The following article is reprinted with permission from the October 2004 issue of Canada’s national pro-life, pro-family newspaper, The Interim.
by Tom Schuck
(Weyburn, Saskatchewan lawyer and long-time leader in Saskatchewan and Canadian pro-life movements)
In both Canada and in the United States, this has been a pivotal year for pro-life people. For the first time, Catholic bishops have spoken out on the incompatibility of the Catholic faith and a politician’s position that supports abortion. It has been a long time in coming. One cannot overestimate the significance of even a few bishops speaking out, and distancing themselves from their own bureaucracies. In Canada, it is the Commission for Social Affairs of the Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB).
To end abortion, a pro-life person always knows that one had to first elect pro-life people. But to elect pro-life people, we have to first convince Christians to vote for life. To convince Christians to vote pro-life, we must first convince their spiritual leaders. In particular, we must convince them that no social program is worth killing for, and that there is little difference between killing someone and voting for someone who would permit it.
The Catholic “social justice” bureaucracies in both Canada and U.S.A. have been so enamoured by government social programs, however, that in recent years, the abortion issue has been buried by other issues the CCCB identified as important, but that usually just required more money to fix. In a materialistic society, it is only natural that some would perceive that the greatest sin is one that denies material things to others. But to trade the innocent lives of some for material benefits for others is the pinnacle of materialism.
In both Canada and in the U.S., it has been the Catholic vote that has assisted in electing pro-abortion governments, presidents and prime ministers, and in both countries, the Catholic bureaucracies managing social justice departments for bishops would appear to support pro-abortion political leadership. The cesspool of moral depravity in which we live has had a political leadership largely supported by Catholics and Catholic leadership. They considered abortion as an acceptable trade off for what they perceived as better social programs offered by the political left.
It was only a matter of time before bishops would recognize the sheer hypocrisy of excommunicating young women who work in the abortion industry, and yet support voting for pro-abortion politicians, or worse, participate in state funerals for former Catholic prime ministers who made public abortion possible and acceptable. With some bishops now stepping out of line and making their own decisions on who is unworthy for the Eucharist, it is only a matter of time before every bishop will reflect more deeply on the sheer hypocrisy of acknowledging that the unborn are people, and then distributing CCCB election materials that create a moral equivalency between the killing of innocent people and the saving of Medicare or eliminating child poverty. The moral confusion of our present prime minister, Paul Martin, is the end result of this Catholic culture, and his ignorance is a reflection of Catholic teaching in Canada on social affairs and social justice.
We all know and understand that if some politician was advocating the killing of the poor to eliminate poverty, or the killing of aboriginals to eliminate crime, or the killing of the sick to save Medicare, that we would not be receiving the same voter’s guide at election time from our church. Why do they treat the unborn as though they are not fully human?
In the future, we can hope that more bishops, who in the past simply went along with the majority of bishops in accepting pro-abortion Catholic politicians and distributing CCCB material, will now take a more critical look in light of the abortion issue. When they do, they will eventually appreciate the hypocrisy of condemning abortion as the taking of life, and then suggesting that some issues could make voting for a pro-abortion politician acceptable, or accepting a pro-abortion politician’s participation in our church as though nothing was wrong.
Yes, 2004 is a pivotal year for pro-life people. It is the year that our spiritual leaders have started to move onside by providing direction on voting for political
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