Christ Church

A spirit of respect and reconciliation is something for which we pray at every Chapel service. There can be no reconciliation without the acknowledgment of what has happened, the truth of events of the past, as it were. Reconciliation builds on truth to transcend the things of the past, not by forgetting and ignoring them, but by confronting them and yet looking beyond conflict and opposition.

The story is not a simple or a single story. It means looking back and inward to very different features of the interplay of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of Canada Here is a contemporary artist, Heather Dale, performing Jesous ahatonhia, Canada’s first and oldest Christmas song:

The words were originally written in the Huron/Wendat language by the French Jesuit missionary and martyr, Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, probably in 1642. He was a linguist who took the time and care to learn the language of the Wendat people and to appreciate their thought and culture in interaction with Christian ideas and themes. By singing in the Wendat language, Heather Dale draws upon the work of Brébeuf, who, like many early and largely French missionaries, began the project of providing alphabets and thus a written form for the various first nations’ peoples. This work has continued even into more recent times with the Inuit peoples. Bishop John Sperry, for example, who learned Inuinnaqtun, translated the Bible, the Prayer Book, and various hymns into the Inuktitut dialect, one of the five dialects of the Inuit peoples of the Arctic.

This shows a very different kind of relationship between cultures and languages than what took place in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries with the Indian Act (1876-present) which reduces the native peoples to “wards of the state,” and, particularly, with the notorious Residential Schools programme. Such things reveal a much more aggressive and destructive form of imperial colonialism derived from Britain and America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indian Act and the Residential Schools programme were intended to assimilate the native peoples into Canadian life but entirely and often brutally at the expense of the cultures and languages of the native peoples themselves. Assimilation was the buzz word of the times but in the view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission it was “cultural genocide,” a policy undertaken “to kill the Indian in the child” (TRC Report, 2015).

Read the rest of this entry »

In Memoriam: Queen Elizabeth II

Our parish in its history and life has existed under the reign of nine monarchs over its 251 year history since its founding in 1771 during the reign of George the Third. He provided through the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury gifts of “two sets of [silver] communion plate” which we use on High Feast days such as Christmas and Easter. They arrived in 1790 before the original Christ Church building was completed. Some of the silver dates to 1729. But in that long history of the Parish under monarchical rule and governance, the longest reigns were those of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth who together constituted 134 years out of 251. The longest reigning monarch in English history and the history of the Commonwealth was Elizabeth II whose platinum jubilee (70 years!) was observed in Windsor at King’s-Edgehill School last spring and remembered in our prayers at Christ Church.

Elizabeth II embodied the very model of steadfastness and devotion to duty for which we can only be thankful. Her remarkable reign was testament not to the power of dominion and domination, of force and coercion, but to the power of duty and service in and through the changes and challenges of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. She was a figure of unity in divided times.

Her passing marks the beginning now of the reign of the tenth monarch, Charles III. God save the King. We remember Elizabeth II with gratitude and thanksgiving for her long reign of devotion and duty and commend her soul to God’s gracious keeping.

O God, the King of Glory, who raises up Kings and Queens as the instruments of your justice and mercy, we give thanks to you for the seventy years of faithful, compassionate, and dedicated service of Elizabeth II, Queen of England, of the Commonwealth of Nations, and of this country Canada, for her witness to truth and order, to peace and good government and the flourishing of all who are under her reign, and we beseech your grace and mercy upon her soul at this time of her passing at age 96, ever mindful that the hearts and souls of Kings and Queens are ever in your sight to the praise and glory of your Name and for the good of your church and people; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Fr. David Curry
Friday, September 9th, 2022

“A Walking Sacrament”
An address to the St. John Vianney Chapter of SSC by Fr. David Curry
August 4th, 2022
Christ Christ, Windsor, Nova Scotia

This address can be downloaded as a pdf document (which includes footnotes) by clicking here. A PowerPoint presentation accompanying the address can be downloaded here.

Thank you, Fratres, my brothers, for being here at Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia, and, especially, to those who have travelled such long distances in these seemingly ‘perilous times’ to come to what might seem to some of you to be, if not ultima thule, then at least very much next door to the farthest ends of the world!

SSC is a spiritual fellowship of Catholic Priests within the churches of the Anglican Communion, itself situated at least historically and traditionally within an understanding of how Anglicans, itself a later term, understand themselves as “an integral portion of the One Body of Christ composed of Churches which, united under the One Divine Head and in the fellowship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, hold the One Faith revealed in Holy Writ, and defined in the Creeds as maintained by the undivided primitive Church in the undisputed Ecumenical Councils; receive the same Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as containing all things necessary to salvation; teach the same Word of God, partake of the same Divinely ordained Sacraments, through the ministry of the same Apostolic Orders; and worship One God and Father through the same Lord Jesus Christ, by the same Holy and Divine Spirit who is given to them that believe to guide them into all truth,” to quote at length one of the most remarkable statements of catholicity and doctrinal restraint that is the legacy and living force of things in Canada, the Solemn Declaration of 1893 (Cdn BCP, viii). Yet, in my view, it speaks to something much deeper and much more profound and which relates to the aims and objectives of the SSC in the face of the various disorders of polity, moral, and doctrinal understanding that beset the churches in our age.

The task and challenge is to locate the spirituality of the priesthood within such a catholic vision that the Solemn Declaration envisions. That means finding ways to think about our priestly life, what it means in a reformed catholic understanding, and how it speaks to the spiritual confusions of our age. To be a priest is to be a servant of Christ in the midst of the body of Christ. What is impressed inwardly upon our lives of the sacrificial love of Christ is to be expressed outwardly in our work “to the glory of thy Name and the edification of thy Church” (BCP, p. 546). We do not live for ourselves but for others.

Yet we do so as a spiritual fellowship of priests, as those who have been called and chosen, set aside, dedicated, and charged by God’s grace to be “messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord” (BCP, p. 648). It is not us per se but what is given to move in us. SSC at its best, historically and prophetically, is about the radical nature of the call to service in Christ. It is not political or worldly; it is meant to be transformative spiritually. It speaks to the very heart of the ministry: another lives in us so that Christ can live in those whom we serve.

Read the rest of this entry »

At this year’s Atlantic Theological Conference, The Rev’d David Curry made a special presentation on Louise Penny’s novel The Madness of Crowds and other related literature. The YouTube video of Fr. Curry’s talk is posted here; his lecture notes follow below. He also prepared a set of PowerPoint slides, which can be downloaded by clicking on this link.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well

Thank you for the privilege of offering the Atlantic Theological Conference book study. It marks a new venture and is not without its challenges. In my experience people have quite different opinions and feelings about literary works especially those in the popular realm, both about authors and characters. Some absolutely adore Louise Penny’s novels and her lead character, Armand Gamache; others, well, perhaps, not so much. My interest is not to persuade you one way or another on that score but simply to consider the kinds of ethical questions that such literature raises and the ways in which they are considered.

To that end, I would like to offer some reflections on the conference theme of “Plague, Perseverance, Providence: Adversity and the Christian Response to Adversity” by way of a brief consideration of Louise Penny’s novel ‘The Madness of Crowds’ complemented by a side-long glance at Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ and John Donne’s Sonnet, ‘What if this Present were the World’s Last Night.’ “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine” (R.E.M. 1987), only we don’t, and perhaps shouldn’t. The accompanying power-point helps to highlight certain passages in the texts.

‘The Madness of Crowds’ was published in 2021 as a post-pandemic novel in her popular series of seventeen Chief Inspector Armand Gamache’s detective mystery stories. The title is taken from Charles MacKay’s ‘Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’ (c. 1841) which explores a great range of examples of the psychology of mass hysteria and which is explicitly referenced in the novel.

Louise Penny’s novels belong to an array of detective mystery stories that explore a number of ethical questions and problems belonging to our contemporary world. Ethical refers to the idea or concept of what is good and right to think and do. It cannot be just for the few; it has to be for all. That is very much at issue in Louise Penny’s novel, The Madness of Crowds. Justice, as Plato shows in ‘The Republic,’ cannot simply be “the interest of the stronger”; in other words, that ‘might equals right.’ The Philosopher, he argues, must return to the Cave; his pursuit of wisdom is not a private matter. He is obliged to seek the good of all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2021 (in pdf format).

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2020 can be accessed via this page.

Rector’s Annual Report for 2021
February 13th, 2022

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom”. It could be the motto for our Parish in these troubling times. It signals wonderfully what we have endeavoured to do together as a Parish in the face of covid (no longer always capitalised) and its fears and in terms of the restrictions that have curtailed worship in various ways. We have pressed on carefully but in a principled way with the protocols we have established and which have been welcomed by you. This has allowed us to continue with worship for the most of the year until the suspension of services by the Bishop, over and above the mandates of Public Health, which resulted in the cancellation of Christmas and most of Epiphany season. It is the first time, I think, in the history of the Parish that there have been no Christmas services. We have lately learned, too, that you can’t count on the weather, especially in this winter unlike any other, it seems. A “bleak, midwinter” indeed!

Yet in the face of the things that lie beyond our control, we have pressed on with the Christ Church Connections email message every week and with recordings of the 8am communion service or, when services were completely curtailed, with an audio file of the Services of Matins and Ante-Communion. Homilies and meditations, on my poor part, have attempted to provide some food for the soul in these times of spiritual famine and eucharistic fast. The upside of these things, perhaps, is that it has allowed for deeper reflection on the wisdom of the Scriptures and to the ways in which Scripture in its own voice speaks to our souls even in the midst of the storms and tempests of our disordered world. In other words, as a Parish we have not been simply in survival mode but are growing spiritually in maturity and understanding about who we are in the Body of Christ. Such things have also been an important part of our spiritual outreach to “the friends of Christ Church” further afield whose prayers and support have been most encouraging. We have also persevered with the Christ Church Book Club throughout the course of the year.

For all of these spiritual labours may God be praised. It has meant looking beyond the inconveniences and frustrations that so often beset us. It has been about keeping our minds on the things of God. We have learned to appreciate better the things which truly matter, and so, like Mary, “have chosen the good portion”, I hope, “which shall not be taken away”. It is about “let[ting] the word of Christ dwell” in our hearts and minds “richly in all wisdom”, words which we heard on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany last week which happened to coincide with the first time that we were able to return to worship since the last Sunday in Advent, 2021.

Read the rest of this entry »

At every Chapel service we pray “that a spirit of respect and reconciliation may grow among all nations and peoples.” That is very much our prayer for the indigenous peoples of Canada and for all of us not just today but for the foreseeable future. Here is the Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn singing the first verse of Jesous Ahattonia, Canada’s first and oldest Christmas song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrd4Sw0peZg

The words which he is singing were originally written in the Huron/Wendat language by the French Jesuit missionary and martyr, Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, probably in 1642. He was a linguist who took the time and care to learn the language of the Wendat people and to appreciate their thought and culture in interaction with Christian ideas and themes.

We know and use this hymn at King’s-Edgehill in a later English translation (by J. Edgar Middleton, 1926). In singing it in the Wendat language, Cockburn builds upon the work of Brébeuf who, like many early and largely French missionaries, began the project of providing alphabets and thus a written form for the various first nations’ peoples, something which has continued even into more recent times with the Inuit. This shows a very different kind of relationship between cultures and languages than what took place in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries with the Indian Act (1876 – the present) which makes the native peoples “wards of the state,” and, particularly, with the notorious Residential Schools programme (1876-1996). Such things reveal a much more aggressive and destructive form of imperial colonialism derived from Britain and America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indian Act and the Residential Schools programme were intended to assimilate the native peoples into Canadian life but entirely and often brutally at the expense of the cultures and languages of the native peoples themselves. Assimilation was the buzz word of the times but in the view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission it was “cultural genocide,” a policy undertaken “to kill the Indian in the child” (TRC Report, 2015).

The Residential Schools were “the most aggressive and destructive of all Indian Act policies” (Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act, 2018, p. 52). It was a government programme managed by the churches – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, subsequently the United Church, and Presbyterian – and a government wanting to be freed from financial responsibility towards the native peoples. It was a sad and shameful time in our Canadian history that reveals a betrayal of care by those who were entrusted with the care of over 150,000 children, more than 6,000 of whom either died or disappeared. There were as well incidents of sexual and physical abuse. The numbers of the missing children are imprecise because neither the government nor the churches kept records, hence the heart-rending spectacle of the discovery of unmarked graves this past spring and summer. It is as if they didn’t matter, didn’t exist.

The Indian Act programme of assimilation was part of the so-called “progressive” thinking of the late 19th century in America and in Canada along with eugenics, racial theories about immigration, and discriminatory practices with respect to social services.

The Schools were chronically underfunded. “The buildings were drafty and unsanitary and food for the children was insufficient and often rotten … the schools were also breeding grounds for diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza” (Bob Joseph, 21 Things, p. 58). Most of the children died from tuberculosis. The problem, though known, highlighted for instance by Dr. Peter Bryce who called it in 1922, “a national crime”, was largely overlooked and denied. All to our shame.

Chief Robert Joseph, an outstanding native leader, provides a moving portrayal of the sufferings endured by many indigenous students who were forcibly taken from their families and communities and placed in Residential Schools far away from their homes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_jUXiOSbp4

We can only confess our own sins, not the sins of others, but that does not mean ignoring the mistakes and wrongs of the past and their legacy in the present. It also means a commitment to the reconciliation and the recognition of the indigenous peoples of Canada as full and integral members of Canada. Reconciliation is not an indigenous problem; it is a Canadian problem which can no longer be ignored but requires commitment to the difficult but essential process of reconciliation. In some ways, it is about dignity and respect towards the native peoples of Canada.

Has anything been done? In 2005, a $1.9 billion compensation package was announced for former residential school students; in 2007, the largest class action settlement in Canada, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, was implemented. All of this built upon a growing awareness of the appalling sufferings of the native peoples in the Schools that began to come to the fore in the 1990s and which led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2007. Apologies were made by the United Church in 1986, the Anglican Church in 1993, the Presbyterian Church in 1994. In 2009, Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations met with Pope Benedict XVI who expressed sorrow for the abuse and deplorable treatment of indigenous students, and on September 24th, 2021, the Conference of Canadian Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church also offered an “unequivocal apology” for the wrongs and abuses done to those in their charge, and committing as of yesterday, $30 million towards reconciliation. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of Canada in 2008; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 extended a further apology to indigenous peoples in Labrador and Newfoundland who had not been included in the previous federal apology.

More needs to be done, certainly. The task of reconciliation remains before us and is, I think, quite movingly stated, again by Chief Robert Joseph, in words which touch upon the ideals and life of our School. It is his words which we need to hear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJQgpuLq1LI

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English and ToK Teacher
September 29th, 2021
Michaelmas

Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2020 (in pdf format).

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2019 can be accessed via this page.

Rector’s Annual Report for 2020
“But that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart, having
heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”
February 7th, 2021

Patience. In many ways, it has been a year that has required great patience and perseverance, a year of trials, in part, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I say ‘in part’ because struggles and trials, difficulties and tribulations are a constant feature of human experience. The question really is about how such things are faced. That has been the question for Christ Church as a Parish and for the wider Church and culture as well.

Timothy Findley’s novel, “The Wars”, written in 1977, offers an important insight into how difficult and catastrophic things are faced which complements, I think, the Sexagesima Gospel. The point is not to take refuge in tragedy but “to clarify who you are through your response to when you lived”. This is wisdom, it seems to me. It points to the activity of our souls, to what is alive in us. As a Parish, we have weathered the sturm und drang, the storm and stress of the current concerns with COVID-19 quite well. Thanks to the hard work and leadership of the Parish Council, we have taken the courage to do two things: first, to spell out some of the potential scenarios for the future of the Parish; and, secondly, to articulate a Parish protocol in accord with the requirements of the Department of Public Health that have allowed us to be able to continue with “in-person worship”, to use the phrase du jour, responsibly, creatively, and with reasonable flexibility.

In the early days of the pandemic, we were closed but maintained contact with the Parish and with many ‘Friends of Christ Church’ via the Christ Church Connections. That has continued and developed even after we were able to be open again starting on Trinity Sunday in June. We were one of the few churches in the Diocese and in the Province that found ways to be open safely, with a reasonable set of protocols in place, and with a minimum of fuss. I am most grateful for the response of the Parish as a whole to these protocols, and for the trust and confidence that you have shown in the face of these troubling and uncertain times. The point is about carrying on faithfully in what belongs to our mission and life as a Parish in worship and teaching, in care and compassion. The mantra has been “be not fearful but careful”. We have been fortunate that the situation in this part of Canada and the Province has allowed us to continue.

Read the rest of this entry »

He was one of the giants of the Evangelical and Anglican world, like the California Redwoods which he used as an image for the Puritan theologians and pastors who had greatly influenced and shaped his life and ministry. A prolific writer of many books which spoke the Word of God in season and out of season to the contemporary world in its confusion and ignorance in Canada and beyond, his A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (1990) captures best perhaps the tenor of his soul and its quest. A work admired by the Revd Dr. Robert Crouse, it shows the maturity of vision and commitment to the qualities of the spiritual life to which Dr. Packer thought we are all called and which he saw in the wider traditions of spirituality reaching back to the Fathers and to Medieval writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux, but as grounded in the Scriptures; for him, the living oracles of God. He was one of a few Evangelical theologians, like Dr. Peter Toon, who understood and appreciated the doctrinal and spiritual qualities of the Common Prayer tradition and who remained committed to its promotion and use. He was an academic pastor of souls, a teacher and professor at Regent College for many decades, whose teaching has shaped the lives of many, many pastors and preachers. One of the Vice-Chairmen of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, his ministry reminds the Society of the richness and the depth of the reformed traditions that belong to the patterns of spirituality embedded in the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer.

The frontispiece to A Quest for Godliness from John Geree’s 1646 work on The Character of Old English Puritans is testament to Dr. Packer himself. “He was … [a man foursquare], immoveable in all times, so that they who in the midst of many opinions have lost the view of true religion, may return to him and there find it.” We give thanks to God for his life and ministry. May he rest in peace.

Humbly submitted,

Rev’d David Curry
Vice-Chairman, PBSC
July 20th, 2020

Other remembrances of Dr. Packer are posted at the websites of Regent College and The Anglican Planet.

Protocols for Liturgies at Christ Church
(Approved by Parish Council, June 2nd, 2020)

The following protocols are intended to provide a clear set of guidelines about how best to proceed with Church services under the present health concerns about Covid-19 once we are able to open and are more or less functional, subject to our overriding commitment to the directives of the provincial Department of Public Health. These protocols may be subject to review and refinement as we learn how best to function in the context of worship to the glory of God and to the good of his Church and people. Apart from the primacy of worship within the integrity of our Anglican understanding and practice, our main concern is to take reasonable and prudent precautionary measures in the face of people’s fears and worries. It all comes down to trust, transparency, and a reasonable and principled flexibility.

The specific protocols for each service will be laid out below but first a few general procedures and observations.

People will be expected to observe the policy of social distancing in coming and going to and within the Church and Chancel. Given the size of Christ Church, this should not be a problem and for the sake of planning, the Nave and the Chancel can be regarded as two separate and distinct spaces.

The front door and the ramp door of the Church as well as the exterior vestry door will be open. People will enter and exit through either but being mindful of the social distancing practices that are now ubiquitous and common in our communities. Prayer Books and Hymn Books will be in two separate boxes; one for the 8:00am service, one for the 10:30am service, and one for any other service, such as Evening Prayer should that happen. After each service, the books will be returned to the designated box. Hand sanitizers will be strategically placed at the back of the Church as well as in the bathroom (where additional directives will be noted about sanitizing).

Pews will be designated for sitting: three pews apart on either side. Families will be allowed to sit together but in order to avoid confusion everyone is asked to maintain social distancing when moving from place to place within the Church just as is the pattern in the stores of our communities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fr. David Curry has collected his four Lenten Programme addresses (with footnotes) into a single pdf document. Click here to download “Lenten Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer”.