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| St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church |
It is time to remember.
Time to recall another epic failure in the history of Catholic leadership in our province. Why so? Let us learn from our mistakes and take charge of our future, God helping us.
"Who is going to
save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to
you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church.
Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops like
bishops and your religious act like religious."
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
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What's Wrong
With Newfoundland Catholics?
By
Frank
O’Leary, native of St. John's, NL
Catholic
Insight April 1998
Purgatory Regained,
Via Sins Of Omission
How is
it that Newfoundland lost its Catholic schools? We can perhaps understand what happened
in Quebec after forty years of secularist propaganda, but the events in Newfoundland
came as a great shock.
How do
we explain that there was not one single
member of the provincial legislature who opposed the Clyde Wells - Brian Tobin assault
upon the educational rights of parents, who had had these rights for over 150 years?
How is it that the leaders of all three parties, Liberals, Conservative, NDP, Brian
Tobin, Loyola Sullivan, Jack Harris, all three Catholics, went to Ottawa and pleaded
with the Prime Minister to rush through the amendment which would wipe these rights
from the constitution? What is the matter
with Newfoundland Catholics?
We asked
Frank O'Leary of St. John's to try to give us some understanding of what's gone
wrong and, if possible, to throw some light on this most difficult of questions
and also one of the most important changes in recent Canadian history.
The loss of our
schools was not an event but a process
Pounded
on an anvil
When you've been on an anvil getting an unrelenting
pounding for nearly ten years, one attribute likely pounded out of you is objectivity.
That would be merely unfortunate, but it would be a tragedy if charity got pounded
out too. Without it, personal relationships decay, civil society grows cold and
becomes uncivil. That has been the danger, and it continues.
For sensitive souls, being a practising Catholic
in Newfoundland has been a true test of faith ever since the Mount Cashel orphanage
sexual abuse revelations. Without the Catholic theology of suffering, the experience
would be regarded as a sheer misery rather than the extraordinary means of Grace
which it can be, seen properly. But we have been treated so badly that the temptation
to anger is strong. We can't understand what happened without recalling that, ultimately,
we are dealing with the mystery of iniquity.
Religious
racists
"You had to be there." While Catholic Insight readers had the political
and legal basics of the issue explained to them, can they understand that practising
Catholics in this Canadian province now know, in a very personal way, what it was
like to be an outcast in society, like being a Jew in 1930s Germany?
An exaggeration? No. Canadian-style pluralism
in Newfoundland means that if you don't want to be assimilated, but choose to remain
apart, to be "other," you are the intolerant one. We Catholics were branded
"religious bigots" for defending our constitutional rights.
Bill Rowe, for example, a lawyer, former Liberal
leader and cabinet member, and host of the province's largest Open Line radio show,
repeatedly stated on air that segregation of children by religion is wrong and must
end. Rowe knew very well the overtones of the word segregation, its negative connotations of the American South, its image
of bullheaded racists railing against the integration of black kids into white
schools. It was utterly wrong to apply this
term to a minority's voluntary choice. But he did it deliberately and audiences
took the implication: Catholics are religious racists.
If you want to remain apart from us, that means
you think you're better than we are. Ironic, though, that the pro-'reform' parents'
group chose as a slogan "One province, one people, one school system".
It echoes the cry of "Bin Volk, ein Reich, ein Fiihrer" from a former
day.
The experience has been positively frightening.
By the end of 1997, the Liberal governments of Clyde Wells and "Catholic"
Premier Brian Tobin had scapegoated and marginalized Catholics, stripped them of
their natural law rights, given phony "rights" to homosexuals, and extended full funding to the clients of Morgentaler's
abortuary. The media colluded every step of the way. Indeed, it would have been
impossible without the media's eager participation.
Only those ignorant of history and philosophy
can deny the totalitarian analogies which, one is tempted to believe, is precisely
why these two subjects are neglected by an educational establishment thoroughly
formed by the philosopher John Dewey. As Dewey said, "Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of
the collective society which is coming." That society is Canada. The 'harmony'
is Canadian bogus tolerance.
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| Newfoundland
Premier Brian Tobin genuflects before Prime Minister Jean Chretien after accepting
the Constitutional Amendment to Newfoundland's Term 17 at a ceremony at Ottawa's
Rideau Hall on January 8, 1998, as Governor General Romeo LeBlanc looks on. "He
who does not bend his knee to God will inevitably bend his knee to man." |
A deceiving state
Newfoundland's Catholics have had the full power
of a lying, cheating state turned against them, backed by the unanimity of the media,
the academic establishment and the unions, all joined in a massive act of social
engineering. Orwell and Kafka, Lenin and Goebbels nod knowingly. Most frightening
of all, for those of us who see the parallels with the Nazis and the Bolsheviks,
is that none of our fellow Newfoundlanders do. Instead, they believe they've been
righteous.
To make sense of how and why all this came about
one might use the former Soviet KGB's analytical method. In formulating and assessing
tactics, the KGB was guided by the concept of kombinatsiya, or the correlation of forces; that is, the total effect
of interplay between social, economic, cultural and moral factors. In society, as
in nuclear physics, the chain reaction can't begin until critical mass has been
reached. With respect to Newfoundland, this means that the accelerating secularization
of society and the corresponding loss of faith prepared the way for our defeat,
with the Mount Cashel scandal lighting the fuse.
In his article on the history of Catholics in
Newfoundland (CI, Jan., 1996), Murray
Nicolson wrote "In no place was the antagonism
more vividly demonstrated than in Newfoundland where, unlike in Canada, the Penal
Laws applied. And yet, regardless of the influence the Irish had in most of English-speaking
Canada, it is in Newfoundland that the roots of Irish Catholic ethnicity run deepest."
And therefore, too, Irish Catholic piety. But let us add at once: also Irish anti-
clericalism. Outlining the numerous impediments to Catholic religious and civil
rights, Nicolson continued, "It seems
appropriate to look upon Newfoundland in this early period as a purgatory for the
Irish."
The observation resonates in the 1990s. Undoubtedly
the forces arrayed against the Catholic position - the kombinatsiya - were powerful, but that can't be the whole explanation.
If the Turk was stopped at Lepanto by the rosary, the cause of Catholic education
in Newfoundland was not hopeless. Or was it?
Catholics
hardly "practising"
Twice above, I emphasized the word "practising"
when referring to Newfoundland's Catholics. That is because I was asked to explain
why the Catholic resistance collapsed in our second referendum. Exhaustion and depletion
of resources is one answer. Shortage of troops and resources in the first place
is the other.
Consider the following: the Catholic population
forms 37% of the province's population, but the Archdiocese of St. John's recently
acknowledged that but 30% practise their faith. Thus only 11% of the provincial
population were even in Catholic churches in the first place to hear the bishops'
letters (Which, by the way, is about all the bishops did "publicly" to
defend and preserve our schools).
Add another (American) poll which discovered
that only 30% of those who attend Mass understand and believe in the Real Presence
in an orthodox way. That would leave us with a mere 3.3% of the provincial population
who are Catholics with the supernatural resources to fight this battle. Indeed,
these are the only Catholics who truly understand why we had to fight.
One can compute yet other factors into the struggle.
This includes a lack of cooperation. Most zealous Catholics are not as well organized
or cooperative as those in the world. One of the hardest things is to get orthodox
Catholics to cooperate. (Fr. Virgil Blum, SJ, founder of the Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights in the U.S., was more blunt: most Catholics lack the
courage to defend the Church and the Faith.)
Mistaken
deference
Then there is lack of formation. Here it is
perhaps more a matter of suffering from the defects of our virtues. Deference to
authority, fidelity to the Magisterium, loyalty to the Holy Father, religious submission
of mind and will are all admirable qualities and were much a part of Newfoundland
Irish Catholic piety. In practice, though, they meant that the clergy didn't need
to be clerical because the laity had become thoroughly clericalized in their own
thinking, to the point that they misunderstood the respective roles of "clergy"
and "laity," identifying the "Church" as synonymous with the
clergy.
Those attributes of deference to authority,
etc., no longer fully operative in a correct way, left a residue of mere habit which
hamstrings the modern laity in a battle with secular forces. They still act as though
only the clergy and the hierarchy have the prerogative - and responsibility - to
make decisions or speak publicly on such matters. Few lay people act in concert
with one another without first asking, "What does the bishop say about this?"
(Often, however, that "appeal to authority" is a lazy or cowardly excuse
for inaction.)
Thus when Wells defined the terms of the debate,
characterizing an undemocratic, authoritarian, institutional Church opposing the
democratically elected government of the people, circumstances favoured him, and
our side also played right into his hands. We ourselves thought of this as "Church
rights." rather than "parents' rights."
Even at the risk of sending slightly mixed messages
and utilizing different arguments, every K. of C. council, CWL chapter and Catholic
school principal should have spoken out in the media across the province. Instead,
we had silence. Everyone waiting to see what the bishop would say. And our opponents
claiming that Catholics don't think for themselves.
The difficulty
of defence
But even given the organization, the cooperation
and the courage, would we have had the tools? How does one first ex- plain and then
defend, to an uncomprehending skeptic, the Catholic position and philosophy of education
when one doesn't know it oneself? We haven't had clear catechesis for thirty years,
and for that our clergy and hierarchy must take the lion's share of the responsibility.
Deficient as simple catechesis has been in the years since Vatican II, what is perhaps
more relevant to our political battle, is that even at the peak of our strength
years ago, there was no training in apologetics and there has never been any Catholic
higher education in Newfoundland whatsoever. Most adult Catholics' formal instruction
in the faith stopped at the end of grade eight or ten.
Wells's depiction, eagerly bruited by a compliant
media, thus had some natural, historic resonance with a great many Catholics. But
Catholics bought into it principally, I believe, because by now we were suffering
from the Stockholm syndrome after the many years of intense coverage of the Mount
Cashel scandal. With no voice of our own in the media, and nowhere to turn for succour,
many Catholics came to identify with their 'captors,' the CBC. [Note to reader: CBC refers to the national broadcasting media Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.] They learn about
their Church from the CBC, and see her through CBC eyes.
Once more, even this is not surprising. The
Catholics in Newfoundland have permitted their consciences to be formed by cable
TV, MTV and Oprah for years. These Catholics see "their" Church today
as a human institution like any other. Identifying "Church" with clergy
and bishops, they think it's largely the Church's own fault because in many ways
her officers act like those of secular institutions, trying to be relevant to the
modem world, being communal and horizontal, rather than having the courage to be
a sign of contradiction to the world, emphasizing its divine character, its vertical
and transcendent orientation.
For decades we've been living off the spiritual
capital of our ancestors, and we're overdrawn at the Bank of God's Grace because
we haven't been making deposits.
Catholic
faith leached out
Our schools' vibrant Catholicism of earlier
days has been leached out of them progressively over the years. It was heart- breaking
to see our side defending the preservation of Catholic schools on the basis of their
distinctiveness, and on the fact that the Catholic world-view permeates the entire
curriculum and ethos of the school, when most of those making this argument knew
that either it was no longer true or at best that the schools were pale shadows
of their former selves. (Even so, they were still Catholic schools, remaining superior
to the others!)
Newfoundland's educational system may have been
called "denominational," but as it was fully publicly funded, and there
was no purely public school system, it's equally accurate to say our system has
for years in fact been a public system. The title “denominational” camouflaged the reality, thereby salving and soothing
the consciences of the clergy, indeed the consciences of all parties, and of all
denominations.
And what of parents? It is often said that either
they abdicated their responsibility, or that they were too trusting - they assumed
that the children were receiving sound Catholic education in our schools. But should
they not have been alerted by what they experienced themselves in Church on Sundays,
by which they could have put two and two together? If they hadn't heard for years
from the pulpit a clear, sound, forthright and courageous sermon on any of the vital
doctrines, why should they have assumed their children were getting anything better
in schools?
Bait
& switch
Notwithstanding all these criticisms, it is
too harsh to say that Catholic resistance collapsed. For years and through two referenda,
we did put up a valiant struggle. Despite everything, weak as we were, with all
our shortcomings, and strong as our opponents were, it still required them to lie
to win.
These lies were the Liberal governments' calculated
ambiguities. In the September 1997 referendum, a great many people had been bamboozled
into believing that "religious education" in a new Tobin common school
system in fact meant confessional religious instruction, as presently exists in
the denominationally shared 'joint service' schools. But that this was not the government's
intent was clarified so late in the game—and we had no media of our own to publicize
the clarification—that the damage was irreversible.
We know who the Father of Lies is. Cardinal
Ratzinger noted that ambiguity is the mark of the demonic. Marshall McLuhan said
in a 1972 letter that the modern media are
engaged in a Luciferian conspiracy against the truth. And Larry Henderson, a
former editor of the Catholic Register,
and now of Challenge, once said that the
most dangerous force in society today is the power of the media. The Newfoundland
schools question proves those gentlemen prophets.
Well before them, though, Pope St. Pius X said:
"In vain will you build churches, give
missions, found schools - all your work, all your efforts will be destroyed if you
are not able to wield the offensive and defensive weapon of a loyal and sincere
Catholic Press, I would make any sacrifice, even to pawning my ring, pectoral cross
and soutane, in order to support a Catholic paper."
That EWTN,
the world's largest religious network with 1,600 affiliates broadcasting in 34 countries,
can be denied entry to Canada "opposed in part by CCCB bureaucrats" can
only be called demonic. Is it too much to think that had we had EWTN reaching Canadian homes, we might have
preserved our schools? That EWTN might
cement some of the cracks between home, church and school in Newfoundland and other
provinces?
People cannot respond to Christ's Truth unless
it is first preached. Concerned Catholics must make a specific apostolate out of
media work, as his Vicars have called upon us to do in Miranda Prorsus (1957), Inter
Mirifica (1963), and the annual Papal Messages for World Communications Day.
We must promote journals such as Catholic
Insight far and wide. And we must insist that the CRTC reverse its decision and grant a licence to Mother Angelica's EWTN. Otherwise we will be still further
scapegoated and marginalized. And His Message along with us.
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RELATED:
On the Subject of Catholic Education
Pope Emeritus Benedict's address to Catholic educators at
the Catholic University of America
