Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops of Canada

Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops of Canada

1) Introduction

April 25, 2013

If [...] you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked man from his way, he [the wicked man] shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death.  [Ez 33:8]

To the Bishops, the Successors of the Apostles, in Canada,

2) The Silence of the Bishops

With great distress faithful Catholics in Canada note the ongoing virtual silence of too many Bishops on the subject of legalized child-killing in Canada and expect the Bishops to take all necessary steps to confront the demon of abortion in Canada which has claimed over three million unborn victims.

3) Desecration of the Eucharist Precludes Respect for Life

In evaluating the factors contributing to the tragedy of legalized child-killing in our nation, how can any faithful Catholic fail to take special notice of the desecration of the Eucharist by obstinate, dissenting "Catholics" living in grave sin? This widespread and large-scale practice counts as the single greatest contributing factor to Canada's moral descent and disrespect for human life. Without acknowledging the neglect and/or indifference of too many Bishops in this tragic situation, it would be impossible indeed to account for such a phenomenon, because, in fact, the oversight of the Eucharist is entrusted entirely to the Successors of the Apostles. How is it possible to foster respect for human life when disrespect for God Himself, through the Body and Blood of Christ, is not only tolerated but modeled at every Mass?

This sacrilege of handing over Jesus to His enemies, through Holy Communion, is no less a crime today than when it was first perpetrated by Pilate 2000 years ago. The Scriptures warn, "For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." Furthermore, the Christian "cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. [1Co 10:21]." Communion with Christ and communion with devils cannot be had at once. Christians, who by association, sympathies, and actions participate in devilish strategies that destroy life, family and the Common Good, cannot participate in Holy Communion. Unless the Holy Scriptures can lie, the implications of this truth are clear and astounding: No such wholesale sacrilegious communion could take place unless so many Bishops had been communing with demons!

Shockingly then, just as "pro-choice" Pontius Pilate, who was "personally opposed," nevertheless delivered Jesus over to His enemies, so too many Bishops of Canada have dispensed the Body and Blood of Jesus to any and all persons in the communion line, even though independent sources cite that as many as 90% of "Catholics" reject the authority and certain crucial teachings of His Church. The truly faithful Catholics have been scandalized and demoralized for decades by this officially sanctioned sacrilege.

4) A Pseudo-Catholic Culture Flourishes in Canada

The result of this abomination is a flourishing pseudo-Catholic culture - one based not upon the mystery of the Eucharist but upon the "magic" of the Eucharist. Thanks to the negligence, or perhaps simply the spiritual darkness, of too many Canadian Bishops, regardless of the moral conduct or spiritual disposition of vast numbers of renegade "Catholics", attendance at Mass and mere reception of Holy Communion is assumed to magically confer absolution for even the gravest sins and satisfy all of God's significant imperatives for the Catholic. This grave misrepresentation of the Catholic faith not only dishonors faithful Catholics but scandalizes the entire Christian community in Canada, many of whom are forced to conclude that Catholicism is but another cultish enemy of the true Christian faith.

The Bishops are well aware that, according to the Catechism, those "Catholics" who deny Church teaching on the intrinsic evils of contraception, abortion and sodomitic relations as well as the mortal sins of masturbation, co-habitation, fornication, pornography, adultery and divorce disqualify themselves from partaking in the Holy Eucharist. Without first giving evidence in Confession of genuine repentance and receiving absolution, they may not receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Despite such explicit teaching, not only inordinate numbers of average Catholics condemn themselves through sacrilegious Communion but significant numbers of openly dissenting priests, religious, theologians, and professors do so as well. These leaders are permitted to further corrupt the faithful by disparaging the Church's doctrine on priestly celibacy, women's ordination, same sex "marriage," and other non-negotiables of the faith, all without public rebuke by the Bishops. The heresy dissent from Rome's teaching by too many Bishops themselves in regard to Catholic sexual ethics, particularly contraception, with its consequent immoral living by millions of Catholics is bringing Canada to the brink of demographic and cultural collapse.

But shouldn't the Bishops be warning such obstinate unrepentant persons that neither baptism nor the Eucharist will save them? Again, according to the Catholic Catechism, to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love is to be separated forever from Him in Hell. The Bishops know these things but their neglect or unbelief betrays them since they refuse to teach and to warn Catholics. Therefore many of them corrupt the faith and prove themselves not shepherds but wolves, risking the eternal salvation of more than 13 million Canadian Catholics. The result of their distorted, devilish thinking is a collapse in the integrity of the Canadian Catholic community as a whole and an entire generation of Catholics is ignorant of the true means of obtaining God's grace.

5) Pope Benedict Pointed to the Problem in 2006

Which habits have the Bishops determined to change in light of Pope Benedict's warning in September of 2006? In no uncertain terms, the Pope tackled the failure of Bishops to address the moral problems of Canada, specifically pointing to homosexual "marriage" and abortion and to the extreme split between the Gospel and culture, strongly evidenced by the exclusion of God in the political realm. If the Bishops continue the unscriptural and heretical practice of granting Holy Communion to those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, and refuse to take due diligence in defending the Holy Eucharist from sacrilege by the ordinary Catholic, Canadian society will continue to go amuck "in the most disturbing of ways," in the Pope's words, through neglect of the truth and of discipline.

The Pope's comments politely and subtly point to a pervasive counterfeit culture which is supported by these sacrilegious communions and the immoral lifestyles of Catholics living in grave sin. Multitudes of such corrupted "Catholics" said to be "in good standing with their Church" impact every strata of Canadian society, including politics, and further degrade it with their anti-God and anti-life attitudes. Politicians, particularly pro-abortion, pro-sodomy "Catholic" Prime Ministers, draw special attention and indeed are capable of shocking degrees of scandal but it is the average uncatechized Catholic voter, in step with the spiritual blindness and befuddlement of too many Bishops, who empowers these "pro-choice" legislators and killers of the Unborn.

6) Bishops Have Failed to Mobilize the Catholic Voting Bloc

There is perhaps no greater example of the dereliction of duty of too many Bishops to halt the killing of Unborns in Canada than the failure to mobilize the Catholic voting bloc in Canada. Legal protection for unborn children necessitates a political, legislative solution, a fact evident to even the least politically savvy of Canadians. Roman Catholic Bishops in Canada exercise moral authority over a formidable voting bloc of nearly 10 million Catholics and yet after nearly forty years of "legalized" child killing in Canada there is no indication whatever that Catholics have been guided by the Bishops to effect this political change in Canada through even the simplest of voting strategies, one solidly founded on basic moral principles yet not centred in partisan politics.

Why must such a campaign—mobilizing the Christians of Canada to vote effectively on behalf of securing legal rights for the Unborn—fall to some marginalized pro-life entity? Surely, if the Bishops had a will to stop the child killing in Canada, a focused and comprehensive Canada wide, diocesan wide, strategy to engage every Catholic to cast a vote for legal protection of the Unborn would have yielded long ago a complete halt to the killing. In the rare case where Bishops have been found to do anything in this regard it has amounted to a poorly organized, last minute, ineffective scramble. God have mercy on those Bishops for their failure in this most practical of all ways to end the holocaust of the Unborn. Their inaction for decades makes them substantially culpable in the deaths of millions of unborn children.

7) Political Consequences of the Counterfeit Catholic Culture

Out of Canada's counterfeit Catholic culture has emerged political devils such as "Catholic" Prime Ministers Trudeau, Chretien, and Paul Martin. Catholic Bishops were clearly in a compromised, weakened state when, in 1969, they permitted "Catholic" Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and "Catholic" Justice Minister John Turner to foist the "legalization" of the triad of contraception, abortion and sodomy upon Canada, along with the liberalization of divorce laws.

Up until PM Harper’s election, except for a five month break in 38 years, "Catholic" Prime Ministers have managed the affairs of Canada. Every one of them without exception has flouted Catholic teaching on sexuality through their pro-contraception, pro-abortion, pro-sodomy agendas. And every one of them considered themselves good Catholics and regularly presented themselves for Holy Communion. During that 38 year reign of social devastation and spiritual ruin too many Catholic Bishops failed to take steps to deal with this epic scandal. Despite the fierce defiance of Catholic teaching exhibited by the Prime Ministers there is no record of even one single occasion when a Catholic Prime Minister was denied Communion.

Canada's Bishops failed to deal with the grave scandal caused by Paul Martin, one of Canada's recent pro-abortion, pro-sodomy "Catholic" Prime Ministers, defeated in the 2006 election, who spearheaded same sex "marriage" in Canada and vehemently proclaimed his government's commitment to "a woman's right to choose" without restrictions. His Bishop, the Bishop of Canada's capital city, Ottawa, dismissed any possibility of discipline for Martin, claiming that the Prime Minister was a "faithful member of my cathedral parish." (This same Bishop attends the Ottawa March for Life and at the 2004 March delivered a homily condemning the killing of human embryos for their stem cells.)

Profound failures such as this by too many Bishops of Canada blur the line between that which is evil and that which is good and sustain the "extreme split between the Gospel and culture, strongly evidenced by the exclusion of God in the political realm" lamented by Pope Benedict. How can such a caricature of apostolic leadership be described as anything other than the "blind leading the blind?"

8) Bishops Urgently Need to Implement Guidelines Provided by Rome

Two sets of guidelines authored by Benedict XVI, if diligently and universally honoured by the Bishops of Canada, would decidedly impact the moral climate of Canada and immediately set Canada on a path to rescuing the Unborn. In a 2004 letter to the American bishops entitled appropriately Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion, then-Cardinal Ratzinger said that those "Catholics" who continue to obstinately reject Church teachings must be denied Communion. He cited canon 915 and other Church documents to support this position. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 2003, published The Participation of Catholics in Political Life which was directed to Catholic Bishops, Catholic politicians and all lay members of the faithful called to participate in the political life of democratic societies. Principles contained in this guide urgently need application in Canada but are constantly ignored by too many Bishops.

9) Bishops Need to Call for a National Fast and Penance

An international celebration carried out by Canadian Bishops in 2008 in Quebec City with the theme "The Eucharist, gift of God for the life of the world" should instead have been a call for a national fast whose primary purpose was repentance and conversion. God desires first of all obedience from His Bishops, certainly not festivals, celebration and song at such a time of crisis as we face. Ironically, God's gift of life is also the Unborn... who will pay with their lives for the ongoing desecration of the Eucharist.

Rather than using, as the Bishops did, the Old Testament imagery of an Ark making its journey across the nation, the Eucharistic Congress ought to have enjoined Catholics throughout Canada to instead put on sack cloth and ashes, seeking repentance and forgiveness for the disobedience of too many Bishops and the profanation of the Holy Eucharist.

10) Conclusion

Every day the Bishops delay, the souls of Catholics entrapped in the darkness of a false religious culture remain in great danger of eternal damnation and every day the Bishops delay, a further 300 unborn Canadians perish. Their silent scream continues to daily torment those whose Christian conscience remains unfettered by the deceptions of demons.

I hate, I despise your festivals -- and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings, and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. [Am 5:21-24]

Bishops Take Clericalist Stance on Illegal Immigration: George Neumayr UPDATED

UPDATE 1: Google cache is here.
UPDATE 2: Kathy at FiveFeetofFury has more details on the fallout. Illuminating, but as she says, Surprise factor Zero.
UPDATE 3: Google cache no longer there but I have screenshots of the cache.


NOTE: This article was posted early this morning on Crisis Magazine. Less than 3 hours later it had disappeared into nowhere land, i.e. erased from the web. I couldn't find it on Google Cache either. Fortunately I have a copy of the text. Too many Catholic Bishops can't stand the truth. I guess they convulsed when they read the article and all hell broke loose.

This is a rare and honest look at the state of the Catholic Church leadership in the USA. Canada's state, in my opinion, is even worse, perhaps MUCH worse. 

----------------------------------------------


BISHOPS TAKE CLERICALIST STANCE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
by George Neumayr

The proper configurations of immigration law is clearly a matter on which Catholics can disagree. But one would never know that from the recent pronouncements of the U.S. bishops. What they call on their web page the “Catholic Church’s position on Immigration Reform” is not orthodox teaching but tired left-wing clericalism.

Blurring the line between real Church teaching and personal political opinions disguised as Church teaching undermines both orthodoxy and unity. But clericalist bishops don’t seem to care. They like that blurred line, as it allows them to play lobbyists for their pet political causes, from global warming to gun control to amnesty.

It is a scandal that the U.S. bishops feel entitled to use the faithful’s money to put together propaganda campaigns for disputed policy prescriptions.  Were those policy prescriptions Republican rather than Democratic, liberals would be the first to object and bemoan the insidious influence of “religion in politics.” Imagine if the USCCB had a web page called taxjusticeforamericans.org and offered a “parish kit” that explains the “Catholic Church’s position on tax reform.” And what if it proposed an “intercessory prayer”(as it did for “immigration reform”) for the passage of a Flat Tax act? The cries of “clericalism” would be resounding.

But for what amounts to advancing the cause of amnesty, the bishops feel no qualms about using the faithful’s money to supply parishes with tools of propaganda, such as a “sample homily on migration related issues from Cardinal McCarrick,” which “may provide some insights on creating a homily related to immigration.”

Bishops who can’t even bring themselves to withhold Communion from abortion advocates lash out at “opponents of immigration” venomously, speaking of them as if they are apostates. By “opponents of immigration,” the bishops mean Americans who support existing law. What is contrary to Church teaching about that stance? Since when has opposition to illegal immigration constituted a sin against “justice for immigrants”?

Hectoring the American people about clinging too tightly to the rule of law seems an odd exercise of the Church’s moral authority.  If anyone is on shaky ground in the illegal immigration debate, it’s the Cardinal Mahonys who encourage the breaking of just laws. What exactly is holy about that?

The irony is that the same bishops who won’t criticize Caesar when he is wrong will criticize him when he is right. Securing borders falls within the authority of Caesar. For the bishops to treat the performance of that legitimate duty as evidence of injustice does nothing to aid the advance of the Church’s teaching on the natural law.

At the very least, the bishops could temper their clericalism by acknowledging that supporters of existing law and secure borders hold a defensible view. Instead, they act like Democratic partisans who use sophistries and motive-mongering to shut down debate. It serves the political needs of the moment  to cast opposition to their lobbying as opposition to “immigrants.” But that is completely dishonest.  Does disagreeing with the bishops on something as technical and complicated as “earned citizenship” really make one less understanding of the true nature of justice? Is a Catholic “anti-immigrant” if he favors, say, legal residency rather than legal citizenship? There is no “Catholic teaching” on the precise form of a state’s regulation of legal immigration, much less on its handling of illegal immigration.

The specificity of their demands makes their clericalism look even more ludicrous. The other day leading bishops were urging that the already liberal immigration bill currently under consideration in the Senate be made even more liberal. It has too many “restrictions,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez.

Bishops have neither the authority nor the expertise to descend into the details of policy like that. By doing so, they just weaken the perception of their authority where it does exist. The Church in America appears to be gravitating back to the “Seamless Garment,” the attempt by clericalists in the 1980s to lump half-baked liberal opinions on trendy topics in with the Church’s official teachings. Out of that confusion came a stream of inane statements on subjects the bishops knew little to nothing about. This had the effect of making all the Church’s pronouncements look like feeble opining.

A glimpse of the garbled message to which Seamless Garment-style clericalism leads could be seen in Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s recent remarks after the Boston bombings. “The individualism and alienation of our age has spawned a culture of death. Over a million abortions a year is one indication of how human life has been devalued. Violent entertainment, films and video games have coarsened us and made us more insensitive to the pain and suffering of others,” he said. “The inability of the Congress to enact laws that control access to automatic weapons is emblematic of the pathology of our violent culture.”

So a million-plus abortions a year is “one indication” of a violent culture and another is the failure of a specific piece of gun-control legislation backed by the USCCB to pass. Can’t the bishops see how this dilutes the Church’s teachings? Can’t they see that in their desperate craving for political relevance they make the Church’s most important contribution to politics, the transmission of natural-law orthodoxy, irrelevant?

Clericalism ends up dogmatizing personal opinions and relativizing dogmas, making the Church just one more forgettable voice in the din of public life.

Blog Postings Lean: Please Check My Twitter Feed

Lots of solid reading from the links on my Twitter feed. Be sure to scroll through the list when you visit. (You'll find it in the column just to the right.)

FLASHBACK: Political Theory?

Background: The following entry was posted to the IslandCatholic blog on September 20, 2005, just two months after Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide and about four months prior to the Conservative Party victory on January 23, 2006.

------------------------------------

Political theory?

Yesterday’s local paper, The Telegram, carried the front page news of the latest Leger poll showing the Federal Liberal party has rebounded to about 40% popularity. The thought flashed, “Unbelievable! Canadians have such short outrage quotients and memories too.” Then I thought, “Liberals gaining, Conservatives losing, what’s the chance the conservatives will resurrect the same sex marriage issue when they’re so low in the polls?” Not that I really placed any hope in turning back the tables on that issue. It took a fifty year sexual slide in Canadian society to get us to that point so how likely is it that one election issue is going to turn back that kind of momentum?

(Sorry all you fellow hard working right-up-to-the-last-minute Christian resistance fighters. We fought valiantly but really it was like Katrina and the Big Easy…we got clobbered. And just like Katrina, we’ve been warned for years. Just like the weak levees, we left ourselves open and asked for a pounding when we started in the 30’s through 60’s to defy God’s sexual order. But that’s all fodder for another posting maybe.)

Ok, so it seems the Leger polls have a history of bias in favour of the Liberal Party, and other polls show lower numbers but the point is that the Liberals don’t seem to be all that diminished, even after the incredible record of scandal, corruption, and political conspiracy. Who else would get away with it?

Yesterday’s paper also carried comment by Richard Gwyn, in an editorial entitled “The Permanent Party of Canada.” He said that Canadians “don't want anyone other than the Liberals to win an election, particularly not the Conservatives, who might have a "hidden agenda. This distinctively Canadian political expression means that in power they might do something different from the Liberals. At the same time, though, Canadians don't want the Liberals to be in power forever. This would be embarrassing. It would mean that we've become a one-party state.”

In proposing the solution to this dilemma by Canadians, Gwyn says,   “We leave the Liberals permanently in power, essentially because we feel comfortable with them. But we still must keep the Liberals on their toes by periodically scaring them with the prospect of a loss of power.”

Such a solution for Canada means that “the Liberals would become a kind of extension of the civil service, which, indeed, they just about are now. We'd rely upon the other parties for political creativity and originality. That, surely, is about as close as it's possible politically to have your cake while still eating it.”

If all this wasn’t so pathetic and downright dangerous it might be kinda laughable. Is it just me or does anyone else wonder why we don’t have a credible political alternative in Canada to the Liberals? As Gwyn says, Canadians are scared of Conservatives. Yesterday’s news also told us that Preston Manning is proposing a new school of conservatism in order to generate a viable conservative party that stands a chance against the Liberals.

I’m no political analyst and so it may be a dumb question but isn’t it about time the voice of Canadians opposing the Liberal party found an organization to belong to, i.e. a party? I mean, the Liberals are looking at a possible fifth win in a row. Is everyone else asleep at the wheel?

To answer my own question, I think not. It’s just that there’s simply not sufficient steam to turn any other wheels. The conservative ideology and sentiment in Canada seems reserved to a small number of agencies, journalists, and religious organizations. It’s definitely in short supply. Look at Stephen Harper. Nothing personal against Stephen, but he’s not much of an alternative to the Liberals because he seems only slightly less liberal than the liberals. Sorry but I don’t see any real expression of conservative values in his leadership.

Life Site News quotes Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition, as saying that without a firm foundation of objective moral standards, development of conservative public policy is going to be very difficult. Yes, Jim has hit the nail squarely on the head! He’s talking convictions here folks! And no amount of political strategy and think tanks in a nation can make up for a lack of moral strength. Democratic politics is about strength of values and convictions. Sure, you find political corruption and selfish human nature in the mix too but if there’s a dearth of contrary convictions there will certainly be a dearth of parties. Voila Canada!

If you’re following me, I have a question for you, fellow Christians, and fellow Canadians. Where do these convictions come from? To make this simple, let’s restrict the answer to a historical one. Conservative convictions in a Judeo-Christian society come from a biblical worldview. Yep. That’s right. That’s history. And who is the primary champion of the biblical worldview? Is it think tanks, journalists, and institutes? No. It’s the Church. The Church saves souls, teaches (catechizes) souls and sends them out into society, fully convinced of Christian truth, and ready to evangelize. They find jobs and other callings in society; some of them turn out to be teachers, doctors, lawyers, artists, journalists, etc. They bring their convictions with them. The stronger and purer the Church, the stronger the convictions. These convictions find their way inevitably into a political arena, in the interests of preserving and protecting the truth, which ensures a healthy future for posterity. Sorry if you didn’t know this but really there’s no excuse for you not knowing. After all, this has been the pattern of the Church for about 2000 years. You’d think we’d all know this.

Lack of conservation conviction in Canada is nothing other than a failure of the Church to do its job, to fulfill its calling. The Church has failed Canada. Miserably. The Church, with a capital C. Yet not the Roman Catholic Church per se, since the teachings of that body remain inviolable and unchanged due to supernatural assistance from God.

No, the fault lies with Catholic Church in Canada, which being a branch of the true Church headquartered in Rome, and this Church being the true Church of Jesus Christ, is called therefore to be the true light of the world, the true light in Canada. But failing in its duty and calling because of dissent, heresy and apostasy, it has destroyed and scattered its own sheep, as well as lost all privilege and every ground to inspire fellow separated brethren in the other denominations to return to the sheepfold. As the Church goes, so goes sour society. It’s the salt and light thing again, the thing that Jesus spoke about, remember? And if the salt has lost its saltiness, what’s it good for? No salt, no truth, no conservative conviction. No conservative party. Voila, Canada.

It’ll be a shock maybe to Preston Manning, but his plan won’t work. It can’t. You can’t squeeze juice out of a raisin. It’s already taken leave of the grape.

The juice that Manning seeks must come from a renewal and reformation of the Catholic Church in Canada. A good old fashioned nation wide conversion to Christ, to Christian virtue, and to the Church. Of course the evangelical Protestants in Canada could possibly make enormous gains to that end if they were to find the strength of Spirit of such forefathers as Johnathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Dwight L. Moody.  But given the extreme fragmentation and moral laxity caused by apostasy in Protestant circles, this seems unlikely. We’re in trouble folks.

Perhaps you can think of a better comparison, but my thoughts go to Ezra and Nehemiah, Ezra was called to rebuild the temple, Nehemiah was called to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. It took them 100 years to complete the work.

Nevertheless, God have mercy! Let’s start with an Ezra.

Posted to islandcatholic 9/20/2005

Birth Control Advice for Premier Kathy Dunderdale

On Monday January 18, 2013 one of our local media, CBC NL, announced that

“Newfoundland and Labrador has created a new office that will tackle a decades-long slide in its population and a demographic picture that Premier Kathy Dunderdale describes as frightening.”

…..

"We've got to find a way to grow that population…"

...

"Our demographic is scary," Dunderdale said.

Nothing new really. Our province, like all the rest of Canada and the US, has known for quite a long time about the demography crisis which is looming.

I immediately set forth to write a letter to the editor of our local newspaper, The Telegram. The letter appears below. Unfortunately the letter did not get published but that really wasn’t surprising.

(Interestingly, and as an aside, a few weeks later I noticed an announcement in the same paper indicating that due to strong reader feedback and in the spirit of respect for community, The Telegram would finally start publishing more of the letters that they received from the community. However, my letter never was published.)

Fast forward to last week when my attention was grabbed by this headline in The Telegram: Women Help Sustain Vibrant Economy: Premier. The opening paragraphs of the story began to explain:

The province has made great strides in increasing the participation of women in skilled trades, but there’s more work to be done, says the premier.

Kathy Dunderdale, speaking to a crowd of hundreds of students, tradeswomen and industry representatives at the Skilled Trade Conference for Women and Youth at the Glacier in Mount Pearl on Thursday, said the participation of women will help sustain the province’s “vibrant economy” for years to come.

Our premier wants to find a way to grow our population but at the same time increase women’s participation in the workforce. Are the two concepts compatible or does family structure and childbearing demand a return to more traditional thinking with an entirely different focus?

------------------------------

Letter to the Editor The Telegram

Birth Control Advice for Premier Kathy Dunderdale 

If Premier Dunderdale really wants to increase our population her first step ought to be to visit the province’s Archbishop and plead with him to fully disclose to about 190,000 NL Catholics the official teachings of the Church on contraception.

Newfoundland and Labrador once had one of the highest birth rates in Canada. In fact up until about the mid-1900’s all Christian societies for two millennia had prohibited—on pain of mortal sin—the practice of birth control. It was viewed to be “more atrocious than incest and adultery” (Martin Luther 1522) and “hostile to national welfare” (Anglican Bishops 1917). Those who distributed and sold birth control devices were criminally prosecuted.

But that was before Modernism and the “new” morality overwhelmed Christian leaders. By the 1960’s only the Catholic Church continued to adhere to such “antiquated” thinking. Unfortunately, about the same time a new crop of Catholic Bishops began to emerge who, under such mantras as legitimate dissent, politeness, or popularity, quietly kept the age old moral teaching of the Church to themselves. Thus the average Catholic began to act like the average non-Catholic. While morals took a nosedive, Catholics likewise engaged in contraception, pre-marital sex, co-habitation, divorce, abortion, etc., with little or no rebuke. No counter cultural influence prevailed.

Besides the Pope—who travels around the world warning of the destructive, unjust practices of abortion, contraception and sexual perversion—only a handful of bishops in all of North America actually teach, admonish and warn their people as required regarding the moral truths of the Catholic faith. And morality is no abstract notion; it yields its societal fruit as does all ideology. The chickens do indeed come home to roost.

Thus we have the demographics which Premier Dunderdale finds so frightening. But the new morality is more terrifying than simply contracepting away future generations; it also eliminates by abortion 1000 children every year. Since legalized abortion in 1969 we have culled as many as 40,000 or more from the NL Census record.

Compare the numbers. Even if Ross Reid finds for us a few dozen more immigrants every year it will hardly solve our crisis. We need bigger numbers, much bigger numbers; the kind of numbers that we’ll see only if there is a return to a sensible morality. Premier Dunderdale, will you incorporate that goal into your new population strategy?

Without Healthy Families You Can Kiss The Great American Economy Goodbye

Here’s an exceptional survey of why America’s (and the West’s) economy is floundering. And—is it any surprise—it centres around a rejection of Judeo-Christian belief and more specifically the Christian virtue of chastity.

Even if all the market reforms of the Washington think tanks, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes Magazine were enacted, we’d still need to kiss the Great American Economy goodbye. Below the level of economic policy lies a society that is producing fewer people capable of hard work, especially married men with children. As the retreat from marriage continues apace, there are fewer and fewer of these men, resulting in a slowly, permanently decelerating economy.

When men get married, their sense of responsibility and drive to provide gives them the incentive to work much harder. This translates into an average 27-percent increase in their productivity and income. With the retreat from marriage, instead of this “marriage premium,” we get more single men (who work the least), more cohabiting men (who work less than married men), and more divorced men (who fall between the singles and cohabiters).

All this is visible in the changing work patterns of our country, resulting in real macro-economic consequences. Fifty years ago family life and the economy were quite different.

Religion fosters a flourishing society and the bottom line is:

Thus the core strategy for forming great workers for the economy is growing intact married families who are united in worship through their community of belief and send their children to schools that inculcate those values and beliefs. Not only does that produce the greatest average human capital for the marketplace; it also produces the best citizens for the polis and the common good.

Full article here…