FLASHBACK: Canada's Catholic Bishops Place Low Priority on Amnesty’s Threat to Unborn Children

In light of the controversy erupting in Ireland over Amnesty International's sad abortion campaign, I remind readers that our own Catholic Bishops here in Canada did little if anything to push back on Amnesty International when it announced its new evil agenda several years ago. View the short video dealing with Ireland's challenge and then read the press release below.



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Vote Life, Canada! Reviews Annual Plenary Report of Canada’s Catholic Bishops—Threat to Unborn Children by Amnesty International Still Rates Low on Priority List

Toronto, ON November 7, 2007/Christian Newswire—“Tragically, news reports confirm Amnesty International (AI) has commenced abortion advocacy internationally,” laments Eric Alcock, President of Vote Life, Canada!“ but Canada’s Bishops maintain their laissez-faire attitude.”

In an August press release, Vote Life, Canada! complained that ominous indicators of AI’s plans, like threatening letters from terrorists, surfaced early in 2006. Yet this new global threat elicited simply a ho-hum “We’ll be disappointed” comment posted on the CCCB website in July 2006.

A short three months after posting this comment the Bishops held their 2006 Plenary Assembly which, insists Alcock, “should have been a beehive of strategic thinking for the Bishops to spearhead a powerful and effective mobilization of Catholics against the Amnesty move.

Yet official documents released after the 2006 Plenary Assembly indicate no discussion whatever of the Amnesty threat. Alcock is at a loss to explain “the tragic blindness and indifference of the Bishops to this worldwide threat to unborn children.” He notes this astounding failure was further compounded by the prolonged silence of the Bishops throughout 2007.

Incredibly, reports Alcock, “even since AI announced its official new policy in Mexico City in August past—while Bishops elsewhere in the world have been severing connections with AI—the Bishops of Canada have been silent on the matter.”

“Their silence still prevails, as it did in Canada nearly forty years ago when the abortion door cracked open in Canada.” Alcock claims the persistent call from Vote Life, Canada! has been the only voice on record in Canada holding Bishops accountable for their negligence in the AI affair.

Finally, last month’s 2007 Plenary Assembly announced the AI issue as an agenda item. Yet, exclaims Alcock, “The Bishops seem to be allergic to action when it comes to defending the Unborn. The item did not garner sufficient concern and consensus from the totality of Bishops at the Plenary and was referred to the Permanent Council for later decision!”

Referring to Amnesty International, the CCCB President was quoted as saying, “What a paradox that the smallest of human beings – unborn children – are now being put at risk by those who should be their defenders.”

“Paradox indeed but the irony of this statement obviously escaped the Bishop,” exclaims Alcock. “Who more than the Bishops of Christ’s Church are called to defend human life with all their might and influence? And what of those who take no action—or ineffective action—to stop the killers?”

FLASHBACK: Cardinal Ouellet Makes Plea To Caesar To Respect Religion

In light of a similar event which occurred recently in Ottawa with Toronto's Cardinal Collins, this is a timely reprint of a press release issued in November 2007. It deals with the appearance of  a Catholic Bishop before a public government commission in Quebec considering further encroachment on the rights of the Church to advance her mission in the world.

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Vote Life, Canada! Calls on Cardinal Marc Ouellet to Stop Whimpering to Caesar—Lead Like a True Apostle Not an Apologist for Canada’s Deadly Pseudo Catholicism

Toronto, ON November 13, 2007/Christian Newswire “Nothing sustains the killing of unborn children in Canada like the widespread practice of a false and corrupted Catholic faith,” says Eric Alcock, President of Vote Life, Canada! “and Cardinal Ouellet’s recent remarks have only obfuscated the true nature of the Catholic crisis.

“In a disgraceful capitulation to the worldly powers represented by the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Oct. 30, Cardinal Marc Ouellet pleaded for respect for religion and begged the secular fundamentalists to ease up because they were to blame for destroying the soul of Quebec,” observed Alcock.

Alcock insists the evidence shows the secularization of Quebec society has essentially been a reaction rooted in a profound distrust of the Catholic faith which for decades has been shockingly perverted by the Bishops as described in the recent Open Letter by Vote Life, Canada! “Longstanding worldly compromise by Canada’s Catholic Bishops has so dulled their spiritual senses that, like Cardinal Ouellet, they no longer recognize their own role in society.”

Alcock explained that where the three-fold role of a Bishop to teach, to sanctify and to rule is carried out faithfully, a society cannot but advance from paganism into Christianity and from imperfect expressions of Christian living to more perfect expressions of God’s will for society. He notes the history of Western civilization has testified to this reality. “Where (Christian) societies have regressed into paganism or atheism—otherwise known as secularization—the failure and corruption of Bishops is traceable. Quebec society is no different nor is Canadian society.”

"In a tragic display of swallowing camels and straining out gnats, rather than hammering renegade ‘Catholic’ and priest politicians—whose secularist mindset devastates Canada’s common good—the Cardinal disciplines only little old women praying their rosaries and rebellious deluded priests who, while deserving excommunication, pose no ‘secular’ threat whatever.

 “Cardinal Ouellet is looking everywhere for answers except in the mirror. In his desperate attempt to blame ‘secular fundamentalists,’ the Cardinal has indicted himself and his colleagues. A true Catholic faith generates authentic Christian living and sanctifies the surrounding community while earning its respect. The pseudo-catholic religion portrayed by the Cardinal is a victim of ‘anti-Catholic’ forces and the media and needs to be recognized, respected and propped up by the State for its continued existence.

“The Cardinal intimates that God’s promises are insufficient to preserve society, even the Church. But it’s really the Cardinal who must learn respect for religion—respect for a true Catholic faith which has power to purify and displace the most diabolical secularism, from the degenerate culture of the Roman Empire to the very gates of hell. But hell is another unmentionable reality in pseudo-catholic rhetoric—even to society in grave need of warning.

“Rather than calling for national fasting and repentance the Cardinal is counting on a magic cure—the International Eucharistic Congress—where he hopes revival will ensue. But the Cardinal ought to look once more to history to learn that great national revivals are always preceded by bold preaching and profound repentance. Bishops, please lead the way.”


Related:

My Subjective Assessment Of Cardinal Ouellet

Cardinal Ouellet Part of The Problem, Not Part of the Solution

FLASHBACK: Archbishop Collins Please Redress Schwarzenegger-McGuinty Scandal

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

This is a timely reprint of a press release issued in June 2007 dealing with the ongoing scandal in Canada of Catholic politicians defying Church teaching and the indifference/inaction of Catholic Bishops on the matter.

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Vote Life, Canada! Calls on Toronto Archbishop to Redress Scandal Surrounding Governor Schwarzenegger's Stem Cell Deal with Ontario Premier McGuinty

MEDIA ADVISORY, June 4 /Christian Newswire/ -- "The scandal caused in Canada and the US by so-called 'devout' Catholic politicians who defy the true Catholic faith reached new depths of disgrace last week," says Eric Alcock, President of Vote Life,Canada!

Even as Governor Schwarzenegger met with Premier McGuinty to contract a deal which underwrites $30 million in public funds for the willful destruction of embryonic human beings, both politicians brazenly affirmed a staunch Catholic faith.

Catholic teaching condemns embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) as a crime against the dignity of embryonic human beings since they have a right to the same respect as the child already born. Furthermore, Alcock noted, "ESCR is a worse crime than abortion since no mother sets out from the beginning to abort her child whereas ESCR always envisions the purposeful, willful destruction of human life at the embryonic stage."

"Canada has descended a path of barbarism and secularism, even sponsoring the monstrous evil of abortion, thanks to a succession of 'devout' Catholic politicians and Prime Ministers," says Alcock. "Their testimony confirms the spiritual apathy and neglect of Canada's Bishops, practically all of whom continue the cowardly policy of leaving the defense of innocent Unborns to a persecuted minority of 'fundamentalist' pro-lifers."

Ironically, Alcock disclosed that in Toronto on the same day of Schwarzenegger's and McGuinty's scandalizing actions, Toronto's Archbishop Collins was delivering a speech entitled "The Contribution of Religion to Society." One point the Archbishop made was that religion contributes to the common good of society by bringing to bear on current social issues the insights arising from religion's ancient heritage of wisdom.

Alcock also pointed to an interview in December past when Archbishop Collins inferred that he would not rule out excommunication for politicians who defied Church teaching. Father Raymond J. de Souza judged in an article in the National Post that "the sheer size of Toronto and its status as the nation's media capital make the Archbishop the sine qua non of the Church's presence in Canadian public life."

Therefore, for the sake of Canada's Unborn, Vote Life, Canada! calls on Archbishop Collins to reverse the trend of deadly silence among the Bishops, to immediately and publicly address this scandal through reaffirming Church teaching on ESCR and to initiate Church Canon law discipline for all professing Catholics who refuse to make their consciences correct with Magisterial teaching, starting with Premier Dalton McGuinty.

[Source]

On Catholic Bishops Withholding Communion: Can Religion and Politics Coexist?

Can Religion and Politics Coexist?

Originally published at Focus on the Family Canada

http://www.fotf.ca/tfn/religiousFreedom/stories/101205.html

(link no longer working)

October 12, 2005

Roman Catholic bishops should as "a sad necessity" withhold Communion (link no longer working) from political leaders who profess to be faithful Catholics but whose decisions violate the basic tents of their faith, says Edmonton Archbishop Thomas Collins (link no longer working).

"Politics is a sacred vocation. It's a life where we need people with a conscience," he told the Toronto Star (link no longer working; same story can be found here).

Collins is currently in Rome along with 256 Roman Catholic bishops, cardinals and heads of religious orders from 118 countries to attend a three-week Synod - the first to be called by Pope Benedict XVI since he was elected in April to succeed John Paul II.

One of the issues being raised at the Synod is the linkage between a person's faith and the Church's place in society. In a homily on the opening day of the Synod, Benedict stated, according to Reuters (link no longer working, but similar story can be found at CBC): 

The type of tolerance which permits God as a private opinion but refuses to allow him in the public arena, is, in the reality of the world and our life, not tolerance but hypocrisy.

There can be no justice where man makes himself the only master of the world and of himself.

Earlier this year, the Vatican denounced Catholic politicians in the United States, Spain, Italy - and Canada - for their failure to oppose abortion and homosexual marriage. One Canadian parliamentarian so far has been denied Communion for having voted in favour of Bill C-38, which legalized gay marriage across Canada.

It is a position that apparently most Canadians do not support. According to an Ipsos-Reid-Associated Press poll  (link no longer working) released in June, 72 per cent said that religious leaders should not try to influence government decisions. As one television newscaster recently claimed,

 Canadians have long had a tradition of separation of church and state.

But Sudbury Star columnist Claire Hoy, a Presbyterian, counters that this so-called tradition

was never meant to bar religion from politics. In fact, it was meant to protect [the American] people from the state imposing a religion upon the people, as England had done.

Indeed, it

has absolutely no legal, historical or constitutional standing whatsoever in Canada.

Churches of any denomination, Hoy added, are

entitled to say to a politician that you can't have it both ways: you can't, on the one hand, try to win votes among people of your faith by making a public show of attending the church of your choice, only to turn against church teachings on political issues and then expect no repercussions. . . .

[Either those] who take Communion - and partake in other church rites, whether Catholic, Protestant, or any other faith - uphold their end of the bargain or [they] lose their rights to participate.

Hoy also spoke to the common argument that politicians who get elected should disregard their religious beliefs when making political decisions.

Why should they? We don't expect them to jettison any other beliefs? Why should they renounce their faith in favour of secular partisan political values?

Parable of Poverty, Dead Children And A Religious Coalition

We are strolling down the street with representatives of the Religious Social Action Coalition. We have come from a faraway country to learn strategies for dealing with poverty in our own country, having learned of the formation of this remarkable Coalition.

They are about to take us on a tour of the streets of St. John’s and show us the reality of child poverty, which they claim needs to be urgently addressed—even abolished—because children are needlessly suffering every day.

As we walk and they share with us their exciting vision of a city and a province without poverty, a horrid sight suddenly overcomes us. There on the sidewalk is the lifeless body of an extremely young child, severely lacerated and with some body parts even missing. We are immediately repulsed and horrified.

“What,” we exclaim, “has happened here to this child? Surely a great and violent crime has been perpetrated against this child and neither the criminal nor the neighbourhood has had the decency to ensure a proper burial! Furthermore it is obvious that the police have not even been called to inquire into this greatest of all injustices against an innocent child!”

Leaders of the Coalition assure us not to be alarmed. They note that we are likely to see at least three of these children in such condition in the city of St. John’s each day that we are on our tour, some of them even much younger than this child and some of them entirely in small pieces as if shredded.

We protest and demand how it is that this can be so. Leaders try to calm us and assure us that this is not a problem to be concerned with. They would like to hurry us along past the dead child and further along into the tour. But we protest further, insisting that we must know more about these heinous crimes that are taking place against innocent children in this great city of St. John’s. We simply cannot move past this child and resume the tour until the grave injustice has been explored and understood.

The Coalition emphasizes that this is not their mandate and that they have chosen to look at other ways in which they can help children and their families, poverty being what they consider to be the most pressing matter. They boast that the urgency of addressing poverty was such an animating force among the leaders of the Coalition that never before in the history of NL is there a record of such a diverse group of religious leaders from all faiths coming together with a united voice to address such a great injustice.

But immediately we ask the leaders, “But what of these children lying in the streets, violently killed and disposed of in such an inhuman, undignified manner? What of justice for them? And why did not such a diverse and powerful Coalition first come together to put an end to the evil practice of child killing in the city? Of what use is it to expend energy in feeding and clothing children when clearly many children in the city are in serious danger of being killed?”

The leaders seem somewhat shaken and at a loss to answer these penetrating questions but assure us that others are looking after the problem, and that, in fact, many residents of the city do not find the killing of these children objectionable.

We are dumbfounded by this claim, asking Coalition members what sort of callous hard hearted people live in this city. Furthermore we demand to know why it is that those who have been assigned to solve these despicable crimes have not been able to put a halt to such barbarism.

We surmise that such crimes might be the result of recent actions by some particularly heinous serial killer(s). But upon inquiry we learn that this activity has been going on for almost forty years in the city. We are totally shocked and appalled by this disclosure and immediately cancel our tour in order to return to our native country, realizing we will learn nothing from Coalition leaders about addressing any of the needs of human beings, let alone children, and admonishing the Coalition to immediately change the focus of their efforts from “abolishing poverty” to abolishing child-killing.

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[This parable needs only one distinction be made in order to clearly reflect the reality of our decrepit condition: Mothers don’t dump their children on the streets of St. John’s. It’s certainly too visible but also unnecessary. The government pays abortionists to kill their children and dispose of them in a dumpster or sell their body parts to various private enterprise firms.]

FLASHBACK: Originally posted on the Vote Life Canada blog, Sept. 9, 2007

FLASHBACK: Betrayal by Catholic Bishops Quickens Secularization of Society

Check the news today…every day. The West crumbles and we appear to be powerless to stop it. Moral chaos, including rampant homosexual rights and pornography, looming economic collapse, creeping Islam, losses in religious freedom and freedom of speech, erosion of constitutional rights, waning international influence and credibility: THESE ARE ALL CONNECTED.  

I don’t believe in fate and I don’t believe God wills for us this kind of demise. However, in God’s economy, actions produce consequences and wrong actions produce—at the least—painful consequences. We are straying tragically from the path of God and we are experiencing tragic consequences, i.e. the breakdown of our society. Only God knows whether we’ve passed the point of no return.

God has direct representatives here on earth, those in the lineage of the Apostles, whose duty is to instruct and exhort in the ways of God. These representatives, the Catholic Bishops, have remarkable influence—far more than we can imagine—in the world, particularly in our Western society which traces its institutions and worldview predominantly to Christianity.

Warning is a function of exhortation and beyond a shadow of a doubt, we need the clearest and strongest possible warnings. They will not come except from God’s prophets and in our day, those prophets are none other than the Bishops. I will continue to make this case because unless the people of God rise up and demand holy and fearless leadership from their shepherds, all will likely be lost for our civilization and like Greece and Rome we will be replaced with a more worthy successor. Chances are—and if history is any judge—such a replacement will be revealed in the midst of great upheaval, war and destruction.

Will Christians secure the attention of God and His governors, the Bishops? Will their cries reach Heaven and the cathedrae of the Bishops? First must come repentance.

"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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The following was a press release issued in 2007 which provides in vivid detail one snapshot of the alarming failure of Catholic Bishops in Canada to preach and teach God’s Word and the true Catholic faith which is the only formula for godly character formation. Such failure consigns our nation to a continuing degradation and injustice which threatens the hard earned, God-given prosperity of our great nation.

Vote Life, Canada! Decries Honours Heaped by Montreal’s Cardinal Turcotte on Chief Justice Antonio Lamer, One of Chief Architects of Canada’s Culture of Death

Toronto, ON December 11/Christian Newswire—The recent funeral of Canada’s former Chief Justice Antonio Lamer was presided over in Montreal’s Cathedral by Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte who described Lamer as "a giant of the law," claiming that his passion for justice would make the whole world more peaceful and serene and intimating that his form of justice pleased God.

“What scandalous remarks were these and other absurd comments made by the Cardinal,” protests Eric Alcock, President of Vote Life, Canada!  “This event illustrates well the case made in our “Open Letter” that the Catholic Bishops of Canada are sustaining and fostering a pseudo-catholicism which has overtaken Canada and fatally blinded the vast majority of Catholics to the true tenets of Catholicism.”

The truth says Alcock, is that “Lamer practically denied the concept of Common Good, as set forth by Church teaching, and pursued his own perverse notion of individual liberty and autonomy as a democratic right, thereby denying God’s true justice.”

“Incredibly, by his own testimony at times, he sought to divorce legal considerations from morality, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the absolute law of God, urging Canadians to accept the secular nature of Canadian society demanded by the Charter of Rights. This is the secularization link to which Catholic Bishops like Marc Ouellet appear blind, a link which starts in every Bishop’s own diocese through a failure to adopt a faithful (to official teachings), comprehensive and determined approach to Catholic catechesis and exacerbated by a serious neglect of Catholic discipline mandated by the tradition of the Church. Both failures make it impossible to prevent—and rout—the radical anti-life and anti-family politics or ‘democracy’ espoused by renegade Catholics like Lamer.”

“A solid orthodox Catholic faith would have uniquely positioned Lamer to guide Canada safely through the choppy complex waters of Charter interpretations for the greater Common Good of Canada,” observed Alcock. “But his pseudo-catholic faith, imbibed and lived out approvingly under the tutelage of Canada’s pseudo-catholic Bishops, led rather to the dismemberment of millions of unborn children and also the intense assault on family and marriage.”

Alcock maintains that Lamer’s spurious Catholicism and the nation-wide scandal it spawned ought to have provoked the firm rebuke and correction of some Canadian Bishop aiming to preserve the Common Good, protect the innocent and defenseless and save faithful Catholics and other Christians from devastating confusion. According to Catholic teaching, scandal is defined as “an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil.”

“The fact that not one Canadian Bishop is on record addressing this long term national scandal testifies to the pervasive and spiritually corrupting effect of pseudo-catholicism. The lukewarmness, heresy or in some cases outright rebellion against official Church teachings by Canada’s Bishops has clearly left them susceptible to gross deception and manipulation by the devil.

“What a grievous time in our nation’s history when the most urgent and charitable work in Canada is to summon Catholic Bishops, the God given shepherds of our nation, to flee the wrath of God and return to the true faith.”