“We’re ready to go,” Rector Emma Vickery said of the church’s preparedness to start blessing committed same-sex unions.
“We’re ready to uphold and give a place for people to feel welcome. And when the time comes, we will be the first ones at the door.”
Maybe, but the identity statement approved by members of St. George’s Sunday doesn’t exactly read like an act of defiance. The document says such a blessing will only happen if the Bishop of the Edmonton Diocese is agreeable. And Victoria Matthews made it clear this week that such a blessing won’t be happening during the time remaining on her watch.
“As a bishop, I make a solemn promise to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Church of Canada,” said Matthews, who recently announced she is stepping down from the post she has held for 10 years.
In other words:
“Gosh, we like what is happening to the Americans so much, that we are going to imitate them and follow in their footsteps. Now who can we sue, eh?”
The Canadians decided that ordaining practicing homosexuals was not against core doctrine, and they rejected authorizing them. The core doctrine was in the sense of creedal which everyone now forgets. These ambiguous statements open the entire province to New Westminster’s innovations. Reprehensible duplicity. If you are going to ordain homosexuals just ‘fess up and do it and not cowardly hide behind these smoke and mirrors so as to protect your lambeth invitation.
The beat goes on….
Great news!!!! Good for them!
Yes, #4, it’s always wonderful to see people saying, ‘Sod “the faith once and for all handed down to the saints”– we’re going to do what we want!’ For too long people have believed that they were created in God’s image. It’s time to turn the tables on God and insist that he be created in our own! How freeing! Or… was it damning? The two are so easily confused…
St George’s was my old home parish from 1971 to 1976 when I was in grad school at the U of A. It’s right off the campus, so the attitudes there don’t surprise me a bit, even if they’re profoundly disappointing. Let’s not forget, however, that it’s one parish in one diocese, not “Alberta” Anglicans in general … at least not yet.
In the end, the best thing to come out of my time there was an appreciation for the faith of the Ugandans who had come to Edmonton as refugees from Amin. Consequently, a quarter century later I was bouncing across gravel roads in rural Kansas, taking the then-unknown Henry Orombi to see some American bison, because as a very humble rural man himself he was worn out from America’s urbs and ‘burbs.
God is always preparing us, though we rarely know for what. That said, I do know that the Ugandans at St. George’s a generation ago would be even more disappointed by this news than I am.
More “..blind leaders of the blind..” Nuff said!!