Profile of a celibate TAC priest in New Hampshire

Great article about a celibate Traditional Anglican priest in New Hampshire.

After five minutes with the Rev. Christian Tutor, it's difficult to imagine he spent 11 years in a monastery. It's not Tutor's prayerfulness or reverence you'll question. It's his gabbiness and that easily triggered laugh.

Surely, he was ssshhhed a lot? Tutor, 39, has heard that question before.

"Have you seen The Sound of Music?" Tutor asks, laughing. "And the nuns ask, 'How do you solve a problem like Maria? . . . She sings! Well, I was like Maria in the cloister."

Tutor believes God asked those same questions of him 10 years ago and answered by calling Tutor out of his quiet West Coast Augustinian monastery and into busy parish work. After challenging assignments elsewhere, Tutor arrived in Concord about a month ago to lead the All Saints Anglican Church, a new congregation that formed in 2003 after Gene Robinson, an openly gay man from Weare, was elected New Hampshire's Episcopal bishop.

The parish is part of the Traditional Anglican Communion, which is distinct from the Anglican Church that includes the American Episcopal Church. The worldwide divide began years ago, long before Robinson's election. Other divisive issues have included the ordination of women and revisions in the liturgy, which traditional Anglicans oppose.

Latimer would not guarantee he would not euthanize his wife

I just heard an amazing interview of Mike Duffy by Michael Harris on CFRA. You can listen here. The whole interview is worth listening to, but the part about Robert Latimer blew me away. Duffy said that Lisa LaFlamme of CTV was the only journalist who reported that Latimer would not guarantee to the parole board that he would not euthanize other family members if their pain became intractable. You can hear Lisa's report here.

Click on the video icon in the right hand column.

So....how come I have not heard that story anywhere else? I was already disturbed after reading Mark Pickup's excellent column criticizing the narrative that has developed around the Tracey Latimer's life.

Here's a link to my story on the recent denial of parole to Robert Latimer for the murder of Tracey, his disabled daughter.

OTTAWA - The decision to deny parole to Robert Latimer, who murdered his 12-year-old disabled daughter Tracey in 1993, has prompted an outpouring of sympathy for the Saskatchewan farmer. This outpouring has sent a chill through the disabled community and alarmed anti-euthanasia groups.

“It’s a scary time to be disabled (as I am),” wrote disabled rights activist Mark Pickup Dec. 6 on his blog Human Life Matters. “Apparently it’s a disgrace to imprison the killer of a person with a disability.”

Interesting commentary on Traditional Anglican Communion's approach to Rome

In the notorious Operation Keelhaul, at the close of World War II, Allied forces delivered tens of thousands of Russians back into the hands of the Soviet Union-- knowing full well that many of them would soon be living in the gulag archipelago, if they were living at all. It was a shameful episode in our history. These poor souls had made their bid for freedom, relying on the free nations of the West to help them-- thinking, perhaps, of the Statue of Liberty, and its promise to welcome the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free"-- and the West betrayed them back into the hands of tyrants.

Now the Traditional Anglican Communion looks desperately for help from Rome, as a means of escaping ecclesiastical chaos. And perhaps more than that, as a means of saving their souls. And the answer is... not yet clear.

David Warren on freedom of speech

The right to free expression of opinion and belief -- though constrained in its extremes during wartime -- is not something that can be negotiated in a free country. For it is the most fundamental right -- the queen bee in the hive, as it were. Every other freedom depends on this freedom. Take it away, and we no longer have a free country.

Read it all here.

Human rights complaints against Mark Steyn and Maclean's raise deep concerns

Late yesterday I stumbled across an article about a "human rights complaint" filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) against Maclean’s, Canada’s most widely-read news magazine, for running a "flagrantly Islamophobic" excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. At least two Canadian Human Rights Commissions have agreed to hear these complaints. Only then did I find Steyn’s too-easily-missed late-night post from Wednesday on the controversy.

This is a big deal. The blogosphere has so far largely missed it, but this attack on Mark Steyn is very much our business. There may be an impulse to dismiss this assault on Steyn, on the assumption that it will fail, that Steyn is a big boy and can take care of himself, and that in any case this is crazy Canada, where political correctness rules, rather than the land of the free. That would be a mistake.

Interesting article about opposition to the TAC's approach to Rome

One of the Vatican's most senior cardinals has dismissed the idea that a breakaway group of Anglicans might be received into the Catholic Church en masse - despite Benedict XVI's personal support for such a move. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told The Catholic Herald: "It's not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome."

The cardinal's comments refer to the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a rebel group which claims to represent 400,000 people. Its bishops sent a letter to Rome last month requesting "full, corporate and sacramental union". But the bishops did not send their letter to Cardinal Kasper. Instead they addressed it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, it is understood, they expected a warmer reception.

It has been claimed that 60 Anglican parishes have joined the rebel group since their request became public.

Vatican insiders say that Benedict XVI is scrutinising the matter very closely and believes that the TAC is setting out a path that other Anglicans will follow.

Cardinal Ouellet still hopes the pope will come to Quebec City

From the Catholic Register's website.

OTTAWA - Cardinal Marc Ouellet returned to Canada from Rome Nov. 29 with no final answer on whether Pope Benedict XVI will attend the 2008 International Eucharistic Congress next June in Quebec City. “I am still praying and hoping and asking people for prayer because it would be a great blessing to welcome the Holy Father with his charism,” said Ouellet.

“We need his word, his wonderful word, here in Quebec City on this occasion. It would be an extraordinary support to the effort of the church to re-centre its activity and its faith in the Holy Eucharist, which is so important."

How does the Quebec archbishop deal with the suspense?

“I tell you, it is not easy,” Ouellet said in an interview from Quebec City Dec. 3. “I don’t know his answer. I really don’t know. And I don’t know exactly when he will make it public and in exactly which form.”

There's more.