Re Taking Off the Robe, February
As a retiree myself, I asked myself why, if the author was retired and spends half the year in Florida, he would want to be involved in the day to day administration of the church? I would have thought he would have been happy to leave it to his younger colleagues.
I also wondered if he remembered the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s history and what led to the establishment of parity between the laity and clergy on the church councils. Even a cursory reading of the documents would remind him that in 1925, when the great schism between Presbyterians and unionists occurred, the laity felt they had been betrayed by the clergy. They rightly felt that those whom they had entrusted with leadership had betrayed them at the levels of church councils. (A similar situation occurred in the United Church of Canada over the ordination of homosexuals.) They took steps to see that this would not happen again by not allowing presbyteries to become clergy dominated. It has been said that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
