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The Cardinal's Dinner and John Turner

by Fr. Alphonse De Valk, c.s.b.

Reprinted with permission from Catholic Insight Magazine
October 5, 2001

In late July 2001, Mr. John Turner, the former Prime Minister of Canada and a former Minister of Justice in the first government under Pierre Trudeau, sent a letter to all parish priests in the Archdiocese of Toronto inviting them to extend their usual support to the annual Cardinal's Dinner to be held on October 18. He signed the letter as the Dinner's chairman.

Informed about Mr. Turner's letter, some Catholic pro-life activists expressed their surprise that the Dinner Committee would have chosen Mr. Turner chairman. After all, Mr. Turner guided the infamous abortion legislation of 1969 through Parliament. This legislation changed the outright prohibition of abortion prior to 1969 into a theoretical prohibition only, with so many loopholes that within a few years it became clear that the 1969 law actually permitted abortion on demand. How could such a politician be invited to chair the Cardinal's Dinner?

The critics would not have objected if Mr. Turner had been prepared to publicly acknowledge that he was wrong in 1969 and during the years following, when he still publicly boasted of "being one of the architects of the legislation." But Mr. Turner has made it clear that he is not about to do so.

Subsequently, pro-life news media such as the daily LifeSite News, the monthly newspaper The Interim, and our own Catholic Insight, set forth Mr. Turner's involvement in the abortion controversy (see C.I., "Counter witness: the Cardinal's Dinner," Oct. 2001, pp. 27-28). Almost six years ago Catholic Insight also discussed Mr. Turner's record, including his refusal to apologize for or to acknowledge that he had acted in error at the time (see C.I., "John Turner," Jan/Feb 1996, pp. 4-6).

Archdiocesan statement
On October 1, the Communications Office of the Archdiocese of Toronto issued a release headed, "The 21st annual Cardinal's Dinner. The Catholic community united in service to all human beings. Statement of the Archdiocese of Toronto, October 1, 2001." The release was unsigned. It was sent to all parishes of the Archdiocese.

The statement first related Cardinal Ambrozic's deep appreciation for Mr. Turner's task "in chairing the 21st annual dinner."

It then summarizes Mr. Turner's 25-year public service in Parliament, describing it as "distinguished." It also relates his "less well-known" service to the community at large in some detail.

The statement further presents an evaluation of Mr. Turner's role with respect to Canada's abortion legislation. It does this, the release says, "in answer to the small number of persons who have sought to cast doubt on the firm commitment of this Archdiocese to the life and welfare of all unborn human beings."

According to the statement, Mr. Turner, in his role as Minister of Justice under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during the years 1968-1969, "merely ratified the decisions of the highest courts in Canada and other major jurisdictions." Moreover, in preparing the legislation "he consulted with experts in a broad range of fields and with community leaders across the country, including the leaders of our own Church." "What has happened since in Canada," the statement contends, is "the responsibility of all of society, not of any one individual, particularly one who neither willed nor mandated what came later."

The statement continues with another four paragraphs. In the first, it notes that "in the ensuing years various forces and developments in society have removed any limit to abortion." It concludes, "by action or by inaction, all of Canadian society has brought this about."

The next paragraph expresses the Cardinal Archbishop's hope "that all of Canadian society will come to see the need and therefore, act to protect all of our brothers and sisters, born and unborn, from conception to natural death."

Finally, the statement recalls that "in this service the Cardinal's Dinner was founded and continues today." It concludes by conveying the Cardinal's best wishes for the organizers and supporters of the Dinner.

Comments:
The hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have actively supported and worked in the political defence of the unborn, some for as many as 35 years, are clearly at one with the hope of the Archbishop of Toronto that some day Canadian society as a whole will demand, once again, the protection of the unborn. They, too, share the Cardinal's desire for the protection of all human life, born and unborn, from conception to natural death. This point should be uppermost in our mind.

Aside from this unity of purpose with the pro-life movement, the statement from the Archdiocesan Communications Office flatly contradicts those who oppose Mr. Turner's participation in the Dinner by presenting an interpretation of Mr. Turner's role which can only be described as a radical re-writing of Canadian history.

The reader is told that Mr. Turner-and by implication Mr. Trudeau, who in December 1967 announced he intended to make abortion legal in Canada- "merely ratified the decisions of the highest courts in Canada and other major jurisdictions." I ask: what courts? what jurisdictions?

In the early seventies I wrote a book entitled Morality and Law in Canadian Politics: the abortion controversy, (Montreal, Palm Publishers, 1974, pp. 184). It covers the Canadian scene from 1960 onwards, year by year, blow by blow. I can state categorically that there were no decisions by the "highest courts in Canada" at all.

Mr. Turner-who apparently has presented this view to the Publications Officer of the Archdiocese of Toronto-is confused in his memory of the events. Before 1968 he studied law in England. It was in England, not Canada, that in 1967 the House of Lords adopted the views of the Wolfenden Report, issued in 1957, discussing the relationship between morality and law and arguing that the two are, and must be, separate, because law can do without morality.

With his head full of the spurious arguments by Sir John Wolfenden-and apparently never noticing that they had been torn to shreds in 1959 by England's Appeal Court judge Lord Devlin (see pages 148-151 in my book), Mr. Turner introduced them into the Canadian debate: "Separate law and morality." He triumphed: abortion and homosexuality (presumably in private between persons 18 years and older) became legal in 1969, as desired by Prime Minister Trudeau, the Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, assorted feminists, and the spokesmen for doctors' and lawyers' associations. It was a huge victory for law without morality, that is to say, for law without Christian morality, because people immediately looked up to the permissive law as the new morality. For this reason we beg to differ from the Publications Office when it describes Mr. Turner's career as "distinguished."

Everyone responsible?
The statement further contends that these events of 1969 are "the responsibility of all of society, not of any one individual…."This surprising view is reinforced by the claim that "various forces and developments in society" were responsible for the removal of any further limits on abortion. Mr. Turner is made to look innocent and helpless, as if in the clutch of irresistible forces.

But Canadians are not the products of materialist Darwinian evolution, nor of unseen impersonal forces which make us do horrible things for which we can't be held responsible. We are responsible. So is Mr. Turner. It was he who spoke of separating morality from law. It was he who introduced the World Health Organization's definition of health, encompassing even the slightest discomfort, thereby assuring that abortion for reasons of health became abortion for any reason at all. Thus from 1969 onwards, free abortion "evolved" not because of unseen forces, but because Messrs. Trudeau and Turner had seen to it that the legal wording allowed a ostensible prohibition with a few concessions to evolve into abortion on demand.

And it was not as if Mr. Turner had never heard the Catholic teaching against abortion. The opponents of the 1969 legislation in Parliament were eloquent. Some fourteen "Créditistes" from Quebec, sound Catholics all, quoted frequently from the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas and Catholic moral teaching. But they were hounded, ridiculed, mocked, and verbally brutalized by the English-speaking daily media as "extremists," while contemptuously ignored by haughty Liberal Party Members of Parliament who helped crush them and Christian morality.

The Catholic weeklies and monthlies of the day, both English and French, analyzed and refuted the pro-abortion arguments. The Canadian Bishops issued their own statement (1968) which rejected making abortion legal under Canadian law. Aside from all that, Mr. Turner received thousands of letters opposing his proposed legislation and reminding him that the Second Vatican Council called abortion "an abominable crime." To now say that he and Mr. Trudeau "merely ratified" the decisions of others is absolute balderdash. It sets the truth on its head.

So we critics stand firm when we say that to honour Mr. Turner without first obtaining an apology for his role in the passage of the 1968-69 Omnibus bill is a counter-witness to the pro-life cause. We are now also truly amazed and disturbed at the attempt by the Toronto Archdiocesan Communications Office to recast Canadian history.

Fr. Alphonse de Valk is editor of Catholic Insight, a national magazine out of Toronto.

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