By Peter J. Smith
HALIFAX, August 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The President of Ontario’s Catholic Bishops told Catholic women that they have a “rare second chance” to reverse Parliament’s legalization of same-sex “marriage” in Canada according to Canadian Catholic News.
At the national convention of the Catholic Women’s League (CWL) in Halifax, August 15, Pembroke Bishop Richard Smith urged the league’s members to mobilize their 99,000 associates in a grassroots campaign to contact their Members of Parliament and vocalize their support for traditional marriage. Bishop Smith urged them to telephone, write personal letters – not ineffectual petitions – and “knock on the door” in order to use every effective means to alert MPs about their support for traditional marriage.
Bishop Smith, also CWL’s spiritual advisor, said that the 800 delegates must make sure they bring the national decisions back to the parish level for grassroots action in order to make resolutions “real to every level of the league.”
Bishop Smith told delegates he believed he was speaking for all of Canada’s Bishops when it came to the “incredibly important issue” of preserving marriage as the lifelong bond between one man and one woman, where children may best know and be raised by their biological parents.
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This June Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Canada that Parliament will re-open debate on same-sex “marriage” in its Fall session. Last year on June 28, Parliament passed Bill C-38, by a 158-133 margin, making Canada the fourth country to recognize same-sex “marriage”, after the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.
The renewed debate over the fate of traditional marriage in Canada gives a perfect opportunity for an ad limina delegation led by Bishop Smith to show Pope Benedict XVI how seriously they take his words. Bishop Smith told the Toronto Star the Pope had reminded bishops from Canada’s eastern provinces that “Faced with the many social ills and moral ambiguities which follow in the wake of a secularist ideology, Canadians look to you to be men of hope, preaching and teaching with passion.”