A fine mess

In light of the square-circle Canada seems set to pass very soon, here's a link to an interesting interview with Jim Hughes, president of the Canadian national pro-life organization, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC). You'll never read this in the Globe and Mail, and rarely will it be heard in National Post.

Q: It's astonishing that Prime Ministers Trudeau, Turner, Mulroney, Clark, Chretien and now Martin, all Catholics and most from Quebec, have all, in varying degrees, supported the these radical social changes. How do you account for this? A: Well, I cannot account for it. I hear people saying that the problems occurred on the Catholic side after Vatican II, but in reality the problems occurred and were created by people, such as those prime ministers, who attended Latin Mass, people who were brought up on the Baltimore Catechism learning the truths of the faith by rote. Those are the people who were the architects of all of this stuff. They've rejected their faith and have lived like devout pagans, as some have described this behaviour. I guess they just didn't understand their faith or didn't believe it and they ushered in what is known as cafeteria Catholicism and so that's part of the main problem. We were told by many people in the Church not to judge, "don't judge others". This crept into the school system and instead of having young people trained on what is right and what is wrong, the emphasis became what feels good and in your own conscience, "what do you think is right"? That all goes back to Winnipegitis, that is, the Winnipeg Statement of 1968, with the Canadian Catholic bishops failing to support the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical on human life. All of the decisions since then, in large part, can be traced back to a loss of faith. There are no objective standards of morality. It's all how you feel. Every one of these prime ministers have reflected those changes. As well, we are constantly seeing mainline churches running to protect their charitable tax status and avoiding the crucial issues because they might offend members of their congregations and might affect their ability to raise funds for their extended programs.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame Canadian Catholics for this turn of affairs. The PMs listed might tell us more about Quebec's influence in Canadian politics than it does Catholics. After all, there has been a fair share of nuttiness from Episcopals as well as other churches. Unity and courage will do us a lot more good than finger pointing.