The thorny problem confronting the bishops of the Catholic Church in Canada – Should Catholic members of Parliament be denied communion if they voted for same-sex marriage? – became slightly thornier this month.
Although Prime Minister Paul Martin had sponsored the bill that legalized same-sex marriage, said Rev. John Walsh, priest of Martin’s home parish in Montreal, he would always be welcome to receive the Sacrament. A CanWest News Service report quoted his explanation: “We can’t use the Eucharist as a time … to judge a person’s conscience by refusing them communion.”
What created the problem was the fact that Charles Angus, a Northern Ontario socialist MP, had been very publicly denied communion in his home parish for voting in favor of Martin’s bill.
In much the same vein, Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary has refused ex-Prime Minister Joe Clark, also a Catholic, the right to speak in any Catholic school because of his unreserved support for abortion on demand. On the other hand, the sponsor of the abortion legislation, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was given a full-regalia Catholic funeral in Montreal five years ago.
So the plain Catholic layman can be forgiven for asking: Are there now two Catholic churches in Canada – the one that expects Catholic politicians to vote for Catholic morality in Canadian law, and the one that doesn’t? Heavens no, the bishops reply. But that doesn’t answer the question.
An answer might come from Rome, since the responsibility of Catholic politicians was said to be on the agenda of the first synod held by Pope Benedict earlier this month. But Father Walsh has decided already. “I think,” he says, “that we must look at the situation and say: ‘Are we respecting a person’s conscience?'”
Meanwhile, an Anglican (i.e., Episcopalian) academic, who was once an MP, took it upon himself to explain in the press why MPs should not be governed by their religion when they are determining public policy.
There was a time in England, wrote the Rev. Reginald Stackhouse, principal emeritus at Wycliffe College, Toronto, when all births, marriages and deaths had to be registered with the local Anglican Church. But this became unworkable when so many English people were not Anglican. They were Methodists, Catholics, Jews, atheists. In short, England had become “pluralistic.” So the state had to take over these registrations to avoid discriminating against non-Anglicans.
Canada, says Dr. Stackhouse, is now similarly pluralistic. No longer does Canadian law reflect Christian morality. It doesn’t prohibit Sunday shopping, or make divorce difficult, or restrict the right to abortion. Instead of Christian morality, we now have “another foundation.” We have the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the provincial human rights codes. “They ensure that anyone within our borders will be respected as a human being with the right to be free from discrimination.”
Anyone within our borders free from discrimination? Now this, of course, is simply false. The whole body of criminal law exists to impose discrimination – against thieves, murderers, cheats, child abusers. In the most callous way, it fails to “respect their rights as human beings.” In fact, just about every law on the books – the tax acts, the building codes, the environmental laws – they are all there specifically to restrict rights and impose discrimination upon individuals.
One other thing to note is that every law is the expression of some moral principle. All criminal codes are simply lists of moral commandments. Not just criminal laws, either. Other laws similarly express morality. Income tax laws express the moral principle that those who have more should pay more. The health laws express the moral principle that we are responsible for one another and should therefore control the spread of disease.
You cannot divorce morality from law because the basis of law is morality. And for Christians, Jews, Muslims and others, the whole source and authority for their morality is their religion. So to deny their religion a role in the shaping of law is to prohibit them from functioning at all. It effectively disenfranchises the religious.
Nonsense, says Dr. Stackhouse. Instead of Christian morality we now have “another foundation.” We have the Charter.
But then how do we decide what goes into the Charter? What is to be our moral authority for that? Religious people have the Bible, the Quran, which they discern as the Voice of God. What is Dr. Stackhouse’s authority? The Globe and Mail, perhaps, or the New York Times? The loudest and latest lobby group? He doesn’t really say. What a pity.
Subscribe to feed