Category: Statements and other writings

Sermons, Theology

Lenten Programme on The Lord’s Prayer IV

This is the fourth and final address in this series. The first is posted here, the second here, and the third here.

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us”

Our Lenten study of the Lord’s Prayer brings us to the last three petitions, to the triad of forgiveness, temptation, and evil. They draw us into the deeper meaning of Christ’s Passion. To pray for forgiveness for ourselves and towards one another, to pray not to be led into temptation, and to pray to be delivered from evil is to pray the Passion of Christ.

We pray to our Father in all of the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. To pray “Our Father” achieves, Thomas Aquinas tells us, “five things.” First, the words “Our Father” serve to “instruct us in our faith”; second, they “raise our hopes”; third, “they serve to stimulate charity”; fourth, they lead us “to imitate God”; and fifth, they call us “to humility”.  In other words, the phrase “Our Father”, which is present throughout the Lord’s Prayer, gives us confidence in God. As Aquinas says, “Our Lord, in teaching us how to pray, sets out before us those things which engender confidence in us, such as the loving kindness of a father, implied in the words, Our Father.” Once again, we see how the Lord’s Prayer is an essential of the Christian Faith.

Augustine breaks off his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in the sixth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel to speak about the Creed. He is speaking during Holy Week in the context of preparing catechumens for baptism. Both the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed are to be learned by heart. “When you have learned [the Creed], that you may never forget it, say it every day when you rise; when you are preparing for sleep, rehearse your Creed, to the Lord rehearse it, remind yourselves of it, and be not weary of repeating it. … Call your faith to mind, look into yourself, let your Creed be as it were a mirror to you. Therein see yourself, whether you do believe all which you profess to believe, and so rejoice day by day in your faith. Let it be your wealth, let it be in a sort the daily clothing of your soul. Do you not always dress yourself when you rise? So by the daily repetition of your Creed dress your soul.” It is a powerful passage complemented by his teaching about the creedal nature of the Lord’s Prayer as being an essential form of our participation in the life of God in Christ.

From these remarks about the Creed, he turns to the “Our Father,” and highlights its essential and radical nature. In saying “Our Father,” he says, “you have begun to belong to a great family. Under this Father the lord and the slave are brethren; under this Father the general and the common soldier are brethren; under this Father the rich man and the poor are brethren. All Christian believers have various fathers in earth, some noble, some obscure; but they all call upon one Father which is in heaven.” Like the Creed, it is to be prayed every day.

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Sermons, Theology

Lenten Programme on The Lord’s Prayer III

This is the third address in this series. The first is posted here and the second here.

“Give us this day our daily bread”

Who are we asking? Our Father. Not our Lord. It is perhaps important to remember that all of the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are addressed to God as “Our Father.” As with the first three petitions, so too with the last four petitions. What we ask for we ask “Our Father.”

Origen already remarked on this unique and special feature of the Lord’s Prayer. Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures do we find any prayer addressed to God as Father. Augustine several centuries later also calls attention to this as does Aquinas in the thirteenth century.

The opening words of the “Our Father” carry over into all of the petitions and serve to ground our prayers in a kind of praise and wonder about God himself that acts as a counter to the ways in which we invariably seek to make God subject to ourselves. That, of course, is how we lose ourselves because we lose sight of God. “For many things are said in praise of God,” Augustine notes, “which, being scattered variously and widely over all the Holy Scriptures, everyone will be able to consider when he reads them; yet nowhere is there found a precept for the people of Israel, that they should say ‘Our Father,’ or that they should pray to God as a Father; but as Lord He was made known to them.” It suggests something intimate and important about the “Our Father” as belonging to the essential understanding of the Christian faith.

The seventeenth century Anglican Divine, Lancelot Andrewes, in his Holy Devotions, notes that the Lord’s Prayer begins with “a Father, not a Lord/ One being a name of love./ The other of dignity … One being, a name of Goodness, Comfortable … the other of Power, Terrible … Who then durst be so bold as to call the Father, but that Christ did command it?” The Lord’s Prayer is grounded in the Son’s love of the Father; his Father is “Our Father” at his bidding and command. We are bold to say, “Our Father.”

Jesus provides instruction about prayer and about persevering in prayer in many places such as in Matthew 7.9. “What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?” Christ’s first temptation, too, was about the manipulation of the world, about turning stones into bread. The image of “Our Father” reminds us of the essential goodness of God and about what he seeks for us, namely, not stones but bread. Why? Out of the love of the Father for the Son and in the power of the Son’s love for the Father; out of the bond of their mutual and indwelling love, we learn the deep love of God for us. Thus this fourth petition, which marks the beginning of the second set of petitions, concerns what we seek from God in terms of our lives here and now but only as grounded in the deep love of God himself and that love as turned towards us; in short, God’s love for us.

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Administrative, Statements and other writings

Anglican church services suspended until April

Archbishop Ron Cutler has, effective immediately, suspended all public liturgies in the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island until April 3rd, at which time a decision will be made regarding Holy Week and Easter worship.

The Archbishop’s full statement is posted here.

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Statements and other writings

A brief note about COVID-19, Church Services, and Communion at Christ Church

We will continue to hold services in the Hall and later in the Church unless directed otherwise, but advise acting with care towards others in terms of hand-washing and perhaps exercising the concept of ‘self-distancing’ from each other. Both the Hall and the Church are commodious spaces that provide room to spread ourselves out, so to speak. These are simply precautionary strategies. At present, there is no reason to worry.

The Chalice will still be offered at Communion but if you do not wish to receive from the Chalice, that is fine. Just indicate by a nod. The sacrament is whole in each of its parts. Anglicans, theologically speaking, are utraquists – offering the sacrament as commanded by our Lord in both kinds – and so I am obliged to act accordingly. In terms of the various practices about receiving, may I request that you not ‘intinct’ (dipping the host yourself in the Chalice) since that only increases the risks of contagion (via hand). Let us pray and keep in our prayers, all who are the victims of plague and sickness  and those who live in nursing homes in our communities.

Be careful but be not fearful.

Fr. David Curry
March 15th, 2020

Update: Archbishop Ron Cutler has released a “Pastoral Letter with regards to Covid 19”. Click here to download (pdf).

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Statements and other writings

A Very Brief and Short Introduction to a History of King’s-Edgehill School

On Saturday, February 22nd, the school chaplain, the Rev’d David Curry, gave a talk on the history of King’s-Edgehill School for the West Hants Historical Society in Windsor. It was not and could not be, as he said “THE” history but at best ‘a very brief and short introduction to a history of King’s-Edgehill.’ The talk emphasized the significance of the School and its history for the Town of Windsor. The presentation began with an image of the burning of Edgehill on September 1st, 2016, the loss of one of the most iconic, one of the most important, and certainly one of the most visible architectural structures in the landscape of Windsor. The campus of King’s, by comparison, is largely hidden from view. The history of King’s-Edgehill does not simply begin with the amalgamation in 1976 but goes back to the eighteenth century and is really the story of three institutions: the School, variously referred to as the Academy, King’s Collegiate School, and King’s College School founded in 1788, the University of King’s College founded in 1789, and the Edgehill Church School for Girls in 1891.

Born between two revolutions, the American and the French Revolution, these institutions belong to a loyalist sensibility about the need for “a seminary of learning” with regard to public service, especially in the learned professions of law, medicine, and theology. This is signalled in the mottoes of the School and College and of Edgehill: Deo, Regi, Legi, Gregi and Fideliter. “For God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People” and “Faithfulness”. Such mottoes belong to an educational programme that emphasizes leadership and public service, exemplified for example in terms of the commitments and sacrifices of both the students of King’s (School and College) and Edgehill in the First World War. Attention was called to Clare Gass, an Edgehill Girl who among others served as a nurse in the First World War and whose diary contains the first mention of John McCrae’s famous poem “In Flanders Fields” six weeks before its publication. Discipline and duty was what Headmistress Gena Smith expected of the girls of Edgehill.

The talk touched upon the Anglo-Irish tensions that threatened the early life of the School and the College, not because of the clergy but owing to Judge Alexander Croke’s vision of creating a little England here in the colonies, a vision also shared by Thomas Chandler Haliburton. This vision ignored the diversity of backgrounds culturally and religiously and was opposed by the founding father of the School and College, Bishop Charles Inglis, the first bishop consecrated for an overseas diocese. Croke insisted that the President of the College have degrees from Oxford or Cambridge and that the statutes follow the models of Oxford and Cambridge in terms of subscription to the Thirty-nine articles, thus alienating significant elements of the settler populations of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The first President of the College was William Cochrane who was Irish and Irish educated at Trinity College, Dublin. The first Headmaster of the School was Inglis’ nephew, Archibald Paine Inglis, also Irish (as was Inglis) and educated at University College, Dublin, Ireland. Cochrane was a major figure in the early life of the School and College, being head of both on occasion but then ‘demoted’ to being vice-president with the arrival of Oxford educated Charles Porter. It is enough to say that they didn’t get along and that along with the problem of the statues, this affected the early years of both institutions. Throughout the 19th century, there were a total of four years in which the School was not open. The glory days of Windsor and of the College and School were the 1880s and 1890s when the College in particular was regarded as an intellectually serious seminary of learning.

It was the fire, one hundred years ago on February 5th, 1920, which was catastrophic for the Town as well as the College and the Schools. It resulted in King’s College being relocated to Halifax, probably the most devastating of several factors which contributed to the decline of Windsor. Had the University stayed, Windsor would have continued to develop as a university town much like Woflville or Antigonish. The presentation ended with an artistic image of Edgehill which adorned the School’s yearbook for the year 2016. A lively Q and A followed the presentation.

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Statements and other writings

Rector’s Annual Report, 2019

Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2019 (in pdf format).

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2018 can be accessed via this page.

Rector’s Annual Report for 2019
February 9th, 2020
“Go ye also into the vineyard”

The transitions from one season of the Church Year to another and even from one Sunday to the next are intriguing and instructive. They remind us of the necessity of the patterns and rhythms that belong to spiritual life and to the importance of regular worship, week in and week out. That sense of regularity and commitment has often been a challenge and a problem for the institutional churches, particularly in our rural parishes but also in our towns and cities. At issue is any sense of clarity and commitment to what the Church is and teaches. It remains the principal problem with respect to church attendance and, consequently, to the very existence of the institutional church in the form of parishes and dioceses.

For more than fifty years, parishes and dioceses have had to deal not only with that challenge but with a more modern problem, the re-defining of the churches as franchises of a centralized bureaucracy both at the diocesan level and in terms of the national churches. This ‘model’ replaces the idea of doctrinal unity grounded in the teachings embodied in liturgy and worship with conformity, first, to the ever-changing mantras and agendas of technocratic culture, and, secondly, to the excessive  burdens of a form of taxation that support centralized bureaucracies at the expense of the very existence of parishes themselves. Salvation by allotment alone is simply death by parochial suicide. In other words, faith is defined more in terms of belonging to the institutional structures and the finances required to maintain them than to the principles of Faith belonging to our history and theology. Belonging trumps believing.

While recognizing that polity – the order of the Church – is part of Christian identity since the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” is an article of Faith, the fatal subordination of parishes to the unrelenting financial demands of the centralized bureaucracies of the diocesan and national churches results in the unsurprising yet demoralizing collapse of Parishes and, by extension and consequence, to the diocesan and national structures themselves. This faux corporate model imitates the secular corporate culture of big business (i.e. Bishops as CEOs) but the model betrays the corporate life of faith centered on worship and service. And it is, quite simply, unsustainable. Having bled the Parishes to death, it is not surprising that the national church now forecasts that not much will be left of the Anglican Church by 2040. It is, sadly, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Needless to say, at Christ Church we remain committed to the principles of the Faith that belong to our corporate identity as “an integral portion of the One Body of Christ” united “in the fellowship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” expressed so wonderfully in the Solemn Declaration of 1893 which references clearly the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the “undisputed Ecumenical Councils” as the ground and basis of doctrine and spiritual life. That includes as well our commitment to ‘Bishops’ and to the diocese and the national churches even in their confusions, knowing that “they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God,” as Article XXI of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion pertinently puts it. In short, we recognize not the infallibility of the Church in its polity and structures but its fallibility, “wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture” (Art. XXI, BCP, p. 707).

As such we have tried to be faithful to what properly belongs to our corporate life without compromising the existence of the Parish to the demands of the diocesan and national churches and their agendas. What the Church is and teaches is not found in the pronouncements of Bishops and Synods both of which are properly subject to those same principles of the Faith that have been received in our Anglican polity.

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Anglican issues, Statements and other writings, Theology

“Nothing has changed”: Fr. Curry on the Marriage Issue

‘Nothing has changed’
A statement about same-sex marriages in the light of the decision of the General Synod and Archbishop Ron Cutler’s response

It is incumbent upon me, for what it is worth, to say something about the recent decisions of the Anglican Church of Canada with respect to the question about same-sex marriages. Simply put, nothing has really changed. The Anglican Church of Canada remains caught in the confusions and the contradictions of contemporary culture about the politics of identity. Yet the General Synod, meeting in Vancouver, ultimately voted against equating same-sex marriage with the Christian doctrine of marriage articulated most clearly in the Book of Common Prayer. The result of a long and drawn out process of discussion, this was the result, whether or not one agrees with it, or, for that matter, whether or not one agrees with the assumption that national and diocesan churches have anyauthority to determine on such matters of doctrine, in this case, moral doctrine.

Councils “may err and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God,” as our Articles remind us (Art. XXI), and so Councils will err though sometimes, too, they may be right. There is also the question about which councils and upon what issues. Archbishop Ron Cutler of the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island notes that this issue can be revisited within the institutional structures of the Anglican Church of Canada. Everything, it seems, is endlessly ‘provisional’ especially when one is in pursuit of a predetermined end which only then becomes, mirabile dictu,definitive. Thus, despite the decision of the General Synod, he has declared that Diocesan local option takes precedence against it. Same-sex marriages will be allowed where desired in the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. At the same time, we are told, no parish or priest will be forced to marry same-sex couples. Nor can they be. And so the division continues and endlessly so.

We live with the confusions and complexities of our age about identity, about what it means to be a self. What matters are the assumptions underlying such decisions. Marriage, according to the Archbishop, and in this he simply reflects the assumptions of the culture, is fundamentally about ‘committed relationships’. If that is so, then there can be no discussion, no debate. And while commitment is an important concept, the question is, commitment to what? After all, one can be in a ‘committed relationship’ with any number of things, including oneself, and to any number of social constructs of whatever sort. While we would all want to agree about the importance of commitment, the classical understanding of Christian marriage is not simply or even primarily about commitment beyond a commitment to the character and nature of marriage; in short, to what it is. We cannot be of one mind if we cannot say what something is; in this case what marriage is. At issue are the principles which govern our understanding about the meaning of our humanity as found within the doctrines of creation and redemption in which marriage is located as oneof the ways of living out the Christian faith.

Nothing has changed inasmuch as the institutional church remains caught in the controversies of identity in our contemporary culture. And nothing has changed with respect to my own contributions to the debate theologically. “The sad tragedy of the Anglican Churches” continues to be “the inability … to distinguish between two different things: marriage and the blessings of friends.” I continue to be committed to upholding the principles of Christian Faith doctrinally and morally as they have been received by the Anglican Churches insofar as they lay claim to be and are an integral part of the Catholic and Universal church regardless of the statements of Synods and Bishops. We live in a divided church but prayerfully and, I hope, charitably with respect to these divisions.

Rev’d David Curry
July 18th, 2019

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Anglican issues, Statements and other writings, Theology

The Solemn Declaration: The Net of Memory

Given the reference to the Solemn Declaration of 1893 in this morning’s homily, it seems appropriate to post Fr. David Curry’s paper “The Solemn Declaration: The Net of Memory”, which was published years ago in the Machray Review by the Prayer Book Society of Canada.

Click here to download “The Solemn Declaration: The Net of Memory” (in pdf format) or click here to read it online.

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Statements and other writings

Letter to the Parish, June 2019

Dear Friends,

“Lift up your hearts.” “We lift them up unto the Lord.” The familiar words of the Sursum Corda, as it is known, capture an essential feature of the liturgical and sacramental life of our Parish. It is very much about our being gathered into the motions of the Ascension. “We ascend,” as Augustine beautifully puts it, “in the ascension of our hearts.” Ascensiontide signals that profound gathering of all things to God in the homecoming of the Son to the Father. His homecoming opens out to us our true homeland of the Spirit, the Trinity.

Bev Morash has been the sexton of the Parish for many years but for reasons of health is stepping down officially as of the end of June. He and Jacoba wish to continue to help out with the sanctuary guild when and to what extent they can. Wonderful. On behalf of the Parish, I want to thank Bev and Jacoba for their many labours. We will be putting into place various ways of ensuring the continuing maintenance of the Parish and its operations. We have established a reasonable protocol about garbage which, thanks in part to Scotty and Kathy, will go to curbside when needed in accord with the stipulations of the Town of Windsor. Please note the directions in the Hall about garbage (clear bags), compost (small bin to big bin to green bin), and recyclables (blue bags in blue bin).

At the Annual Meeting of the Parish, ideas were raised about the possibility of replacing the siding of the Church with newer and improved vinyl including insulation, repairing the sills of the windows, and replacing the lexan protective panels. We are still endeavouring to get estimates about cost. This would be a major, major undertaking. I want to be clear about the financials of the Parish with respect to capital plans.

The operation of the Parish depends in part, indeed, a large part, upon contributions from the Christ Church Foundation. We have been able to maintain operations and some capital improvements from funds generated from the interest on its investment portfolio; we have not touched capital. We also depend upon the offerings of all of you. Like many small institutions, it is a constant struggle but one which I am pleased to say we have managed rather successfully in terms of our mission, thanks to so many of you.

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Statements and other writings

Rector’s Annual Report, 2018

Click here to download the Rector’s Annual Report for 2018 (pdf document).

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2017 can be accessed via this page.

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