At the Crossroads
When Canada was just a collection of young frontier colonies, the Church in Europe was well established and already taking giant steps in a civilized world. Religious orders were being founded by giants of the faith, pontifical universities were up and running, and the old St. Peter's Basilica was being torn down to make way for the new and improved icon of the Catholic and universal Church.
In time, Canada grew up, having a social order that based its institutions, laws, and customs on Christian thought. Bishops and religious were sent from overseas to cultivate a hopeful landscape of Christianity. The family and the Church were the foundations of daily life.
Catholics in Canada, despite a prominent Christian history, now have to live within the public forms of an anti-Christian society, where many Christian values are asserted to be meaningless and opposed to "progress."
Under the guise of freedom, attacks have been launched against the family and the dignity of human life since the 1960s with contraception, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. With "political correctness" as a prevailing attitude in Canada, it is no wonder that so little has been done to recall the culture to its Christian roots. From abortion to homosexual-matrimony, political bodies in Canada have alienated the Catholic community.
Political Roots of a Secularized Canada
Though Catholic and societal decline hasn't one author, the late 60s ushered in a political figure who championed and institutionalized a new sense of Canadian independence from religion, both in public and private life.
In the 60s, during his political years, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became a media sweetheart despite his classical Catholic education. That he rejected this formation was key to his media success. In 1967, as the new Justice Minister, he announced that in these modern times, religious principles have no bearing on the affairs of state. With the liberal media dominating the airwaves, they were delighted that religion could be further relegated to the sidelines of Canadian life. Trudeau cast the die and abandoned any meaningful relation with the Church as teacher and moral guide, while "rights," "equality" and "freedoms" were redefined.
In Canadian politics, through to the present-day Catholic Prime Minister Paul Martin, this attitude has prevailed. Martin was asked at a G-8 summit meeting in 2004 how he would choose if his religion was in opposition to any of the rights and freedoms proclaimed, or assumed, in Canada's Charter of Rights. He said, "I'll take the Charter." The precedent was set in the 60s and continues without falter.
The Roots of Dissent from Within the Church in Canada
"Unrestrained secularism," as John Paul II often called it, affected the Church from the inside as well. In 1968, the Canadian bishops collectively issued a response to the papal document upholding the traditional teaching on birth control, the encyclical Humanae vitae . In it, the bishops claimed, in contradiction to the document itself, that "whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience."
With this license, Canadian theologians seemed free to dissent from the Church's teaching, and not only on contraception. Since then, a proliferation of theological writings has emerged in contradiction to the Holy See. This includes everything from contraceptives, abortion, divorce, sexual relations outside marriage, pornography, in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research, and euthanasia, for example, which supports the prevailing credence that freedom to select a personal truth is the most valuable of all freedoms and can coincide with being a faithful Catholic.
Today's Political and Religious Climate
From a legal standpoint, Canada boasts a Supreme Court that is sympathetic to "sexual orientation" being a part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1995); judges have declared the traditional definition of marriage unconstitutional and ordered that it be rewritten to fully accommodate homosexuals (July 2005); abortion is a regular procedure, even in some Catholic hospitals; in vitro fertilization is legal and largely unmonitored; and the Liberal-NDP coalition is preparing to support a bill which calls for euthanasia.
Inside the Catholic Church in Canada, things can be just as murky as to what is or is not acceptable for a modern Catholic to believe. In Ottawa, the faithful may see a "woman priest" — excommunicated by Rome and condemned by the local bishops after a false ordination — reading a letter from Paul to the Ephesians on a given Sunday and chatting happily with the parish priest on the steps after the Eucharistic Celebration. The St. Michael's Cathedral in Toronto scheduled a benefit this month for an organization that distributed condoms in Africa, though it was cancelled after some critical media coverage. Crucifixes have been taken down in a number of Catholic universities, and radical feminist theology can be found on the course list at once orthodox institutions.
One Catholic educator, Blaise Thompson, told Inside the Vatican he lost his job at a Catholic school when he refused the mandate from his higher-ups to take the Catechism of the Catholic Church off the reading list for his catechism class. This happened in the 1990's, and Blaise was never hired back into the Catholic education system in his province of Ontario.
The Voice of a Few Good Bishops
There has been a continuation of a long-term downward trend in the number of Roman Catholics, with Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism growing substantially, and many more people professing no religion at all.
Though the number of Canada's Catholics is in decline, the bishops have become more vocal in recent years.
The "same-sex marriage" (SSM) legislation, passed as a nation-wide right in July of this year, was high in the public debate since 2003, when the definition of marriage in Ontario was widened to include homosexuals.
Father Alphonse de Valk, C.S.B., noted in a March 2005 editorial of his magazine, Catholic Insight , that this "legislation has moved Canada's bishops to speak out individually from coast to coast for the first time since the close of Vatican II in 1965."
It was no surprise to see the media playing one bishop off against another, evaluating the varying strengths of their responses and claiming to reveal confusion and inconsistency — "reasonable" (otherwise timid) measures contrasted to the more robust "diatribes" surely show the Church "can't be trusted." Bishops spoke out, albeit in different ways, from the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and Vancouver. Letters were sent to the Prime Minister and petitions made to the House of Commons. There were pastoral letters, prayer vigils at the Parliament, demonstrations, exclusive interviews, and public letters published in secular daily newspapers.
Calgary's Bishop Fred Henry had two lesbians file a complaint against him before the Alberta Human Rights Commission. They felt discriminated against when he said, "Since homosexuality, adultery, prostitution and pornography undermine the foundations of the family, the basis of society, then the State must use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail them in the interests of the common good."
Though homosexual marriage made it into law in Canada, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, when speaking to Inside the Vatican about homosexual marriage, said "the issue was long debated because the bishops were the first on the battlefield, speaking as a group and as individuals all across the country." He said that "we may have lost the battle but we saved the honor not only of the Church, but also of human reason."
To see bishops act with force on this pivotal issue, gives a sense of unity and strength and provides the faithful and other bishops, with an example worth following.
What is Ahead?
The same-sex marriage bill caused a new sense of unity but there are many issues the Church must deal with in Canada.
Prime Minister Paul Martin is a parishioner who denies Church teaching on abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, homosexuality, marriage and euthanasia, and encourages others to do the same. But he still receives Communion at his local parish, while outside the Church there is a never-ending selection of proposals offered as the latest universal remedy to yet another social ill. Bishop Henry publicly summed up a proposed euthanasia bill in Canada, quoting George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984 : "It is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder acceptable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
A French-Canadian Bishop Speaks
Cardinal Ouellet told Inside the Vatican that there is no mistaking the situation Canada faces. From the merely political point of view, he said that "society is a disaster and there needs to be renewal at all levels. Even politicians are aware that if the liberal agenda is pushed, the economic decline will be serious and even irreparable. The family, and children being in a stable family, is the richness of a country!"
"There are too few of the young to take care of the old. Euthanasia creeps in; euthanasia will creep in to accommodate, and we will then be getting rid of people not only at the beginning of their lives, but also at the end, when determined by the state, professionals, or family members. We are getting rid of handicapped people too. It is a part of the pity of our culture. This needs to be tackled from all sides — from the pulpit, the parliament, the media and any other venue. We must act, there is no question," said the French-Canadian Cardinal.
In addition to real evangelization of the culture, Cardinal Ouellet says immigration can be a real chance for the country and the Church. "When people immigrate into Canada, we Catholics must welcome them with open arms, even into Catholic homes," he said. "We can't be afraid. Yes, cautious, but for our future we need people. We need to help immigrants keep their faith, or even gain faith."
Hope for the Future of Canada
Archbishop Thomas Collins of Edmonton, when Inside the Vatican asked what can be done in Canada, and what his hopes were for the future of the country, first recalled a danger to the Church that is often overlooked.
"We cannot turn in on ourselves, and we speak in unison with Rome," he said.
"There was a profound change in the 1530's in England, for example. In 1535 the Church became the Church of England. We as Catholics must remember that the Catholic Church is the Universal Church, and we happen, however, to be living in Canada. I look upon myself as a bishop of the Universal Church who has been entrusted with the care of a portion of the Church, which is in Edmonton, Alberta. Canadian bishops need to keep together and coordinate what is best for the Universal Church in our country."
The Archbishop said that, as Catholics, "we have not been as astute as people who are pushing their own secular agenda in getting things done. I don't think you can make a wall between your personal convictions and what you do in public. That is called integrity. Integrity means being integral, not being fractured. So we have to act with integrity and speak thoughtfully and carefully.
"We must infiltrate society with the message of the Gospel. When that doesn't happen, other people with darker values are very effective. It's disastrous.
"Many act as if the way to have a tolerant and multi-cultural and multi-religious society is to basically drain the public discourse of any mention of religion, even if your convictions are offended. We need to see where we are weak and see where we need to encourage, and then strengthen our public witness. We are not going away, we are moving forward."
And how we move forward is of paramount importance, he said. "It is absolutely important that things go from adoration to action. We have to start with our foundation, that we are citizens of the New Jerusalem. We are not at home in this world. We are aliens in a very real sense. Therefore we can't get caught up in our society, but must remain at a healthy distance from it in order not to get swept up in a lot of things it has to offer. Yet as part of it, we must be engaged in it. That is why things such as adoration of the Blessed Sacrament are profoundly important. Prayer is by no means the ivory tower stuff, but rather gives the context, which allows us then to move out and go from adoration to action, through politics, the media, entertainment, and so many other initiatives to shape society. This is for everyone — our values have been hijacked and why should a Christian simply timidly sit back while other people with a very real agenda take over?"
When asked specifically if he had hope for the Church in Canada, he said, "I am in no way discouraged. I am disappointed by our country. Immensely. But not in the slightest way discouraged, either about the external state of our country or about the state of the Catholic Church. I see people moaning away. I say, good grief, what are you thinking about!? The Lord is with us until the end of time. As long we seek to be faithful, Christus Vincit! Christus Regnat! Christus Imperat! "
Charmaine Graves is a Canadian journalist.
© Robert Moynihan
This item 6868 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
