MONTREAL, Quebec, May 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Archdiocese of Montreal is currently advertising a fundraiser for a Jesuit think-tank that features a keynote address by one of Canada’s leading advocates for dissent against Church teaching.
The ad is for a benefit evening on Monday, May 30th to support the work of the Jesuit’s ‘Centre justice et foi’ (Justice and Faith Centre), which distinguished itself in May 2010 by denouncing Cardinal Marc Ouellet after he proclaimed the Church’s respect for the life of the unborn even when they are conceived in rape.
The event, which is meant to honour the Centre’s late founding director Fr. Julien Harvey, will feature a keynote address by Gregory Baum, who’s infamous for his long opposition to the Catholic Church on issues such as contraception, homosexuality and priestly celibacy.
Baum, a former priest who married a divorced former nun without having sought laicization, is particularly notorious for helping rally opposition to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reiterated the Church’s condemnation of contraception. But since then, he was a prominent activist for same-sex “marriage,” and was co-founder of the liberal Catholic New Times, which sought to undermine Catholic teaching from its inception in 1976.
In a May 2010 article for the newspaper Le Devoir, the Centre justice et foi’s executive director Élisabeth Garant denounced Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s defense of life, accusing him of creating “division, anger, and extreme polarization.” (See article on the Centre’s website here.)
In her piece, Garant calls abortion a “delicate, complex, and dramatic issue.” “A representative of a Church whose moral credibility is being undermined by scandals of sexual abuse should approach this debate with great humility,” she wrote.
Garant then goes on to accuse the Church of not considering the perspective of women in its teachings on abortion. “Unfortunately, in the Catholic Church there’s still a hierarchy consisting solely of male and unmarried clerics, systematically excluding women, who define the official discourse – particularly on matters of sexual ethics,” she wrote.
LifeSiteNews.com did not hear back from the Archdiocese of Montreal by press time.
Contact Information:
Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, Archbishop of Montreal
2000 rue Sherbrooke ouest
Montréal, Québec
H3H 1G4
Phone :
(514) 931-7311
E-mail: [email protected]