Magic Statistics

Anglican Journal’s report on yesterday’s vote by Montreal Synod in favour of asking Bishop Barry Clarke to allow same-sex blessings in the diocese includes this interesting tidbit.

[W]hile some opponents of the resolution did refer to potential political dangers, there was no lack of scriptural argument. Rev. Gregory McVeigh of St. Stephen’s Church in Westmount said the strongest scriptural arguments against same-sex marriage come not from a few selected texts but from a general view of the couple as male and female right from the creation story through the Bible. “However you interpret this scripture, you have to take it seriously.”

Rev. Dean Brady, a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal, said his studies of scriptural interpretation suggest that same-sex couples run counter to all traditional levels of scriptural interpretation. To support the motion would be to reject the “lens” of scripture as a way of interpreting the world in favour of a “lens” of modern social science.

This appears to refer only to statements made by opponents of SSBs.  Still, I think it interesting that no scriptural references by SSB proponents are reported.

Are we to conclude that there weren’t any?  Or that Anglican Journal considers that aspect of the debate of only minor importance?

Also of interest, The Rev Joe Walker notices that Bp Clarke, in his charge to Synod, brings up the precipitous decline in Anglican membership in his diocese.  In only twenty years, membership has declined from 33,000 to 13,000—a drop of over 60%.

c/p: Anglican Essentials Canada Blog

Previous related posts:

• Montreal Synod votes tonight on same-sex blessings
• Primate sees no problem with Ottawa Synod resolution

A fascinating and enlightening juxtaposition of book reviews appears in today’s Globe and Mail.  In the featured review, Peter Newman offers his caustic take on Jean Chretien’s blinkered and self-serving “auto-hagiography” of his years as Canada’s thug-in-chief prime minster.

The other review of note concerns a man who is Chretien’s polar opposite.  L’Arche founder Jean Vanier is too humble even to write a conventional memoir or autobiography; the book is a collection of his letters.  As Michael Coren points out, Mr Vanier is driven by convictions that make little sense to most Canadians.

By his works rather than his letters should we know him. In other words, the man's humility prevents him from explaining in these messages to friends and supporters just what he actually does. And what he does is not only to love the most humiliated but also to bathe them, put them on the toilet, clean their filth. Clean their filth precisely because the filth of selfishness and rejection has so infected the mainstream world. Yet if he is reluctant to write of his own achievements, he is jubilantly explicit when explaining why he does it in the first place.

"Pray that I may be faithful; that is the only thing that counts. It is true that we can easily turn away from the truth of Jesus and be seduced by prestige. Pray that I remain poor and never fear doing what Jesus asks of me … pray also for the Church, that the people may be authentic in their commitment to Jesus, that they do not try to escape into a certain piety but remain open to the Holy Spirit and to their wounded brothers and sisters."

He does not look left or right, but looks up: a deliberate defiance of the banality of political labels and stylized solutions to complex problems. Vanier works and lives with the handicapped not in spite of his Roman Catholicism, but because of it, which is key to understanding the man and his work. Yet this is also the most difficult aspect of Vanier for many of his admirers. Canada is comfortable with decency to the point of being drugged with the opiate of good works. But it needs to understand that those good works are provoked in this case and many others by absolute faith in Christ and in the church he founded. Yet while the culture easily embraces Vanier, it tends to reject the institution that made and makes him.

Jean Vanier and L’Arche are living proof of Christ’s words to St Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.