Moderate the title

The debated stole, I expect, in many people's minds at this year's assembly, was a stole of office for the moderator of our church. We don't have such an office in The Presbyterian Church in Canada, at least we didn't the last time I was awake, and neither do we need a stole to demarcate it. The person who moderates a particular assembly is just that, the moderator of that particular assembly, and nothing more. That the person works as an ambassador for the church for a year and sits on some influential committees does not change this fact. And yet, each year, and throughout the year, the Record continues to coronate a person The Moderator of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. As you well know, or at least should, the proper language is, “The Moderator of the 133rd General Assembly.” If the Record would begin to assert the truth by the language it uses around this issue and the way it presents this person on its pages, I expect it would go a long way toward contravening idiotic debates about stoles of office and other related nonsense about moderators, including the correcting of what I perceive is our denomination's drift towards an Episcopalian model of church government or perhaps something even worse. To be quite frank, I do not have the stomach for this drift.