This was the processional hymn at St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin this morning and, except as the choir processed past me, I felt like I was singing a solo.
However I needed this to restore some faith in why I, for the time being, remain committed to Anglicanism.
In searching on Youtube I began to believe it might be a Catholic hymn. There are hundreds of versions there, many as part of Catholic services, but this one, although posted by a Baptist church with obviously US spelling, is sung by the choir of Norwich Cathedral and I was pleased to learn it was composed by an Anglican, George W. Hitchin and sung in Winchester Cathedral in 1887.
It lends itself to Cathedral processions with the cross held high at the front.

Oh how I wish I could be in St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin next Sunday when I am sure it will be packed.  Present will be the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and I was offered a ticket. Sadly, several months ago I chose next weekend for our hikers' camp in the Catlins and as I am the chief organiser I can hardly absent myself.

A number of events in the past week have caused me to wonder if I want to be associated with any church anymore.

First a matter that does not really concern me, except for a number years I found consolation in a Catholic environment. When Sydney Anglicanism had me in despair, I found acceptance among the Catholic brothers and lay teachers with whom I worked.  I knew then that the hierarchy were not supportive and that Cardinal Pell in particular was abhorrent.

Earlier this year there was a newspaper article writen by a previous Premier of NSW, Kristina Kenneally.
Some excerpts were very apt.

He's a product of a particular time and culture in the Catholic Church. I can't imagine he was overjoyed as Bishop of Sydney to have me, a theologically-trained Catholic feminist Premier on his hands.

Some people swear the Cardinal has a great sense of humour. I suspect those people are men. In my interactions with him, I never saw evidence of it.

....am pleased for Cardinal Pell as he takes up a significant promotion to oversee the Vatican administration and financial operations. It's a serious job that will place him at the centre of the Church's operations. But I am more pleased with Pope Francis for making such a clever choice.
The Pope has likely tapped the right man for the job. But the Pope has also given Australian Catholics a reason to breathe a sigh of relief as their local Cardinal now heads off to Rome.
Since coming to Sydney in 2001, Cardinal Pell tried to force the Australian Catholic Church into the shape he wanted it to be: conservative, doctrinaire, and authority-based. If Mass attendance is any indicator, Australian Catholics voted with their feet – or perhaps, their knees – and rejected Pell's approach.

he has not responded well as a pastor, and that he lacks evident compassion and humility in the face of story after story of failure in the Catholic Church to deal with the sexual abuse of children. Unfortunately, his public statements indicate an inclination to protect the institution rather than the vulnerable.

Then this week came this bombshell.

George Pell wants to insure priests against being sued for child sexual abuse. My head is still rotating on its axis. Our man in purple, our alpha priest, moral paragon. Our Vatican princeling, just days from taking up his dauphindom in Rome: he said that? He dropped this fissile solipsism on our public debate and left, smacking the dust from his hands like, we're done now, right?

Does he think child sex is some unavoidable occupational hazard? Something a priest will sooner or later fall to? An accident? If you wanted to maximise the damage already done to countless children, you'd be hard put to find a surer way, or crueller.

I think Pope Francis is very wise in burying Pell in some dusty Vatican office where he can be out of sight, out of mind and perhaps achieve some good for the Vatican finances. He is a disaster out in the real world.

However idiotic statements are not the prerogative of Catholic Archbishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is giving Pell a run for his money.

I have stated before that I found his predecessor, Rowan Williams, a great disappointment.  I actually thought Justin Welby, although an evangelical, might be better.   I have been proved wrong.

He has stated that if the Church of England were to accept gay marriages, it could lead to "catastrophic" consequences for Christians elsewhere, particularly in Africa. He implies that the advances in acceptance of homosexuality in the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Anglican church in Canada have led to massacres that have already occurred.

I have been unable to put into words my utter disgust with this man who is suppose to be the leader of my church although I regularly try to make it clear that he has no authority in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia or other provinces, Thank God.

I can only print the comment I find online to express my outrage.

Firstly Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary's Cathedral Glasgow.

I find the ethics of this very straightforward. It seems to me that the ethics of the Anglican Communion, of the churches in the UK, of the churches in North America, of the governments of the nations in which we live – these cannot be determined by those who bear the bullet and the bomb. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have been suggesting that our policies should be dictated by murderers.

The trouble is, it is an attempt to deal with the reality and horror of violence by appeasing the violent. It is giving those who murder, a moral authority that they can never be allowed to hold.

If that is true then the only Christian response is to condemn the violence and do so publicly, loudly and endlessly. You don’t keep your mouth shut and try to turn the clock back on progressive attitudes on the other side of the world as a response to it. The claim is that these people were killed because their opponents believed that if they left Christians alive then they would be “made gay”. If this is true then those people were killed as a result of homophobia.  It is homophobia of the worst, most violent sort that killed the people in the Archbishop’s story.
You condemn it, Archbishop. That’s what you are called to do.

and then Malcom French, a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, who, like me, would be less polite.

There is no denying that there is sectarian violence in many parts of the world. The causes are generally complex and go back several generations. It has to do with religious extremists who want to establish theocratic states. It has to do with previous ethnic rivalries now cast in religious form. It has to do with local demagogues - both religious and political - who divert attention from massive corruption by inciting violence against LGBTQTS. It has to do with cycles of violence where religious communities attack each other. It has to do with the particular sociopolitical pathologies of particular countries. Muslims in Sub-Saharan Africa kill Christians (and Christians kill Muslims) for a constellation of reasons. But the suggestion that Muslims kill Christians because North Americans treat LGBTQTS like human beings is a lie from the pit of hell.

Oh, I have no doubt that, at some point, some Muslim rabble rouser has used endemic cultural homophobia to incite listeners to violence. So have Christian rabble rousers. They may even have referred to the advance of LGBTQTS rights in the West.

But if it hadn't been homosexuals, it would have been something else. To the limited degree that bullies and terrorists need a reason to bully and terrorize, they can always find one. After all, violence between Christians and Muslims in most of Africa predates Gene Robinson's 2003 consecration by some decades.

Archbishop Welby reminds me of the people who tell victims of domestic violence that they must have done something to provoke their abuser. He is scapegoating, pure and simple. His comments are utterly disgusting and without any moral credibility. 

Finally there is the publication of the Me Whea Report yesterday but I have written enough today so that will have to wait while I digest it more fully.

Meanwhile as I despair of Church leaders, I can only sing "Lift High the Cross" and pray that the Love of Christ will be proclaimed (for all people whatever their race, ethnicity, sex or sexuality) until all the world adore His sacred Name.

Archbishops??? of Sydney

As I have noted before, Sydney is particularly cursed in its Archbishops, both Catholic and Anglican.
Cardinal Pell naturally agreed with the Pope in an interview at Easter and as reported by David Marr in Pell rides papal bandwagon of death
"They encourage promiscuity," the cardinal told Sky Television. "The idea that you can solve a great spiritual and health crisis like AIDS with a few mechanical contraptions like condoms is ridiculous."

It's hardly news but in the face of this ridicule it has to be said again: Australia waged the world's most effective war on AIDS by ignoring the Catholic Church. We did not heed the demands of John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI. We encouraged people to use condoms, we distributed clean syringes and we saved thousands of lives.

Of course there has been plenty of criticism from people who actually know what they are talking about like medical practitioners especially those dealing with AIDS patients.

Archbishop Jensen has not been so controversial this year but one does cringe when the TV news shows him preaching on Easter Day from the Cathedral pulpit in a coat and tie. If he is ashamed to wear the vestments of an Anglican bishop he could just resign from the Anglican Communion and make us all very happy, he would not be missed.

His brother the Dean, however, who is an even bigger twit (and was when I knew him at university in the 60's) managed to comment on the same matter by admitting Anglicans are not opposed to condoms but blaming the whole thing on Virginia Woolf who apparently brought all the evils of the sexual revolution upon us.

"In terms of adultery, in terms of divorce, in terms of grandchildren [???], yes we are in big trouble as a society because of the sexual revolution," he said.

"It came out of Virginia Woolf and that crowd (in England in the early 20th century)."

Apparently such things did not happen before then.

Have to tell that to my Great Grandmother who in 1857 at age 17 gave birth to my grandfather (Father Unknown). Of course it is all her fault that I am having trouble finding my ancestors. Apparently this was a common problem at the time long before Virginia Woolf.

I see next Sunday the preacher at St James, King Street is to be the Very Reverend Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark Cathedral. I googled him and found an interview on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission, our national broadcaster) in 2005 at the time of the furore over Canon Jeffery John.

Some of his comments are delightful.

"I think his (Archbishop Jensen) role in particular has been really quite reprehensible because for any Archbishop anywhere, to interfere in the affairs of another province, or as he did, in the affairs of another diocese, namely the diocese of Oxford, is completely out of order.

The association of independent provinces, the 38 of them around the world, has always depended upon mutual trust and freedom of action and for people from around the world, and the Archbishop of Sydney isn't the only one to have done so, to get involved in another country's activities is actually breaking with Anglican tradition and very un-Anglican. ........

the Sydney diocese is well renowned around the world as being a very maverick place where the Archbishop can appoint his own brother as dean, where he can extend his own tenure, where all sorts of strange things can happen that haven't happened anywhere else in the world."

I look forward to his sermon but guess he will not actually criticise Jensen while preaching in the Sydney Diocese, more's the pity.

However Peter Jensen is quite capable of making a fool of himself as seen in the following:

Why Sydney Oh God?

It is claimed Sydney is a godless, pleasure and money seeking city. Is it any wonder most see the churches as irrelevant when we have two Archbishops who could only be regarded as complete jokes except they are serious.

I do not say much about Cardinal Pell but I taught in Catholic schools for many years and know most of my fellow teachers were exasperated by him. He is in the limelight at the moment at World Youth Day and yesterday he said
"Jesus didn't run around handing out condoms, we preach what Jesus taught."
He didn't drive round in a popemobile either, nor wear funny red caps and he did not condemn homosexuality.
He also said
"No western country is producing enough babies to keep the population stable, no western country"
This in a country suffering water shortages and facing food shortages in the long term but then Pell has admitted he is a climate change sceptic. He is wrong anyway, Australia's population growth is still increasing even before immigration.As for the other Archbishop of Sydney, I have written enough but must publish the wonderful cartoon from Madpriest.