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Iindaba
is pleased to see that the Church takes
fraud seriously and makes sure that those who steal money belonging
to God are punished for it.
This
report from “Umbuliso”, newsletter of the Diocese of Grahamstown.
Mrs
Nancy-Ann Richards, formerly employed as an assistant to the
Diocesan Secretary of Grahamstown, was found guilty of 31 counts of
fraud in the Grahamstown court in June, and received a suspended sentence.
The
case arose from the dis-appearance of certain sums from diocesan
funds up to 1999. This was investigated first by the auditors, and
later by the police.
All
money handled by the Diocesan Office originates from the freewill
offerings of the people in the parishes, and is intended to be used
for the furtherance of God’s work.
In
sentencing Mrs Richards, the presiding officer took into account
that she had promised to pay back the sum of R6 000 which she had
taken, and that, if she went to prison, she would be unable to earn
money to do this. She therefore received a sentence of two years
imprisonment, suspended for four years, on condition that she is not
convicted of fraud or theft during that time.
Maureen
Lang RIP
A
personal tribute by David MacGregor, one of our retired priests.
If
there were two things that characterised Maureen for me it was,
firstly, her deep love for Jesus Christ, and her determination to
serve His Kingdom through the media that she loved best - music in
worship, and, secondly, her indomitable courage by which she faced
the terrible physical pain and continuing surgery arising out of a
botched medical procedure in New Zealand, which left her body
increasingly crippled.
When
Mary and I first knew her, over 30 years ago, Maureen, born in
England, was serving as a secondary school teacher in Wanganui, New
Zealand, and I was a curate in the local Anglican Parish. At first,
she didn’t have much time for folk music in church, and
especially since her love was primarily for the classical guitar. She
eventually realised what a vital medium for Christian worship good
folk music could be, and she soon became a partner in many missions
all over New Zealand, and in the TV services that NZBC1 filmed for
National television.
In
1977 we received a call from the Lord to South Africa, and Maureen
decided to come into full time ministry with us. It was in South
Africa that her life’s work was to find fulfilment. Maureen and
I with others ministered our music in missions, and our experience in
leading worship in the Pretoria SACLA Conference in 1979 was the
highlight of our work together. We had led congregations of over 1
000 people in NZ, but 3000 at SACLA was awesome.
She
wrote and had published by Kingsway in London two fine books called
“Simply Worship”, in which she provided a beginners' and
intermediate guide to guitar-playing in worship. Graham Kendrick
called it ‘a valuable resource’. She remained teaching the
guitar right up until her death. Maureen was a disciplined Christian
as her devotion to, and oblate membership of, the Community of the
Resurrection shows. In the Diocese and beyond she became an
astonishing resource person to many churches of all denominations.
Brian Shier and others supported Maureen financially for many years,
enabling her ministry until, with the death of her parents, she
became more self supporting. In her home Parish of St Saviour’s
she was appointed Director of Music and held that ministry for 17
years until her death.
Many
parishes will testify to the deeply moving Taizé services of
devotion she organised with Canon Robert Penrith, and yet she still
had the energy to make recordings of Celtic Music and with her
Healing Sounds group. She didn’t stop there. She finished her
theological diploma and was teaching Greek until she died. All this
in the midst of the debilitating physical ill-health, depression and
pain she suffered.
At
Maureen’s last service on Easter Day, she played her beloved
guitar, Segovia, with Jenny, Michael and myself. Yes! The Lord is so
good to have allowed us to have been a part of Maureen’s life,
and for me personally, she remains in my memory as one of those rare,
true saints of Christ. Well done, good and faithful servant.
A
note on the funeral
Those
who could not attend the funeral of Maureen Lang, OCR, missed one of
the most moving, beautiful and thoroughly Christian funerals I have
ever attended. A worthy tribute to a self-effacing local saint, by
the diocese and St Saviour’s.
Archdeacon
Ruthell Johnson’s ‘tribute’ could not have been
bettered. The music and singing was a splendid tribute to one who set
such store on offering our Lord the best. Maureen’s contribution
to spirituality, worship and music in our diocese and beyond will be
sorely missed. Praise God we have Canon Robert Penrith and others to
continue their good work.
Fr
Roy Snyman tssf, A-C St J.
Maria
Cupido RIP
A
tribute by Perter Bowen, one of our retired priests.
Maria
Magdalena Cupido had been part and parcel of the parish of
Humansdorp for almost all of her adult life. She came from Knysna
where she had been born into one the great Scandinavian families
which arrived there in the century before last. A schoolteacher
herself, she married Ali Cupido, Headmaster of St Patrick’s
school. Before his untimely death, Ali had created a school which set
new standards for education in the area. The work was continued under
the headmastership of Mr Robert Kroutz who married the Cupido’s
only daughter, Pearl. While the results at this school continued to
be quite phenomenal over the years, it was the dedicated work of
Maria Cupido who, for year after endless year, was laying the basic
foundations in the early standards, upon which other teachers could
successfully build. Literally thousands of pupils learned from her,
not merely reading,’riting, and ‘rithmetic, but also a
meaningful love for Jesus Christ. She was a leader and a pillar of
righteousness in the local community, and God help any parish priest
who tried to wriggle out of the awkward questions she was capable of
asking at the annual Vestry meeting!
It
came as no surprise when the Diocese recommended that the
Metropolitan of the CPSA confer upon her, Membership of the Order of
St Simon of Cyrene. In her retirement years she continued to be
extremely active, organising tours far and wide for the elderly folk
in the community. In latter years a book has been published,
depicting life in Port Elizabeth’s old South End. There, hardly
recognisable from the snowy haired, indomitable saint of God that a
whole community grew to love and respect, is a photograph of the
Ladies' Doubles Champion of Tennis, in bygone days. Modest as she
always was - she had never breathed a word about her prowess on the courts!
Iindaba
expresses its deepest sympathies to her family.
CPSA
urged not to avoid same-sex blessing issue
An
Episcopal News Service report by the Revd Jan Nunley who is deputy
director of ENS.
A
report prepared for the CPSA, released in April, cites examples of
same-sex unions in traditional indigenous African societies and the
South African constitution’s sexual orientation non-discrimination
clause in arguing for a new approach by the church to the blessing
of same-sex relationships.
The
Archbishop’s Committee on Same-Sex Unions, chaired by Professor
Joan Church of the Diocese of Pretoria, and consisting of senior lay
and clerical members of the church, produced the report in response
to a Provincial Synod resolution requiring the CPSA to clarify its
position with regard to same sex unions. The committee directed its
findings to the South African Anglican Theological Commission.
“The
issue of same sex unions strikes at the heart of the Anglican
church, which has fought long and hard for justice and inclusivity,
but a definitive stand is likely to lead to polarisation rather than
unity unless all debaters are treated with respect and dignity,”
said Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, in summarising the report for a
press release.
“Besides
commissioning the committee, I have also widely distributed a
discussion document within the Anglican Church and I am calling on
Southern Africa’s 10 million baptised Anglicans at all levels to
urgently address homosexuality and to do so in a manner that will
generate mutual understanding and bring people out of their
‘corners of conviction,’” Ndungane said. He cited a
statement in the report that the unity of the church must be upheld
but must not be used as “a delaying tactic or as an excuse to
avoid the issue.”
Centrality
of love
The
report briefly outlines an approach to developing a theology of
marriage that takes into account varying understandings of sexuality
(as geniality or as “all-pervasive energy force”) and
spirituality (as religiosity or as “touching all of life”).
The centrality of love in Jesus’ portrait of God as the
“Divine Lover,” resulting in the effect that “sexuality
seems to have something of the numinous about it,” and the
shift in the focus of marriage from procreation to manifesting the
love of God, are recommended as topics for “re-examination”
by an ongoing CPSA dialogue.
A
model of biblical interpretation that moves beyond the “largely
fundamentalist” mode of “absolutist, ahistorical”
prooftexting is needed, the report said, to engage the issue of
sexuality seriously. “The model adopted affects the meaning
extracted,” the committee said, recommending a
“conversational model” which “accepts that the Bible
is God’s Word, but argues that it operates dynamically, in
interaction with everyday life.”
Such
a conversational model would be “Christocentric, dialogical,
canonical, and narrative.”
Imported—or
indigenous?
Many
African Anglican leaders view homosexuality as a Western cultural
import. “The Anglican Church in Africa is deeply shocked by the
very idea of blessing the gay relationship and having a liturgy for
such a service in Church,” retired Kenyan archbishop David
Gitari told Anglican Media Sydney shortly after a decision by the
Canadian diocese of New Westminster in 2002 to permit parishes to
bless same-sex relationships. “We are shocked because, when
missionaries from the West came to the darkest continent, we were
told that homosexuality was a sin. Now people from the West are
telling us it is not a sin despite Paul’s words in Romans
1:24-27.” The Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, called the
Canadian decision “an act of new imperialism” by churches
in the global North.
But
according to the South African report, same-sex relationships are
not unknown in traditional African culture, although in different
forms than is common in the United States and other Western
countries. Traditional woman-to-woman marriages “occur all over
Africa,” the report stated. In South Africa such marriages have
been recorded among the Venda, Lovedu, Pedi, Zulu and Narene peoples,
among others. The report cites “two main motivations” for
such unions: because of the powerful position of one of the women, as
in the traditional tribal institution of the Rain Queen, or because
one of the women is childless. In the latter case, a male relative of
the “female husband” may be enlisted to impregnate the
“bride,” though he is considered to have no legal or
biological rights to the child.
“While
these marriages are infrequent they are considered far from
abnormal,” the report stated. Such unions may be protected under
South Africa’s Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, which
came into effect in 2000, as well as under Act 108 of the 1996 South
African constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation. That presents a pastoral dilemma for churches,
said the committee.
Another
dilemma is presented by a 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution on
human sexuality rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with
Scripture and declaring that the bishops of the Anglican Communion
“cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions
nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions.” A separate
discussion document on human sexuality, sent by Ndungane in January
to the bishops, clergy and lay leadership of the CPSA, acknowledged
that “the Lambeth Conference is a significant and solemn part of
this process. At the same time, however, it is also not possible to
assert that the matter was closed for all time in 1998 by the views
of the majority of Bishops at Lambeth at that time. In the past the
Lambeth Conference has ‘moved’ on a decision taken at a
previous gathering, for example on the use of contraception.”
‘A
theological nightmare’?
Reviewing
the legal history and cultural differences regarding same-sex unions
in South Africa and in other countries, the report noted that,
although same-sex marriage has not yet been legally recognised,
“it is clear that in less than a decade there have been major
policy changes in South Africa regarding homosexuals and homosexual
conduct ... recognising certain marriage-like rights of partners in
same-sex unions.”
Nevertheless,
“We are in danger of creating a theological nightmare,”
wrote one of the committee’s gay members, in a separate section
entitled “A Gay Perspective.” Arguing that opposing a
service of “blessing” to a service of marriage creates
confusion, he asked, “What exactly is the difference between
seeking a public recognition by the church of a permanent
relationship through marriage and seeking the blessing of a permanent relationship?”
The
committee recommended that the CPSA “set in motion a pastoral
process to help the church engage, at all levels, with
homosexuality,” including consultation with non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), ecumenical partners and other stake holders in
the issue in what is called an “indaba,” a Zulu concept
meaning a council or meeting to discuss an important matter. The
committee recommends that the process should result in a report for
the next Provincial Synod.
Members
of the committee included Professor Church; Judge Thollie Madala;
the Very Rev Peter Lenkoe; Canon Godfrey Henwood; the Revs Michelle
Pilet, Tim Long, Douglas Torr and Lynda Wyngaard; and Sr Maureen (OHP).
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