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COMMENTARY
December 21, 2005
Dark hypocrisy
Today is the winter solstice, our longest night. Fear not, the light cometh, Merry Christmas.“More than 2,000 years ago, a virgin gave birth to a Son, and the God of heaven came to Earth. Mankind had received its Saviour, and to those who had dwelled in darkness, the light of hope had come. Each Christmas, we celebrate that first coming anew, and we rejoice in the knowledge that the God who came to Earth that night in Bethlehem is with us still and will remain with us forever.” I’m quoting from George Bush’s Christmas greetings, which washed up in my inbox (and in a few million more) on Monday. He began by quoting Matthew 1:23. Mr Bush is a Methodist. Do I object to his greetings because I am a Catholic? No. In fact, they were the most Catholic thing to land in my inbox all day, and I subscribe to the Vatican news service. The greeting was not different in kind or spirit from what Mr Bush sent out the last four Christmases. In affirming an unambiguously Christian faith, Mr Bush embodies Middle America. Among their values, also mentioned in his post, “a responsibility to help those in need. Jesus calls us to help others, and acts of kindness toward the less fortunate fulfil the spirit of the Christmas season.” More broadly, part of being a Christian is not concealing that one is a Christian -- even, perhaps especially, in public life. For that would be denying Christ. However, as Mr Bush has repeatedly made clear, it is no part of his job to advance explicitly Christian interests in secular politics. This distinction is not hard to follow. The Conservatives in Canada have a Muslim MP, Rahim Jaffer of Edmonton-Strathcona, who makes the same distinction. It is only a problem for people who wish to make it so. Now, as a forthright Christian, Mr Bush is lucky to live in the U.S. A person openly espousing Christian teachings up here -- for instance, on sodomy -- can be hauled before the kangaroo court of a “Human Rights Commission”. He can be humiliated, assessed fines, lose his livelihood, be muzzled or ordered to act against his conscience, all without due process. That “midnight knock on the door” can happen, as Fred Henry discovered, even if you are the Bishop of Calgary, addressing your own flock. It is one of the differences between our countries. Contrast, too, the Canadian election campaign, where some media flaks of my acquaintance, following the Liberal bus, have a game going to see if they can trick Canada’s “Roman Catholic” prime minister into saying the word “Christmas” on camera. The embodiment of political sleaze, Mr Martin parades his nominal membership in my Church to reliably cradle-Catholic audiences when he is pitching for their tribal support. But he is strictly “happy holidays” on air and on camera. The Liberals are running about thirty incumbent “social conservatives” -- all openly Christian, opposed to “same-sex marriage”, abortion, and so forth -- in rural and semi-rural Ontario ridings, to prevent them falling to the opposition. So they are not opposed to religion, per se, only opposed when it cannot be used to con people into voting Liberal. In one Ontario riding, the Liberal candidate, according to eyewitnesses, declared when he won the party's nomination that "This is a victory for Islam! Islam won! ... Islamic power is extending into Canadian politics." The candidate denies having made the remarks, yet even so the episode has gone unreported. As numerous bloggers have noted, had there been even the hint of a rumour that a Conservative candidate somewhere in the land declared "a victory for Christianity", and boasted that "Christian power is extending into Canadian politics", it would have made headlines across the front pages. No one in the media would have given the Christian Conservative the benefit of the doubt. As an anonymous Muslim blogger in Quebec (“Islamic Knight”) wondered, what do the Liberals do for Islam? “Same-sex marriage? Drug legalization? Legalizing prostitution? The abysmal immigration system where you have doctors and engineers from the Middle East become taxi drivers and pizza delivery boys?” No, he observes, the trump card that secures the Muslim vote for the Liberals is “anti-Zionism”. Let me correct this blogger. He will find, on further inquiry, that the party can also be very pro-Israel, when soliciting the votes of Jews. You’d have to read party literature in quite a few languages to realize the “diversity” of their views. The contradictions don’t cost them, because they are hardly ever reported. The mantra we instead receive, from our mainstream media, is that Stephen Harper is “scary”. Re-read the above. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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