NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
September 28, 2003
The mission
My faithful readers (now there is an ambiguous phrase) may be under the impression that things are pretty grim just now especially in Canada. They are and they are not. I know this I get letters -- I know that by extension from my own experience there are many many Canadians entertaining a feeling that closely resembles despair about our country and its progress towards hell. I try not to be a "happyface" writer and make light of things which are not light. There are very serious matters before us as a polity and we must look at them as they are without flinching of any kind. I refer to the same-sex "marriage" business foisted upon us by an Ontario court with the connivance of the Chretien government; and to the gag act just passed by the House of Commons to enable the public prosecution of persons and the banning of literature which fails to speak approvingly of homosexuality and homosexual acts. We must pray that the Senate of Canada will find the courage at least to stall this latter mendacious piece of legislation. I am aware of the good efforts made by the Canadian Alliance to insert wording that would blunt its use by the courts for such purposes as suppressing the Bible and all other expression of religious belief. (Faithful Christians Jews Muslims and others have always spoken out against the sin of sodomy. Not against the sinners but against the sin.) But I believe they underestimate our courts which have already proved willing to read far beyond the words of the law when they are in the heat of political correction. Our judges -- a reflection of the men who appointed them chiefly the apostate Catholics I mentioned last week -- will do whatever they think public opinion will let them get away with. And public opinion is a fickle thing in a country that has been partially morally lobotomized. The truth is that Canada can no longer be considered a nation fully under the rule of law; and that laws like Svend Robinson's C-250 hasten our disintegration. If the Senators will not make a stand -- and they too are now overwhelmingly Chretien and Trudeau appointments -- we who must stand by truth must be prepared to go to jail to show the world what has happened in Canada where demands for the public celebration of sexual perversion have led directly to the abridgement of our freedom. And this is no joke. And yet it is joyful. It would be a joy to link arms with our fathers before us in the defence of our Christian faith and freedom. "Rejoice and be exceeding glad: ... for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. ... "And pray for them which despitefully use you": for we stand by the freedom of all men and for the salvation even of our persecutors. Let them see what we are made of. Go out to the enemy with your heart full of the Beatitudes and the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. And remember in the darkest moment that deliverance is at hand. For how often even in this prison of earth it has seemed that everything was lost just when everything was being recovered as in the buds nourished in the ash of the burnt forest. There is in fact plenty of evidence around us that this is going on. I want to give one example of a remarkable Canadian I met this last week who made me very proud to be Canadian again and filled me with hope for the future. The person was Anna Halpine who with her friends founded the World Youth Alliance several years ago when she was just twenty-three. A politician of a kind but whose degree is in music and whose faith is Catholic. The organization which is now carrying a message of hope and struggle around the world in practical good works was founded quite spontaneously in a gesture which showed great presence of mind. It began in the spring of 1999 when the United Nations Fund for Population Activities carefully selected 32 young people and flew them to New York to speak "on behalf of all three billion of the world's youth" and add a set of demands to a bureaucratic document. And these demands were crazed: the "right" to abortions; the "right" to sexual orientation; the elimination of parental "rights"; the "right" to "sexual education" without parental knowledge or consent; the "right to sexual pleasure in a guilt-free way". Anna and her friends decided to distribute a flyer which declared Those youth do not speak for us. It created pandemonium in the conference. And it immediately introduced them to dozens of young delegates from the poor and developing countries who like them felt betrayed by this horrific bureaucratic demonstration of the moral illness of our contemporary world. But rather than whine and blather in the manner of leftish people they set to work. Having looked into the face of the destroyers of our humanity they resolved to build. Let the world see what youth can do -- youth who are not sick whose hearts are instead filled with faith and real love. They have taken upon themselves the extremely uncool task of fighting the good fight within and around all the international organizations -- the U.N. the European Union and the rest -- which make aid to the Third World dependent upon following various guidelines that are morally depraved. For the culture of death of nihilism -- the peculiar product of the "death of God" in the post-Christian West -- is being imposed upon the poor and helpless of the world through endless bureaucratic machinations. Already this World Youth Alliance has through affiliations reached out to more than a million young activists building a network that is truly ecumenical and inter-religious. On a budget of paste and crackers they have opened offices on all the continents and rolled up their sleeves. I advise all my readers especially the young to go find them and help them. And work and work joyfully with all our strength. As Anna Halpine told George Weigel who asked her to explain her motivation for what I think is an heroic mission Pope John Paul II has told my generation to build a culture of life. Those are our orders. We are just following them. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top