Governor-General Julie Payette mocked people of traditional religious faith in speech at a science convention last October. As a transcript of the ubiquitous and intractable reality of human evil, the Christian doctrine of original sin seems convincing enough. Some awareness of it might at least have spared us the sadistic horrors of the social experiments of twentieth-century totalitarians, as it [...]
Law Matters John Carpay The fascist disease of ideological coercion continues to spread in Canada’s body politic. For a charity to receive federal government funding through the Canada Summer Jobs program, the charity must now express agreement with Canada’s state religion, including support for legal abortion, transgenderism, and LGBTQ ideology. The Canada Summer Jobs program exists to create summer employment [...]
Spring, in December, is unthinkable. Nature is a husk of faded flowers and fallen fruit: its breezes have become blizzards, its streams have all stopped. And yet we know that there is a term to the world’s cold fury, a limit past which its tempests may not pass. The endless cycle of seasons is a permanent lesson in transience, a lesson so [...]
W Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin hen Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin announced her impending retirement in June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lauded her as “a judicial leader and trailblazer for almost four decades” who ranks as “one of Canada’s very finest jurists” A host of other politicians, lawyers and law professors have praised McLachlin in similar terms. In one respect, they [...]
After backlash from the public, faith leaders and pro-family groups, a Liberal-dominated committee voted to keep Canada’s only law explicitly protecting religious services and clergy on the books. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government attempted to nix the section from the Criminal Code in Bill C-51, legislation intended to clear allegedly redundant, unconstitutional, or outdated sections from the Criminal Code. But in [...]
University of St. Michael's College president David Mulroney criticized both Julie Payette's ideas and manners. Julie Payette, who was installed as Governor General in October, found herself the center of controversy after a Nov. 1 speech at a science convention where she insulted people who believe that “divine intervention” created mankind. Payette, a former engineer and astronaut from Montreal, addressed [...]
David Mainse On Sept. 25, Rev. David Mainse passed away at the age of 81 following a five-year battle with leukemia. Mainse was the founder of Crossroads Christian Communications and longtime host of Canada’s longest running daily television program, “100 Huntley Street.” 100 Huntley Street had its origins as a 15-minute, weekly show on a Pembroke TV station in 1962 [...]
Like the still, small, voice beyond the raging storm, the Wojtyla Summer Institute for Teachers, at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Barry’s Bay, Ont., did not set out to dazzle or even impress, but rather, quietly resonate. Every year in mid-August, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College hosts a three-day seminar for Catholic teachers as nourishment and fortification for the [...]
Law Matters John Carpay In a free country, should a religious group be able to determine its own membership criteria? Or should judges have the power to impose their opinions about whether someone meets religious requirements? The Supreme Court of Canada will soon consider this question, raised by Randy Wall, who challenged his expulsion from a Calgary congregation of Jehovah’s [...]
Throughout North America, a celebration of work marks summer’s unofficial end, turning our minds from holidays to harvests. This year, however, Labour Day comes amid increasing interest in the notion of Universal Basic Income, a scheme whereby funding for social programs would be diverted directly to individual citizens. Those able to live on modest means, in other words, would be entirely freed [...]
Under Siege: Religious Freedom and the Church in Canada at 150 (1867-2017) by Don Hutchinson (Word Alive Press, $22.99, 276 pages) In Under Siege, former Evangelical Fellowship of Canada vice president and general legal counsel Don Hutchinson writes about the history of Christian churches in Canada describing how the Dominion began as a predominantly Christian nation to one in which is being [...]
Rory Leishman As recently as 50 years ago, it was still a serious criminal offence punishable by up to life in prison for anyone in Britain, Canada or the United States to commit an abortion. And much the same was true everywhere else in Western Europe where stringent laws protected human life in the womb Today, of course, that is [...]
Robert Walley (right) receives the Adam Exner Award from the Catholic Civil Rights League, represented by board members (front from left ) Charles Lewis, Alexander MacDonald, and Tanya Granic, and CCRL president Phil Horgan (back left and executive director Christian Elia (back right). Former religious freedom ambassador discusses the public square The Catholic Civil Rights League presented its 2017 Archbishop [...]
The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, P.C., M.P. Minister of Foreign Affairs Dear Minister, I am writing to express profound concern with your speech on Canadian Foreign Policy, which you gave in the House of Commons on Tuesday 6 June 2017, and on which Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau further elaborated on 9 June. In it, you equated women’s rights with the right to abortion and [...]
Thanks to judicial distortion of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms over the past 30 years, freedom of religion in Canada has come under such severe restriction that an otherwise law-abiding, and conscientious citizen could now lose his livelihood or even end up in jail simply for steadfastly upholding the traditional principles of Judeo-Christian morality. Faithful bakers, florists, printers and Christian [...]