Guest Column
How is apathy overcome? Complacency is so entrenched in our attitude that it has become almost a Canadian characteristic. Our civilization is at the most important crossroads of its history, and still people cocoon themselves in their own illusory existence.
We cannot escape taking stands today. We cannot ignore that which is a direct attack upon us and pretend it is the other fellow’s problem. There are no other fellows – only us. If we don’t speak out now, if we don’t correct the evil laws on our books, if we don’t restore a reverence for life in our society – now is all we will have, there will be no tomorrow for us.
If one regards this as empty rhetoric, consider the realities; not personal, self-appointed, individualistic, ego-promoting realities, but the harsh reality of what is actually before us.
Anti-family, anti-life
In April 1985, Sections 15(1) and 28 of the Charter of Rights come into effect. These sections, dealing with equality between the sexes, are alarmingly reminiscent of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That horrendous, anti-family, anti-life movement went down into defeat. It was the people who realized, almost too late, the far-reaching, negative scope that this piece of law making would have upon their society.
American society, as people knew it, would have ceased to exist, for that piece of proposed legislation was a direct attack upon the family. It was bent on disenfranchising parental rights, spousal responsibility and children’s right to parental care. And so is this Canadian proposal.
If one thinks this is just alarmist, doomsday prattle, then examine what our government officials have said and done recently.
Examples from politicians
Judy Erola, for example, with her despicable tax proposal where women who stay at home should no longer be given a tax benefit on their husbands’ income. Her reasoning? Stay-at-home women don’t contribute to society.
Mme. Begin, our Federal Minister of Health, consistently reiterates her anti-life, pro-abortion views.
And then consider the example of Francis Fox. Not only was he highly immoral, but also highly illegal, when he forged documents to ensure that his mistress obtained an abortion. Now he has returned to a key cabinet position.
All of these incidents are part of a direct, carefully planned, frontal attack on the family. Should we be surprised about this? Not really. Look at what we have been bombarded with over the last few years.
Reader’s Digest, since 1968 to the present, has had at least three or four articles annually that deal with contraception – none on chastity. Abortion, though not overtly promoted by any article within Reader’s Digest, has certainly been discussed in articles on amniocentesis and genetic engineering. How many other popular magazines have fed impressionable minds with such pernicious prose?
Last July, MacLean’s, magazine gave extensive coverage to the confrontation between the Morgentaler cohorts and the pro-lifers. It was easily seen that MacLean’s is very much pro-abortion and was entirely sympathetic towards Henry Morgentaler.
How can such a prominent national magazine, and such a large segment of the populace, be so enamoured of this belligerent proponent of baby-butchery and still maintain their pretense of caring? Morgentaler and his ilk kill babies and assault women, and do so in the name of caring!
Like a cheap novel
Child abuse is out of control. One in four Canadian children will be sexually abused before it reaches the age of ten. The medical profession is talking about guidelines on how to dispose of, kill, or let die, unwanted, and deformed babies. With them it is not a question of “should the medical profession get into the disposal of live babies,” but one of talking about guidelines showing how to do it. This reads like some horrid cheap gothic novel, yet it is the way things are in Canada today.
When are the people going to wake up to the fact that they are still in control, if they want to be? The government of the people, by the people, for the people should again be our watch-cry. Cynicism, hedonism, negativism, nihilism, and the like should be once again brought to heel and kept under strict control.
Make no apologies
Man’s spirituality, eternally his most important facet, should be consciously striven for, extolled, taught and sought after. Let us make no apology for who we are or what we believe. We are all infected by, submerged in, the sickness that pervades our society.
The cures for the ills of our society are, of course, chastity, honesty, virtue and spiritual pursuits.
As in The Pied Piper of Hamelin, let us take to heart the adjuration of the townspeople to the Mayor of Hamelin:
Rouse up, sir; give your brain a racking
To find the remedy we’re lacking.
The remedy is you, and everyone like you. For if this gloomy reality closes in upon us within us to change that outcome, to stem the tide of events; but we must rouse ourselves and act now. There is no more time, and there will be precious few tomorrows for us, if we do not do it now.
Tom Snee is President of Lethbridge and District Pro-Life Association.
