Opinion

February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Justin Trudeau showed the country his top priorities on Sunday when he laid out his conditions for supporting a united Canada. The son of the great federalist champion suggested to Radio-Canada that he would support Quebec sovereignty if Parliament moved to restrict abortion or same-sex “marriage”. As a result of his apparent openness to separatism, pundits are predicting his prospects for the Liberal Party leadership are over.

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But I say don’t underestimate the Grits’ love affair with Trudeaumania. Don’t expect them to so lightly toss aside the Prime Minister’s remaining legacy, a man who has been groomed for years to one day take over the party. Though the separatist comments are damaging, his subsequent unyielding declarations of support for Canadian unity will surely appease his supporters, the majority of whom are sympathetic to his brand of sexual politics anyway.

My question out of all of this is: in light of the growing evidence of the younger Trudeau’s extreme pro-abortion views, how long will Catholic leaders continue to prop up his leadership prospects?

Despite his insistence that there’s no inconsistency between his Catholic faith and his promotion of legalized abortion, he continues to be put on display as a role model for the next generation of Catholics.

This is damaging not only to Catholic youth, but to Trudeau himself – it allows him to harbor a sense of remaining a “good Catholic” even while pushing his extremism on abortion to ever greater limits.

Firstly, it’s important that we realize the full weight of Trudeau’s comments on Sunday. If you can measure a person’s commitment to a cause by the lengths he will take to promote it, how committed is Trudeau to protecting abortion and same-sex “marriage” in Quebec? Apparently he’d break-up the country and risk damaging his father’s legacy over it.

That Trudeau still considers himself a “good Catholic” became apparent in November when he complained to media that he had been accused of being a “bad Catholic” by Tory MP Dean Del Mastro. Del Mastro, a pro-life Pentecostal, questioned why Trudeau was given a platform at a Peterborough Catholic high school twice in three years, while even devoutly Catholic Tories were never invited.

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“Are there any tenets of the Catholic faith that Justin supports?” asked Del Mastro on his Facebook page.

Trudeau said he was “surprisingly upset” at the remark. “My own personal faith is an extremely important part of who I am and the values that I try to lead with,” he told the Canadian Press.

For many of us, it’s hard to believe anybody could seriously consider that Trudeau’s views on life and family are consistent with being a “good Catholic.”

But if he has consistently been allowed a platform at Catholic institutions even while publicly airing those views – and his father the same for many decades before – then why would he think any differently?

Perhaps as much as anything, Prime Minister Trudeau is remembered for his resolve to keep “the state out of the bedrooms of the nation.” Thus he gave us legal abortion, homosexuality, and divorce, and then the Charter that led to state-funded abortion-on-demand and, ultimately, same-sex “marriage”.

We know how some Catholic leaders handled the elder Trudeau’s open flouting of the faith: when he died in 2000, he was given a nationally-broadcast state funeral in Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, presided over by the Cardinal Archbishop of Montreal.

Dare we hope that our Catholic leaders will handle his son’s case any better? I pray we can.

Admittedly, bishops have limited sway over politicians who simply don’t take them or the Catholic faith seriously. But if they can’t change the politician’s mind, they can at least protect the faith of their flock. They can’t silence politicians, but they don’t have to hand them a megaphone.

We do not know Justin or his father’s guilt, and cannot judge their souls. I’d say that given Justin’s paternal model, we can perhaps understand how he could have such a distorted view of the Catholic faith. We must pray that God would open his eyes and draw this wayward sheep back into the fold.

But it’s not enough to sit back and hope that God works in the man’s heart. If we truly believe in our Christian calling to love our neighbor, then we cannot allow him to wallow in ignorance or sin without clear fraternal correction.

Pope Benedict highlighted this “forgotten” Christian duty of “fraternal correction in view of eternal salvation” last week during a talk in preparation for Lent. He emphasized that the Church’s tradition of “admonishing sinners” is essential to our duty to love our neighbor.

“We must not remain silent before evil,” the pope said. “I am thinking of all those Christians who, out of human regard or purely personal convenience, adapt to the prevailing mentality, rather than warning their brothers and sisters against ways of thinking and acting that are contrary to the truth and that do not follow the path of goodness.”

So, how much do we actually love Justin Trudeau? Shall we give him his due as a lost sheep and run out in God’s grace to bring him back into the fold, or do we just leave him to the wolves?