Goodbye and Good Riddance

As far as I am concerned the best thing Benedict has done is resign. Not that I expect that whoever is chosen to follow him will be any better and could possibly be worse. The African cardinal that some are proposing is apparently even more conservative. But all the possible candidates have been chosen by the previous or present conservative popes which does not allow for any change for the better.

As I have often said, I owe much to Catholic friends and I am thankful for the fact that I taught for much of my career in Catholic schools. It was Catholic brothers and sisters and even a few priests who helped me as I was rejected by the evangelicals of the Sydney Anglican diocese.  But they were not the type to be promoted in their church.
Although I had a few quibbles with doctrine, my main objection to Roman Catholicism has always been the control by the hierarchy and the position of Pope. I am sickened to see young people almost worshipping the Pope as he gives his last this and that this week.

Popes are men and some are good and many have been bad. The fact that they are elected by their own kind only perpetuates the conservatism of the church.

I am glad to belong to a church where the leaders are elected by both clergy and laity and generally expected to retire when they reach a certain age. There is only one current Anglican bishop (and he is retired but active) whom I unswervedly admire and that is Desmond Tutu but while I would be overwhelmed to meet him, I still realise he probably has faults like all of us.

I was quite happy to see the retirement of Rowan Williams, he was a great disappointment, mainly because he was weak and gave way to the conservatives. We wait to see what Justin Welby will bring. Although an evangelical he may be strong enough to withstand the fundies.
The point is they are all men with strengths and weaknesses.

Benedict declared people like me to be disordered so while not wishing ill on any man I have no interest in what happens to him from now on.  It would be nice to see a better Pope elected but I will not be holding my breath.

Taieri Gorge Railway

Every week during summer I volunteer on the Taieri Gorge Railway. Usually I come home very tired after serving food and drinks and helping passengers up and down the steps. Most are very pleasnt but some......  I sometimes wonder if it is worthwhile. Then when I watch this I change my mind.

Thank you, Mr President

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law - for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well,"

I only wish that when I first began to realise I was gay, back in the late 50's and  early 60's, there had been similar statements from at least one of the world leaders of that time.  Instead in those days I read that my basic feelings were criminal and unsocial and would lead to a life of misery and depravity, difficult to accept for a boy who was otherwise law abiding and lived a rather sheltered life mixing in Church circles.  I was told by a psychiatrist that I should not become a school teacher as it would be too dangerous.  I was 40 years old when my love affairs became legal in NSW.  I remember how wonderful it felt to be legal when I visited the UK in 1974. 

As we campaigned for legalisation it was beyond our wildest dreams that one day we would be campaigning for same - sex marriage.

Here in New Zealand the law to allow gay marriage is progressing slowly through government committees in which the  usual people are taking their chance to spread hate. One guy tonight was on TV saying only a man and a woman were natural.  He should visit some of the albatrosses nesting here in Dunedin.  Another man who stated gay marriage would lead to incresed crime. That at least has led to an avalanche of  ridicule.  

While I have little to agree with Prime Minister Key on economics, he at least is onside here.

Unlike the Prime Minister of Australia.  Back in the 50's & 60's her living arrangements would have been described as "living in sin".  It was unthinkable that a woman would be prime minister. The few women in politics could not aspire to much more than Minister of women's affairs.  If anyone did entertain the idea of a woman becoming prime minister it would not have been a woman living with a man out of wedlock. 

Prime Minister Gillard will go down in history as a woman who was only interested in her own position, unwilling to risk her career for the rights of gays.  And note that President Obama came out for gay marriage rights BEFORE his recent re-election as President. 

Christmas at Church

I am back in cool Dunedin. Thankfully Christmas day was cool in Sydney and it was the wettest Christmas day for 70 years although I felt sorry for the many who would have planned to eat outside and in parks and on beaches. Choral Eucharist at St James was packed and the choir sang beautifully. However as I get older I do find it hard to stand through their rendition of Palestrina and am happy to join my sister and other oldies sitting down. I do though enjoy all 8 verses of 'O come all ye faithful' including the first in Latin as a processional hymn with a stop to bless the crib.  I am thinking seriously about next Christmas. I wish I could afford to fly over for just a few days.  I would miss Christmas at St James and lunch with my sister but prefer to be away from Sydney in Summer. I have a reunion of my class of 1973 (every 10 years) at the beginning of November and would not miss that for the world so might stay in Dunedin for Christmas next year.

Yesterday I went to Sung Eucharist at St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin. A contrast as the numbers were small. Some tourists, possibly from the cruise ship in port, came in late. That was okay as they stayed for the service but one rude man walked around taking photos during the sermon then departed.
The final hymn was also a favourite of mine, obviously Londonderry Air but I also find the words moving. I was surprised to find it was sung at the same Songs of Praise in Belfast as ''Tell Out My Soul' a week ago.
'I cannot tell why He Whom angels worship'

But this I know, the skies will thrill with rapture,
  And myriad, myriad human voices sing,
And earth to heaven, and heaven to earth, will answer:
  At last the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is King.

Sydney Hate merchants

They are at it again. A letter this week in the Sydney Morning Herald by Rev Nigel Fortescue, who continues to try and put himself forward as next Bishop of Sydney.

In places where the Anglican Church has abandoned the biblical teaching on headship, sexuality and church roles, it is dying. Where they are upheld, it's thriving. Why not check out your local Anglican church this Christmas and see for yourself?
Nigel Fortescue Senior minister, Campbelltown Anglican Churches

A reply the next day

 

All that your letter really indicates, Nigel Fortescue ), is that a proportion of the community, including many parishioners of conservative churches, are living in the past, when women had no rights and people of alternative sexual preferences were often stoned to death.
Christ preached a gospel of love and inclusion, which many found, and still find, difficult to grasp or practise. Conservative Christians seem to forget he ''knocked around'' with people on the fringes of society and was criticised for associating with ''sinners''. Perhaps you should examine your version of ''reality'' and ask yourself if it is really valid.
Derrick Mason Boorowa ( a country town outside the dicoese of Sydney)

 

My email to Fortescue

Three years ago I migrated from Sydney to Dunedin. While I enjoyed worshipping at St James, King Street, a vibrant yet inclusive church which often has women preaching  generally priests from outside the diocese, I found the journey too long.
I moved to the diocese of Dunedin where Penny Jamieson  was the first diocesan woman bishop in the Anglican communion. Juan Kinnear, a  same sex partnered(over 20 years) man had recently been ordained a priest. He was an associate in the cathedral but this year has moved to assist in a nearby parish, he has a full time job at the university.
The vicar of St Johns Roslyn welcomed me although he was full aware of my sexuality. He is now Bishop of Dunedin. In the interim we had a woman archdeacon running the parish. The new vicar is similarly welcoming of me.  Two women  in the parish have been ordained as deacons in 2012 and will probably be ordained priests next year. 

My main point is I find parking hard on sunday morning outside the church. St Johns, Roslyn is a growing vibrant Anglican church even though women are in positions of leadership and homosexuals are welcome.

Moving from Sydney to Dunedin was the best thing I have done for my spiritual life. They preach a gospel of love not hate as found in Sydney.  I am back for family at Christmas and will again enjoy worshipping at St James, King Street on Christmas day, certainly I will not go anywhere near the cathedral.

Approaching Christmas

I am now in Sydney counting the days until I can return to Dunedin next Thursday. The forecast there is for 12'C on Thursday, perhaps a bit extreme for mid summer but much preferable to the heat and humidity of Sydney. It is only 28'C now but the humidity is high.

I have now bought a new MacBook Air. The salesperson convinced me it would be all I needed for my purposes. I needed to buy a superdrive despite Mac now believing we no longer need CDs and DVDS and I also bought an external hard drive. That was a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.

I had problems connecting to my sister's wifi and we decided the modem/router I purchased for her just before moving to NZ, 3 years ago was on its way out.  So yesterday we bought a new one which led to about 6 hours of frustration trying to get it to connect.  It now works well except some sites are blocked. There is no obvious reason eg Dunedin newspaper but not the Sydney paper, some banks but not others.  I have disabled the firewall without success and it now seems we will have to ring the ISP support tomorrow.  Perhaps life would be easier if we did not have computers.

I went to Sung Eucharist at St James, King Street this morning.  I had hoped to hear a sermon by Rev John Beer.  He is an associate priest and often helped maintain my sanity with his acerbic comments about those who run the Sydney Diocese.  He could be more open as his day job was a teacher, he is now retired.  He was invited to the investiture as Presiding Bishop of Katharine Jefferts Schori so obviously has little in common with the archbishop of Sydney and his demand that women be submissive.
Anyway I was disappointed that he only preached at 7.45am and 11am and we had the children's pageant, my second in 8 days. At least it was fairly brief and we still had Eucharist.

I realised I am now more at home at St John's Roslyn.  None of those officiating were present in my time and yet none asked who I was or welcomed me as a visitor.  While St James does liturgy and music very well, it has never been a friendly church despite attempts to remedy the problem.  Much of this is due to the congregation coming from all over Sydney (seeking a real Anglican experience) and it still having a status as the society church of the city.

Last Sunday evening I attended 9 Lessons and Carols in the cathedral at Dunedin partly to recover sanity after the children's pageant that morning.  While only a small congregation, there were others from Roslyn and people I knew from my other activities in the city.  That is the advantage of living in a small city of 130,000 rather than one which has passed 4 million.  I now greet passengers on the train from the cruise ships as being welcome to the "best little city in the world".

St James has 9 Lessons and Carols this evening. It promises to be packed as usual but as my sister is still recovering from a painful knee operation just over a week ago, she is saving up to make it there on Christmas morning.  I went alone to Eucharist this morning.

I am looking forward to a full Choral Eucharist at Christmas. That will be St James at its best.

However the final hymn this morning was one of my favourites, of course appropriate for Advent being based on the Magnificat.  I love to sing it at full volume.
"Tell Out My Soul"   Enjoy

Mini disaster

I know my problem is nothing compared to typhoons in the Phillipines or people dying of cancer, however.
I bought my current laptop way back in 2007. My previous desktop is sitting beside my desk but I have not switched it on since shipping it to New Zealand. The big mistake was in July 2011 when I bought an Ipad2 instead of a new laptop. I have hated the Ipad and only used it under duress when travelling. I did not realise it is not a substitute for a proper computer just a very poor but light for travelling accessory.
In January this year I upgraded my laptop to mountain lion or whatever the latest version was (there is now another update). It was much easier when the just used numbers, 10. 6 is obviously an upgrade to 10.5 but who knows where one is with lion, tigers, cougars or whatever.
I was horrified to discover that my much loved AppleWorks program had disappeared. I had to buy and learn Pages and Numbers. They are far too complicated for my small needs. My Christmas card list was on a database and that has completely gone. I use to love Apple, now it is a swear word.
I took the database on a thumb drive to Australia and printed it out.

The week before last I composed my 2012 Christmas message. Last Monday I began to print it out. While it was printing, I decided to create a spread sheet of the names and addresses previously on the database. One address was very long and not complete on the printout and so I thought I would email the person to obtain their correct snail mail address. Disaster struck as the computer completely seized up. I tried to restart and a blinking question mark appeared. I had not seen that since the bad
old days in the early 90's when I ran a bank of apple computers in a school library. Then it appeared almost weekly on one or other machine. I searched and tried all the repair methods I once used. No success. I took it to the local Apple dealer and paid $30 to be told the hard drive had collapsed and
was unrecoverable. I took it to another repair shop and paid another $30. They rang to say they also could not repair but could send it to a forensic lab with a high success rate. Only problem it will cost $750 to $800. However it holds all my photos of travels from 2007 to 2011. The only photos on the lipad are my travels this year. Also my accounts but I think I backed them up in September. I am not sure as I cannot put the USB drives into an ipad.
Having been assured I only need to pay if successful, I agreed and should know the worst by the end of this week.

I have always intended buying a new machine when I go to Sydney next week. They are cheaper there because GST is 10% in Australia and 15% in NZ. I was thinking of buying a MacBook Air  and selling the Ipad on trademe. Now I will buy a MacBook Pro and continue to struggle with the Ipad when travelling. At the moment I am backing up the Ipad and this years travel photos onto ICloud but it has been going for over 24 hours and still says another 6 hours to go.

I have friends my age who do not own a computer. I am beginning to envy their uncomplicated life.
I have drawers full of slides taken on holidays from the 70's and 80's including 3 trips to Europe. I never look at them but have plans for one day. I even brought the slide projector from Australia for that one day. Photos of the 90' s and up to 2006 are printed outand in folders, more easy to access but still rarely checked. So why should I worry about these on the computer? It is just nice to know they are there and some are still a bit too recent to lose.

If I had my laptop, I would research and include a cartoon to illustrate but do not know how on an Ipad. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

UPDATE
Hard drive is completely wrecked and data unrecoverable. Unsure whether to be happy that I have saved $750 or sad that all my photos including 3 trips to Europe and one to North America have gone. Only exception are those on this blog.

Ordinations

Before I came to New Zealand, I had only attended one ordination, that of the 2nd group of women in Australia to be ordained priests at Goulburn in 1992.   I always say that the first group in Perth was a bit far. As it was, I drove nearly 3 hours each way to be present.

I had friends from university days who became priests and a close friend from childhood, for whose wedding I was best man, also became a priest but we had drifted apart by the times of their ordinations.

Shortly after arriving in Dunedin I attended the consecration of Bishop Kelvin Wright and this year I have had the pleasure of attending the ordination as Deacons of 2 women in our parish.

However tomorrow night there is to be an ordination to the priesthood in the cathedral of a man.  My only reason to attend would be to protest so  will not be there. 
David Booth is a member of St Matthews Dunedin , a parish which protested at the ordination in 2006 as Deacon of Rev Juan Kinnear, the partnered gay man who is now an associate priest in the cathedral.  At the time I wrote to them and told them that when I moved to Dunedin I would not be worshipping at St Matthews.  As I have told Juan, he is one of many reasons why I moved here.

Worse, David Booth wrote an article in September objecting to any recognition by the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia of gay partnerships.  I have removed it from my computer but remember being very angry at statements that homosexuality was a choice and could be changed.

I have found this part
“In this paper I have highlighted the results of methodologically sound research that shows homosexuality is a product of social rather than biological factors and that gay relationships are significantly different to heterosexual relationships as far as love, trust, fidelity, and monogamy are concerned.
The evidence so far suggests that non-monogamy is essential for satisfying the male homosexual’s need for ever more satisfying sexual partners, and for ensuring the longevity of committed male same-sex relationships. The evidence also suggests that non-monogamy is a significant factor in there being higher levels of psychological disorder in homosexual households than in heterosexual households."

A response from Dr Nora Dowse, more learned than I, included.
'it is a collection of studies and writings based on anecdotal evidence dating from 45 years ago, with the inevitable question about qualitative methodologies from that era:'

She also stated and I can agree that
Many of us know people who are in loving, loyal, committed gay relationships.

The recent developments in England and the sad  tenure of Rowan Williams as Archbishop pf Canterbury show that we cannot reason or compromise with fundamentalists. They need to be opposed. This week I have read that, while we should pray for our enemies, we are not suppose to have no enemies. Jesus had enemies.

I have never met Rev David Booth but, from his writings, he is my enemy and I object to his being ordained a priest.

SHAME ENGLAND SHAME

That is it. I do not care who is Archbishop of Canterbury. I am a parishioner in a parish in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand and do not give a damn who is in the Church of England. We should break all ties with them.
I will not darken one of their doors next time I go to England.
However I will pray for the women and many of the good men in that church.

If a church decided that black people could not be bishops, no one would expect me to share in Christian worship with them.  I believe sexism to be as great a wrong as racism.  I left the Sydney diocese with its misogynist leaders for whom I had absolutely no respect. I would never enter an evangelical woman hating church. Hopefully none of my friends will be buried from one. But then most of my friends, except for those I meet at church, rarely enter a church and consider my regular attendance as a particular interest of mine similar to our membership of walking or movie or garden groups. The headlines that will follow this decision in England will confirm their beliefs.  In the English papers already the atheists are crowing with glee.  The cartoon by Bishop Alan Wilson says it all.

Some comments from Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow in the Scottish Episcopal Church (Note NOT the Church of England) which reflect my thoughts precisely.

The Church of England looks foolish and we all end up being tarred with the same brush.

The abject failure of Rowan Williams’s archepiscopate is now complete.

Looking on at the passion of the Church of England from outside, one finds oneself trying hard to substitute compassion for pity.  

The Church of England gets its chance to prove that it worships at something other than the altar of compromise.

Phew!!!!!