The Swift And Stunning Downfall Of The Catholic Faith In Canada

ChurchMilitant.TV does an in-depth investigation into the collapse of the Catholic Church in Canada at the hands of Bishops who betrayed the Faith and their flocks. If you are a premium subscriber you can see the full 70 minute+ report by going here.

Cardinal Robert Sarah: An Eclipse Of God

An Eclipse Of God

by Cardinal Robert Sarah

Inasmuch as God has lost his primacy among man’s preoccupations, inasmuch as man himself gets in the way of God, we are experiencing an eclipse of God. Consequently, there is increasing obscurity and incomprehension as to the true nature of man, for he is defined only in relation to God. We no longer know who man is once he detaches himself from his Creator. Man intends to recreate himself; he rejects the laws of his nature, which become contingent. Man’s rupture with God obscures his way of looking at creation. Blinded by his technological successes, his world view disfigures the world: things no longer possess ontological truth or goodness but, rather, are neutral, and man is the one who must give them meaning. This is why it is urgent to emphasize that the abandonment of God by contemporary societies, especially in the West, affects not only the teaching of the Church but also the foundations of anthropology. [Source]

Gay Apostasy Subverts And Paralyzes The Canadian Catholic Church

Ottawa homosexual priest & U of Ottawa prof André Samson

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

In light of my last posting, readers may find the following article, now almost 20 years old, to be quite illuminating. It is simply another small piece of a very large puzzle picturing a sad history of apostasy amongst the Canadian Bishops. It could be an accompanying piece to Michael Voris' recent Vortex entitled Gay Knights and Damned Bishops.

P.S. Ottawa priest Andre Samson, pictured on left, recently caused scandal with his criticism of Cardinal Burke.

UPDATED: The Vox expands on and updates this posting. Interesting commentary.
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Treason Of The Clerics 
Subtitled: Gay Apostasy Subverts And Paralyzes The Canadian Catholic Church

By Joseph K. Woodard
w/ permission

Alberta Report, July 8, 1996


One of the mysteries surrounding the speedy passage of Bill C-33, the "sexual orientation" clause to the Canada Human Rights Act, is the near-silence of the Canadian Catholic Church in the debate. The Vatican defines homosexual behaviour as an "objective moral disorder" and has opposed repeatedly the very idea of "gay rights." The Church's silence in 1996 was a marked change from 1994, when the robust opposition of Ontario bishops was instrumental in defeating the NDP provincial government's own homosexual rights bill. Now a possible--and shocking--explanation has surfaced. It is now known that the Canadian Catholic hierarchy made its own peace with the radical homosexual agenda in 1992, when in a settlement of sexual abuse claims made against Ontario monks, it recognized homosexual "spousal benefits."

Despite Justice Minister Allan Rock's assurances to the contrary, C-33 will soon result in the complete elimination of legal distinctions heterosexual marriages and homosexual liaisons. And so the relative uninterest of the Canadian bishops in this crippling blow to the legitimacy of the traditional family has not gone unnoticed. Indeed, Bishop James Wingle of Yarmouth, a C-33 opponent, has condemned the "false impression" that his colleagues had actually supported the legislation.

It is true that no Canadian bishop actually endorsed C-33. But of the more than 50 Anglophone bishops, only a handful stood firmly against the bill. And when representatives of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB)--the church bureaucracy--appeared before the House Justice Committee on May 2, they effectively sabotaged what little opposition Canada's prelates had mustered.

When C-33 was announced, Vancouver Archbishop Adam Exner issued a statement demanding the law continue to protect "the conscience rights of Canadians morally opposed to homosexual behaviour," and "allow employers to make non-practice of homosexual activity a bona fide occupational qualification." Yet on May 2, when homosexual MP Svend Robinson questioned CCCB general-secretary Doug Crosby about that statement, the priest could only stammer an incoherent denial of Bishop Exner's position. The CCCB delegation also repudiated the Vatican's 1992 statement on homosexuality. (See story, page 31.)

"It was pathetic," objects Sylvia MacEachern, of Ottawa's traditionalist St. Brigid's Association. "Here was Canada's most infamous gay MP, the only one quoting the Church's teaching, and when he asked the representatives of the Canadian Church whether they agreed with it, they were tongue-tied." In her response to Mr. Robinson, Father Crosby's colleague, Jennifer Leddy, could only beg him, as a "serious advocate for human rights," to "give us a chance to participate constructively," since "we want to participate."

Apologists for the Canadian Catholic hierarchy say the speed with which C-33 was rammed through Parliament made any strong resistance impossible. But the capitulation of the Catholic bureaucracy to the gay rights agenda was in April, when New Brunswick Senator Noel Kinsella introduced his "sexual orientation" Bill S-2. The CCCB was offered the opportunity to make a submission against it to the Senate but declined.

Furthermore, the Liberal government has been promising to bring in such legislation since 1993, and renewed its promise last winter. Yet the national church office did nothing.

National bishops' conferences are a modern innovation. In 1964, when episcopal collegiality was discussed at the Second Vatican Council, the venerable Cardinal Oddi quipped that he could find only one biblical citation for the notion, the time during Christ's passion when "they all fled." By 1985, Vatican theology watchdog Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was warning of the "burdensome bureaucratic structures" of the national offices. They have "no theological basis" and "do not belong to the structure of the church," he insisted. Each bishop has complete authority in his diocese and is subject only to the pope. But the national conferences, however, allow the majority of the bishops to hide in anonymity.

The CCCB's General Secretariat employs just under 100 people in a half-dozen commissions, with a budget of roughly $4.5 million. Its functionaries deal directly with their opposite numbers in the local dioceses, and thus they control information flow in the Canadian Church. The secretariat is under the nominal governance of an executive committee--this year led by Kingston Archbishop Francis Spence. But the election of full-time directors falls to its periodic "plenary sessions," dependent on the "guidance" of the existing directors.

"Individual bishops have great difficulty in freeing themselves from the national conference," says Monsignor Vincent Foy, a Toronto canon lawyer. "They're afraid their authority can be undercut at any moment. It's a great burden on the Church. But the Holy See is now preparing a document on the problem."

While lack of accountability is the "iron rule" of bureaucracy, the CCCB's "gay-friendliness" is the result of personalities. In the 1980s, Father Doug Crosby, who was appointed CCCB general-secretary, was pastor of Ottawa's St. Joseph's Church. This parish was jocularly referred to "St. Joe's by the Whirlpool," because of the party tub in its rectory. St. Joseph's became home to the Ottawa chapter of Dignity, the homosexual fifth column within the Catholic Church. Special pews were reserved for Dignity members at the church's noon masses.

Gay or gay-sympathetic priests tend to form a solid, cohesive block within the church, observes Michael McCarthy, a retired priest from the diocese of Saskatoon. "They have such an enormous potential to create embarrassment with their dirty little secrets, the bishops won't stand up to them."

While the number of homosexuals in the Canadian Catholic priesthood is unknown, it is known they have a particular interest in seminaries, where new priests are formed. On the eve of Pope John Paul II's visit to Canada in 1984, Emmett Cardinal Carter, then-archbishop of Toronto, ordered a clean-up of his St. Augustine's Seminary. "Students in the residence could hear other seminarians padding up and down the halls at night, and everybody knew what was going on," says one Toronto-area priest, who wishes to remain anonymous. The obvious theological dissidents were fired, but the previous graduates were already worming their way through the Canadian hierarchy.

An investigation into St. Augustine's found no evidence of homosexual behaviour. That investigation, however, was led by the then-bishop of London, Ont., Marcel Gervais. Bishop Gervais subsequent career has revealed him to be one of Canada's foremost gay-friendly clerics. He has since become Archbishop of Ottawa, sometime president of the CCCB, grand chancellor of Ottawa's dissident St. Peter's Seminary, and the ultimate superior--and protector--of its heterodox sexual ethicist, Fr. Andre Guindon. (See story, page 30.)

A just-published book, Who's in the Seminary, suggests that Canadian seminaries are still hothouses of homosexuality. St. Paul University professor Martin Rovers sent out 455 questionnaires to students at Canada's three major seminaries (St. Augustine's, London's St. Peter's, and Edmonton's St. Joseph's). Fully 25% of the 203 respondents claimed they were either gay, bisexual or unsure of their orientation. As with most self-reported surveys, the accuracy of Prof. Rovers data is open to question, yet it is certain that homosexual representation in Canadian seminaries is many times higher than the now-accepted figure of 1.5% to 3% for the population at large.

"The Catholic Church had a major problem with the retention of priests through the 1970s," says Pennsylvania State University sociologist Philip Jenkins, author of the major new study, Pedophiles and Priests. "So they let in a lot of guys they ought not to have." Many thousands of priests had left the North American churches after the tumultuous changes ushered in by the Second Vatican Council. Desperate for new vocations, seminaries relaxed intellectual and moral standards. According to Prof. Jenkins, many homosexuals have been ordained since then, resulting in "the gay movement becoming solidly entrenched in the Canadian hierarchy." He cautions, however, not to confuse the issues of homosexuality and pedophilia. "If you look dispassionately at the figures, priestly pedophiles run maybe two per thousand, about the same as the rest of the population," says Prof. Jenkins, an Episcopalian.

The perception of a pedophilia crisis was created both by a hostile media and by the division between conservative and liberal Catholics, says Prof. Jenkins. The former blamed homosexuality, and the latter, celibacy. "In fact, the figures indicate that there is no Catholic pedophilia problem, so it's not caused by celibacy." Most of the recent school and choir scandals have not been pedophilia, with prepubescent victims. Rather, they've involved 14-or 15-year-old boys--which is classic homosexuality. That problem, Prof. Jenkins repeats, arose from poor recruiting and later, subversive networking among gay priests.

Ironically, it is the worst homosexual scandal in Canadian history that has cemented the power of gay network within the Church. The Christian Brothers, a lay Catholic order, was for decades under contract to the government of Ontario to run reform schools at Alfred, near Ottawa, and Uxbridge, near Toronto. These schools may have seen some 500 to 1000 cases of physical and sexual abuse, from the 1960s through the early 1980s. When this abuse became public in 1990, a victim's group, Helpline, hired Toronto lawyer Roger Tucker to pursue their claims. Mr. Tucker approached long-time liberal-Catholic functionary Doug Roche, to mediate. Mr. Roche, a powerful Church fixer for three decades, was the founding editor of the Western Catholic Reporter, and a former MP and Canadian disarmament ambassador. He was then also Mr. Tucker's father-in-law. His mediation proved agreeable to the Ottawa Christian Brothers and the Toronto and Ottawa archdioceses. (The Toronto Christian Brothers have refused to endorse Mr. Tucker's efforts. They are pursuing a separate compensation arrangement with abuse survivors).

By 1992, Mr. Roche had completed an agreement whereby validated abuse claimants would receive some $20,000 each and keep silent about their abusers' identities. Yet by 1996, says negotiator Mike Watters, the claimants had received an average of only $12,000 each, Mr. Tucker had pocketed $750,000, and more than $10 million had been spent in administrative costs. Mr. Roche's fee remained secret. Even more interesting, Mr. Roche or one of his colleagues slipped a curious little clause into the agreement, one that was not noticed until years later.

"If you want to know why the bishops didn't fight Bill C-33 and argue the case against gay marriages, check out the reform school agreement," says journalist Michael Harris, author of Unholy Orders, an account of the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal. The agreement with the Christian Brothers' victims provides for dental, medical, educational, and counselling benefits to victims, their family members, and those "in a close personal relationship that others recognize is of primary importance in both persons' lives." This, claims Mr. Harris, constitutes the Canadian Catholic Church's recognition of gay spousal benefits.

It is unclear whether Ottawa's Bishop Gervais or Toronto's Bishop Ambrozic knew about the "personal relationship" clause in 1994, when both vocally opposed the Ontario gay rights bill. But by 1996, "I think the bishops knew it was there, and Svend [Robinson] knew it was there," suggests Mr. Harris. Bishop Gervais remained silent during the C-33 debate, and Bishop Ambrozic, normally the "pit bull" of the conservative Canadian bishops, merely distributed a summary of the lacklustre CCCB statement.

For whatever reason, dissident former priest and theologian Gregory Baum is glad the Canadian bishops ducked Bill C-33. "I don't think the Church has any business saying this is okay or this isn't okay." he says. "This was not a church wedding the government was debating, but a human right."

While Canada's Catholic heretics are pleased with the C-33 resolution, the orthodox are appalled. "The Catholic Church isn't a foreign institution," says Toronto lawyer David Brown, vice-president of the Catholic Civil Rights League. "Canada is founded upon a vision of the human being, grounded in religion. And if the country loses that vision, it risks self-destruction."

FLASHBACK: It’s Not The Homosex, Stupid

Here’s an article I wrote in 2008, as commentary on a disturbing trend. It's still very much relevant, if not more so. You may like the way in which it accounts for the intersections of various crises in today’s culture wars. (Or you may not!)

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It’s Not The Homosex, Stupid

With all due respect to savvy Mark Steyn who quipped “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” I wish Steyn would have pushed back for us the curtain of Western society’s bedroom a little further in order to give us a glimpse of the smirking elephant in the closet. Heaven knows we desperately need a paradigm shift in our thinking about sexual “freedom” in the bedroom.

Is it my imagination or do you notice that a great many “conservative” culture warriors—individuals and organizations, Christians and otherwise—have taken to lobbing grenades at those promoting and engaging in homosex, making that the defining strategy, if not obsession, of their war? According to them, among the top threats to our civilization is the “homosexual” agenda.

So let me ask you. What would you think of drivers who ignored red lights but who regularly demonized speeding drivers as the real enemies on the road? Comical? Yes, but consider this. Heterosexuals who rail against homosex, which indeed is a particularly odious variation of sterile sex, are—with strikingly few exceptions—themselves egregiously addicted to their own pleasurable variety of sterile sex. Equally comical, of course, if you consider sterile sex per se to be in a league with dangerous behaviours such as running red lights.

But please don’t jump ship at this point. Hear me out. I know that our post modern society, parroting the relativism of its enlightened pulpiteers, considers this subject settled and entirely off limits. Any suggestion to re-open it is probably constituted an offense in itself—a possible relapse to a prudish repressive sexual ethic of Victorian times.

“But we believe in real marriage, the traditional kind, one man and one woman for life, and sex only in that context. That’s the correct standard because it’s God’s standard. A married man and woman can make their own decisions in good conscience about the kind of sex they engage in. It’s nobody else’s business.”

Indeed, that’s the claim, but tragically these days it rarely goes beyond a claim. For too many conservatives, yes, and Christians also, who normally relish opportunities to expose politically correct speech, the lack of reasoned debate and evasions of the truth, a remarkable about-turn takes place when the truth concerning sexual disorders gets a little too close to home.

Whoa there! Truth? Disorders? According to who?

Can it be a shock to the reader that throughout two millennia of Western civilization—as well as nearly two millennia of Jewish thought which preceded it—the moral consensus on sterile sex could be summed up like this: All sexual activity, both heterosexual and otherwise, practiced with a view to circumvent procreation constitutes a perversion of God’s order and an abomination.

Here we could take our pick of sources, from the Early Fathers through to Martin Luther, John Calvin, or any other reputable preacher, bible scholar or theologian, right up to the early and mid 1900’s. All—without exception—considered these acts as “a most unnatural wickedness, and a grievous wrong.”

Thus we had the American and Canadian laws which prohibited the sale and distribution of devices that aided in such perversity and which were not rescinded until the 1960’s. Thus we record the witness of some of Western society’s most public figures, such as U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who matter-of-factly labeled the practice of birth control as “the capital sin” against civilization.

But are such ideas peculiarly Western, or even Christian? A surprising number of non-Western cultures throughout history fully squared with Christian teaching on this point. Mahatma Ghandi, a world famous reformer and Hindu, condemned sterile heterosex as a corrupter of morals, a destroyer of marriage and a further degradation of women.

But regardless, truth—the old-fashioned objective kind—is no respecter of cultures and the fallout in our society from a denial of this particular truth has been debilitating. Take note of the Anglicans, the first Christian denomination to break rank with the faith of their fathers on this major doctrine. They formalized the opening of a Pandora’s Box in 1930 by allowing certain exceptions for sterile heterosex and are now being rent asunder by the practice of sterile homosex in the bedrooms of their Bishops. Coincidence?

The extreme break with Christian tradition represented by this acculturated disorder raises serious questions about just how much hostility towards God we have harbored this past generation or two. Some say our rejection of God—played out in this sexual arena—has so cursed our Western society as to account for not only our sex-crazed degeneracy but also family and marriage deformities and breakups, the abortion holocaust, dangerously higher quotas of immigration due to falling birthrates, the growing threat of Islam, the secularization phenomenon with its evil twin Christianophobia and a mounting civilizational self-loathing.

This is a hard pill for many to swallow. But can we admit this much at least: Steyn got it perfectly right when he prophesied the death of Western society due to reproductive sterility. Not for a moment did he suggest that even ten thousand new conferences and/or books on Islam, the tyranny of homosex, the battle for marriage and the family, secular humanism or Christophobia would save us. No, very clearly he stated that it was the question of birthrate which we have refused to address. That alone will cause our society to implode. Steyn put his finger on the precise nature of the problem. Likewise the solution, if it was any closer, might jump up and bite us.

The yearning of many contemporary Christians for a cultural fix through revivalist and “biblical” calls to repentance must also take the birthrate—and sterile heterosex—into account. Though some will contest the point, it must be admitted that any conversion wrought through the preaching of a Whitefield, Finney, et al will not only demand our hearts get right with God but will necessarily reinstitute cultural prohibitions and taboos supporting the age old and exegetically superior biblical interpretation of the sin of Onanism.

The very thought makes many shudder and some to say,

Surely, God, we can instead pay women to have babies, still hold on to our hard earned sexual “freedoms” and save our future. Otherwise, God, this is really going to hurt!

The suggestion that our future hinges on the abandonment of sterile heterosex is utterly disconcerting. It’s too much to grasp—let alone admit—that old fashioned traditional Western wisdom on sexuality was spot on.

But no, it was much more than that. It truly was a civilizational bulwark.

Preachers and pundits would do well then to cease from their various crusades against homosex, Islam, etc. in order to refocus their energies and resources to formulate a new strategy which targets the real enemy. By attacking the ideology and behaviour which is directly fuelling our demographic demise, our odds of making gains in this war are markedly improved.

Another point must be raised. The defense of current phony and lethal sexual “liberties” may be worthy of the label progressive but hardly worthy of the label conservative, and certainly unworthy of the name Christian, at least historically. Such perversions of true liberty were legitimized by the victories of yesteryear’s liberals yet they currently enslave us because they are defended by today’s “conservatives.” Conservatives must seriously examine their own complicity in the sterile sex agenda—which has aided in the destruction of society and has rightly identified them as co-conspirators—and be encouraged to instead stand in defense of established Western wisdom.

Conservatives must decide what it is that they are fighting to conserve. Indeed, what else deserves conservation, other than the collective wisdom and institutions central to Western thought and civilization? Isn’t this precisely why conservatives fight unhesitatingly against abortion, attacks on marriage, disintegration of family, pornography, lowering of morals, etc? Yet why have we not been fighting the one mortal enemy which Western wisdom has explicitly warned—in loudest fashion this past 100 years—would spawn precisely such an epidemic of evils? Sterile heterosex is a beguiling demon of tremendous significance and must be opposed with all our energies and by all possible means.

Instead, we have been trying to beef up our society in order to withstand the intense battering spawned by our own endorsement of sexual license: Educate about the radical homosexual agenda. Expose the dangers and tyranny of secular humanism. Equip Canadians to confront the threat of Islam. Bolster the family and marriage and fight those who attack it.

It’s like trying to engineer more impact resistant cars rather than require drivers to stop at red lights. At this stage, it seems we have even forgotten the red light is there, or perhaps by now we have removed it entirely from the intersection. Is it any wonder the “culture war” is being lost?

So yes, it is the behaviour and specifically it’s sterile sex—of all brands. With great courage, it needs to be identified as such, properly condemned and duly proscribed.

Which again brings us back to Steyn’s famous line and his sober closing:

It's the demography, stupid. And, if they can't muster the will to change course, then "What do you leave behind?" is the only question that matters.

Michael Voris Charges Catholic Bishops With Lies And Deception

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

“Some Bishop has got to have the spine to step up and say this all publicly… admit to his own complicity if he has been complicit and call out the global failings of his brother Bishops. This is a public apostasy and must be spoken about publicly. He needs to stand up and say we have deceived you about contraception by keeping our mouths shut. We have lied to you about the social justice aspects of the Church's teaching and their implementation…”

Emerging Catholics Comprise None Devout

Bishops Right About The Wrong Things In Vatican Surveys

I've covered the Vatican surveys in more than one posting and with many tweets.

These present some shockingly sad realities about the collapse of the practice of the Catholic faith.

Michael Voris pulls the pieces of the puzzle together.

Christmas 2013: The State Of Catholicity In Our Nation

A few morning thoughts on Christmas Eve 2013, from the desk of a pastor in South Texas.

During my year as a hospital chaplain at a “Christian” hospital, I was reminded of something every day and every night. My fellow Protestant Chaplain Coworkers, and I, were not encouraged to talk about Jesus or God in our daily 20 to 40 room visits. If a woman was struggling over whether or not to have an abortion, we were told by our department NOT to tell them the Christian position, we were simply supposed to be there as an emotional support, NOT as a religious or spiritual messenger. If a family asked for the Christian teaching on removal of nutrition and hydration, why were we told not to give Christian teaching, but it was ok to give the hospice and palliative care teaching on not wasting unnecessary money on a person in their last few years of life.

I frequently asked the department heads: “What makes a chaplain different from an atheistic hostess whose job it is to give warm fuzzy feelings?” Never got a good answer. The 8 Protestant chaplains I worked with, and I, were told to NEVER push Christianity on anyone, this was called “inflicting ministry.” We were basically supposed to be embarrassed of Jesus and His gospel. If there was a Jew, or Jehova, or Muslim, or a Hari Krishna believer, we were encouraged to go into deep conversation with them about their spiritual and religious beliefs. It was cool to talk religion in the chaplain department when it was the religion of Mohammad or Hari Krishnas, but it was not cool to get deep into Jesus or His gospel. So it is ok to get deep and religious with Moslems, Jews, Jehovas and Hari Krishnas, but it is NOT ok to go deep into religion or God with Protestants and Catholics????

Why is it ok for Miley Cyrus to dress half naked and do sexually explicit things on international T.V., and she gets props for it, but when an outdoorsman talks about his Christian belief that homosexual marriage is wrong, he is guilty of a politically incorrect hate crime? There are heroic people who struggle with homosexuality, we are not referring to them, we are referring to those who push for legitimizing “alternative lifestyles.”

Why does the preferred political party of the majority of Protestants and Catholics in America embrace a pro abortion and pro alternative lifestyles platform, officially, because they believe it is wrong to violate a person’s free will, but then this same political party violates the free will of all American tax payers by FORCING them to pay for health insurance that pays for abortions and sex changes? Why is it holy for THEIR consciences not to be violated, but it is not holy for the rest of America’s consciences not to be violated?

If these hypocricies and stupidities are not made right in this life, they will be made right in the next life.

Only the Catholic Bishops can turn this around. They need our help.

How One Canadian Province Was Cheated Out Of Its Catholic School System

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.

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 

Five Essential Marks of Catholic Schools