Forty years of culture wars.

CULTURE OF DEATH

It was 40 years ago that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau proposed that surgical abortion of babies in utero be made legal as part of a "progressive" reform of the Criminal Code. As his June 1968 election campaign triumphantly consolidated Liberal rule in Ottawa, he proved as good as his word. Contraceptive practices were already hailed as the new road to freedom for women, further enhanced by the widening of the grounds for divorce.

In early 1969, a new Omnibus Bill included the decriminalization of homosexual acts done in private and, most contentious of all, it proposed the legal killing of unborn babies to be done under the supervision of so-called therapeutic abortion committees (T.A.C.'s) consisting of three physicians. The term "therapeutic" (healing) was accepted with a straight face by leaders of the Canadian Medical and the Canadian Bar Associations, as if there were anything therapeutic about the killing of a tiny baby. But, of course, they were referring to the mother. If "being with child" was uncomfortable to her, then clearly it would be beneficial to her to be rid of it, or so they thought. The legal minds who introduced and defended the Bill in the House under Justice Minister John Turner adopted the World Health Organization's definition of health under which any kind of illness or discomfort was classified as sufficient reason for action. As critics pointed out, abortion-on-demand was a foregone conclusion. Needless to say, they were ignored.

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The Omnibus Bill's abortion section was approved on May 14, 1969, with the Liberal majority voting yes, en bloc The Globe and Mail hailed it as of a new heaven and a new earth.

Years later, in 2008, that same date of May 14 drew 7800 marchers opposed to abortion to Parliament Hill, on a weekday, with the majority being under 25 years of age. As customary, the mainstream media refused to take note, having accepted an earlier statement of then Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien (1993-2003) that the country now had "social peace," meaning that the abortion issue was done and over with.

Why did Jean Chretien assume that abortion was no longer an issue?

The question should be asked how Mr. Chretien arrived at such a conclusion. A short sketch such as this cannot go into details but let me offer some suggestions.

First, Chretien like his leader Trudeau whom he served over the years as Cabinet Minister in a variety of departments and like so many co-religionists from Quebec, had become an agnostic Catholic. Baptized--and therefore in the eyes of the Church always a member of the Church--specific moral teaching, or whatever he knew of it, found no echo in his public life. His thought had followed the same trajectory as that in Quebec province at large where the practice of Catholicism dropped from 80% in 1955 to 8% by 2000. Just so, by the end of his political career Chretien no longer recognized the values of his religion for society or, for that matter, the value of religious participation in civic celebrations. This he now actively opposed.

Jean Chretien's teacher, Pierre Trudeau, had followed in the footsteps of the American presidential candidate John Kennedy who in 1963 before an assembly of Baptists denied that he would follow Catholic teaching if it ever clashed with American interests. In 1967 Trudeau asserted that, as far as he was concerned, God had nothing to do with secular affairs. In 1968 he let it be known that the Papal encyclical Humanae vitae (July 25, 1968) would not affect the government's plans to eliminate legal strictures on birth control and abortion. Another fourteen years later, in 1982, he resisted (as long as he could) the insertion of a reference to the Supremacy of God in the Prologue of Canada's new Constitution.

Like Kennedy, Trudeau banished Catholic moral teaching from his private life, indulging himself secretly with a long line of mistresses except for the short duration of his marriage, while continuing an external profession of Catholicism. As for abortion, which the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) had described as "a heinous crime," he never apologized for it, nor did he ever publicly acknowledge it as a sin.

Other Liberal Party leaders such as Prime Minister Paul Martin (2003-2006) or various declarations of Ontario's current Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, another agnostic Catholic, have made it abundantly clear that even the most solemn Christian moral teachings carry no influence in their decision making. Martin defended and enacted into law in June of 2005, same-sex, so-called, marriage--the definition of which replaced that of traditional marriage of a voluntary union between a man and a woman in the Civil Code.

Clearly, the behaviour of Canada's Liberal Prime Ministers reflect developments in society at large. From the late sixties onwards, Canada's ruling intelligentsia first doubted, then rejected the idea that Truth exists or, if it does exist, that anyone can apprehend it. As the current Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has pointed out over a period of at least 25 years, relativistic thinking undermines every aspect of society. When the media adopt it, as they did in Canada, truth can no longer make itself heard and people start thinking that it no longer exists. That is why the ruling class in Canada thinks the abortion issue is dead; they have no idea what other people outside their own narrow circle think or believe.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party of Canada has now graduated to being led by three anti-Christian, atheists/agnostics: Stephane Dion (baptized a Catholic), Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae.

CULTURE OF LIFE

Unsung, unloved and unknown to the ruling leftist bureaucracies whose members--as indicated--had over time spiritually cut themselves off from truth and reality, the pro-life movement has steadily followed an upward curve. Only a handful strong in 1968, committed pro-lifers today number in their hundreds of thousands with some 50 organizations. Isolated in their seemingly futile protests against the 1968-1969 legislation, today Catholics, Evangelicals and others work together knowing that what they started then is now an indispensable part of a social outreach to all parts of Canadian society in the attempt to keep it a sane society.

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Education

The first thing pro-life activists did in 1969 and following years was to start educational groups with literature about the unborn for use in schools and meetings. These "activists" were ordinary homemakers--Catholic and Evangelical--who were strong and knowledgeable in their faith. By 1973 these women found themselves heading up some 250 pro-life groups throughout Canada, answering telephones, facing the media, organizing aid, raising funds, all without the benefit of civil support or tutelage, sometimes in the face of opposition and disparagement.

Today, many of the 250 educational centres have closed, sometimes from exhaustion or dwindling support. But, they were, and are a huge success from several points of view. As a movement in the early seventies, they projected pro-life women into the "equality for women" movement in their own right, directly opposed to the shrill secular and atheist feminists of their day.

Unwed Mothers

The real dwindling of groups devoted to general prolife education was caused by specialization. They began to reach out to pregnant and often unwed mothers. Pregnancy counselling centres sprang up everywhere. Here the focus was on direct aid to the (young) mothers in need of help. If in earlier days society may have had difficulties how to handle unwed mothers, there was no hesitation now. Material help was extended, sometimes financing, sometimes the provision of baby clothes, often both. Young mothers were encouraged to stay in school. In short, these aid centres called the bluff and bluster of Chatelaine and Globe and Mail feminists and their allies, whose only contributions consisted in calling for more contraceptives and more abortions. Pro-lifers, instead, rallied to the cause and extended their hands to those who needed help regardless of age, class, race or beliefs.

Today pro-life activists have long since become a movement, with an extensive network of organizations funded and aided by committed volunteers. They have been transformed from a few protestors in 1968 to workers in a hundred different engagements. They have reached out to the disabled in their endeavour to halt euthanasia and to women who have had abortions, to bring healing. Their political organizations work and lobby for pro-life politicians. Pro-life members home-school their children, while educational groups fight to keep the school curriculum morally wholesome among school boards, trustees and teachers.

Family and women's organizations keep their eye on provincial and federal legislation. Physicians and Pharmacists for Life keep abreast on the medical front. Because of the media's refusal to report pro-life news, a network of professional bulletins, newsletters, weekly and monthly newspapers has sprung up, topped by a daily Internet News Service, which carries news from around the world. All the while, the surviving educational groups continue to work in classrooms, or the media, through billboards or TV advertising, locally or provincially.

The agnostic/atheist lobby

During the last 40 years, the agnostic/atheist lobby has steadily expanded its assaults on society, supported by government financing and bureaucratic maneuvering: freedom for pornography, sterilization, contraception, homosexual activity, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell experimentation, sex education, same-sex marriage. It has invented Human Rights kangaroo courts and other dissolving and destructive ideas. Indeed, as in earlier socialist-Marxist theories, their agitation is chiefly aimed at the abolition of the family. It is astonishing that without a penny of government money, the pro-life movement has grown so as to provide some resistance to every assault. This has to be the Grace of God. Even though to date one still cannot see how this disastrous course of events is to be turned around, that too will come through the Grace of God.

Is the abortion issue dead? Ask Sarah Palin! In not too distant a future the feminists and Culture of Death people will be gone. They will have brought Canada to the brink of economic, social and moral ruin. But, God willing, Canada may survive this crisis.

BY FR. ALPHONSE DE VALK, CSB