commendations of Starhawk's work in reawakening the goddess religion mean that he accepts pantheism after all. Honesty requires him to state his true relationship to Starhawk's wiccan theology: is he pantheistic or not?(...)
4g) http://www.spiritualrealist.com/MINDFIRE/StarHawkWitchesWisdom.asp Starhawk of Witches and Wisdom
STARHAWK in conversation with ALEXANDER BLAIR EWART
Psychotherapist, writer, teacher, political activist, and witch, Starhawk is a founding member of Reclaiming. A Center for Feminist Spirituality and Counseling in San Francisco, California. She is the author of Truth or Dare (1987), Dreaming the Dark (1988), The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1989), and The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993). She was featured in the National Film Board Studio 1) productions Goddess Remembered and The Burning Times.
ALEXANDER BLAIR-EWART : What kind of witch are you?
S T A R H A W K : Well, perhaps I had better define witch as I use the word. A witch is somebody who has made a commitment to the spiritual tradition of the Goddess, the old pre Christian religions of Western Europe. So I am a witch in the sense that that is my religion, my spiritual tradition. I am an initiated priestess of the Goddess. (...) A B E : I wonder what the role of theology is in that worldview. For instance, a lot of people in Canada, and certainly mainstream society, first became aware of you through the Matthew Fox/Creation Spirituality controversy. Can you talk about that involvement with Matthew Fox and Creation Spirituality?
S T A R H A W K : Yes. Matthew Fox is someone who is really trying to make some of those transformations from within the Catholic Church. He believes very deeply in ecumenism, that the church needs to learn from other traditions. So he brought me in, as well as other Native teachers, African and American teachers, to share something of our traditions as resources for people to draw on, not in the sense of trying to turn nuns into witches, although there's often not that great a difference(...)
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