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TORONTO, December 4, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the name of inclusiveness, Toronto’s Royal Ontario museum has decided to change its system of dating exhibits from the B.C. and A.D. calendar to the controversial B.C.E. and C.E. system, which refers to the obscure “common era”, thereby avoiding any reference to Jesus Christ.

The new policy will begin with the exhibit of the controversial James ossuary which supposedly indicates that Jesus had a brother, contrary to Christian belief and tradition.

The National Post quotes Don Rahimi, the museum’s director of collections as stating the intent of the change “is just to be more inclusive, let’s say, in how we even describe the years. ‘A lot of people accept the reality of Jesus as a historical figure but don’t accept him as Christ, and to use the words ‘before Christ’ is really quite ethnocentric of European Christians. And to use ‘the year of our Lord’ is also quite insensitive to huge populations in Toronto who have other lords.”  The change was implemented after 10 years of internal debate and was reportedly strongly favoured by most of the museum’s curators but opposed by Hans-Dieter Sues, the just recently replaced director of collections and research for the museum.

Dr. Sues told the Post that the politically correct common era nomenclature is “divisive”, “doesn’t make any sense” and that people get “royally confused” when C.E. is used.  Interestingly, the change follows two years after the appointment of William Thorsell as President and CEO of the museum. Thorsell was for 10 years editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper with editorial policies strongly favouring abortion and homosexuality and critical of traditional religious denominations and their moral beliefs.

The Ottawa Citizen reported that at a 1998 conference on religion and media Thorsell indicated there was no reason for his newspaper to cover religion unless it had an impact on public policy. He said “I see religion as just one part of the sociology” and that newspapers have trouble covering religion because it represents faith instead of logic.

When he was appointed President of the prestigious museum Thorsell indicated his objective would be to target “worldly, educated, curious adults and their families.”

See the National Post article https://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={CB9B0D3E-ACFA-4C09-8D99-301B4ECA6BAC}  Comments may be sent to the museum at [email protected] The board of trustees of the museum may be seen at   https://www.rom.on.ca/trustees/  See past LifeSite stories on the Globe and Mail while under Thorsell’s direction https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1998/apr/98040401.html https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1998/oct/98100201.html