In a recent article entitled “Goodbye to Catholic Ireland” (Tablet, June 27) a well-known British pro-life writer, Mary Kenny, writes: “the law is shifting to reflect a preference for ‘private choice’ over the more archaic notion of the State as the guardian of public morality.” Please spot the error, one which is common to those who mistake secularism for neutrality, or tolerance, or the absence of public morality.

The error is that the last two words should have read “Christian morality,” not public morality.

When Western states abandon traditional public morality, they are abandoning Christian standards in favor of secularism. But secularism does not mean that the state becomes neutral or tolerant; rather it implies a new public morality, but this time an anti-Christian one.

The Canadian media are dominated by the “seculars.” That, presumably, is why editors and journalists were upset when one of their own “revealed” in the Globe and Mail (June 3) that there is a “secret conspiracy” in the House of Commons, a “Family Compact” of what was implied to be backwoods Conservative MPs, reactionaries to a man (person?), people who still believe in some traditional moral concepts such as the family consisting of father, mother and children, and who reject such “progressive” views as killing the elderly and the ill, or the equality of homosexuality with “heterosexuality.”

Editors and letter writers stumbled over each other in expressing dismay that such people are still in the House of Commons. “A caucus committee organized against women,” thundered feminist spokeswoman Judy Rebick. And the Globe and Mail asked: “Are these changes” (divorce, homosexuality, contraceptions, common law relationship, single parents) “sapping the moral fiber of the nation?” Answer: “To the contrary, the new tolerance of untraditional living arrangements has freed millions of North Americans from the stifling hold of prejudice and convention…The family is not disintegrating, it is being redefined.” (Editorial, June 15)

Some redefinition! And the Globe didn’t even mention abortion, sterilization, pornography, suicide, battered women, crime, rape, declining populations, AIDS, euthanasia, kidnapping – all evidence, presumably, of a new “progressive” age.

Well, pro-lifers prefer a public morality based on the old “convention,” not perfect mind you, but rational, with a belief in absolute values and standards based on Divine Revelation. That is why throughout the country they should stiffen their resistance to media morality, actively oppose religious dissidents who spread relativism, and light fires under wimpish bureaucrats, administrators and politicians.

Nations should no more sin against God than individuals should. So let’s fight for a religious public morality. After all, the Church on earth is not called the Church militant for nothing. And no Canadian should swallow the nonsense that the decline of “family values” is not undermining the moral fiber of the nation when the overwhelming evidence points to the contrary conclusion.