Here we go again!

The title of this article was inspired by Mr. Omar Savard, whose reaction (published in, C.I., September 2003) was "Here we go again!," after he read the July 17, 2003 letter from CCCB President Jacques Berthelet, C.S.V., to our Prime Minister on the subject of "same-sex marriage" legislation. The bishop's letter began as follows:

"In the name of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and with the support of the Permanent Council, allow me to say that I am deeply concerned and profoundly disappointed with respect to the decision that you have taken {on same-sex marriage legislation}.... The point is not that, because same-sex partners cannot have access to marriage, there would be discrimination. Rather, it is the contrary that is true. Enlarging and thereby altering the definition of marriage in order to include same-sex partners discriminates against heterosexual marriage and the family, which are thus deprived of their social and legal recognition as the fundamental and irreplaceable basis of society."

Mr. Savard commented: "I am old enough to remember the brave clergy (who were not politically correct in those days) who stood up in the pulpit and said it the way it was and got results. What does the current crop do?.... Send a mild pleading letter to Jean Chretien--a supposed practising Catholic, who publicly approves of abortion and same-sex marriage. Shame on you!"

I share Mr. Savard's sentiments one hundred percent! Gaudium et spes spoke of the Church's wish to share with "the whole of humanity ... those saving resources which the Church Herself ... receives from Her Founder." One of the most astounding resources, still left lying dormant in Canada, is the Church's teaching on human life found in Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae, and John Paul II's Theology of the Body. As I see it, nothing could be more pathetic than to see men who are invested with the authority to minister the Church's saving resources to all of humanity timidly asserting, instead, that they are "profoundly disappointed" with Mr. Chretien's actions!

Yes, it is true that the Canadian bishops this summer issued a statement on Humanae vitae, which the editor of Catholic Insight described as a "new and clear endorsement" of the encyclical. (C.I. September 2003, p.29). But I beg to differ with the editor's assessment of the bishops' "endorsement." In the first place, this supposed endorsement was merely posted on the little-known CCCB web site and mentioned in perhaps a handful of Catholic publications, including C.I.. But to my knowledge, no clergyman "stood up in the pulpit" and passed on this endorsement to the laity in the pews. Do our shepherds now believe that their pastoral responsibilities can be fulfilled through the Internet?

In the second place, the endorsement was seriously deficient, because it withheld an important part of the Church's "resources" by failing to quote the plain teaching of Gaudium et spes that "sons of the Church may not undertake methods of regulating procreation which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law."

While the endorsement did point out that "natural family planning methods respect the indivisible link" between the unitive and procreative, no mention was made of the Gaudium et spes teaching that "spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily" in matters of family planning. This was a serious omission, because--as the bishops should be aware--two generations of Catholic have been "nurtured" on the Winnipeg Statement's skewed idea of conscience formation, according to which periodic abstinence is merely one option among many for avoiding pregnancy. (cf. Winnipeg Statement, article 26, which states that persons who "have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given {HV} directives, may be safely assured that whoever honestly chooses the course that seems right to him does so in good conscience.") There must be some among our present bishops who--like myself and Mr. Savard--are old enough to remember that the MOSAIC marriage course, published by Novalis and used for decades across Canada, served as a transmission belt for the Winnipeg Statement by teaching as follows:

   "Intercourse is one action of two people. They
   are two individual persons 'creating' each other.
   Whichever way they choose to regulate their fertility,
   it must be their way. Not his way, not her way.
   Not the way of everyone all the time.... The
   method used must be mutually acceptable."
   (MOSAIC, Planned Parenthood, a Position of Trust,
   page 18). "For some couples, the attempt to refrain
   from sexual union during the fertile period may
   result in great tension and frustration.... Many
   couples have tried to solve this problem by using
   various contraceptive methods. The seriousness of
   the matter led the Church to re-study its teaching....
   The general finding of these studies was that
   every method of preventing conception--including
   abstinence from intercourse--carries with it
   some negative element, either physical or psychological.
   The necessity of using an effective method
   will have to be weighed by the couple against the
   certain difficulties imposed by a particular
   method." (Ibid, page 22.)

Some of our bishops must be aware, also, that in accordance with the Winnipeg Statement's endorsement of school-based sex education, students were influenced by the Winnipeg Statement through programs that predated even the Fully Alive contraceptive indoctrination, and the "gay speak" and "anti-homophobic" workshops now being given to Catholic school personnel. For example, the Grade 12 religion program used in Edmonton's Catholic high schools in the 1980s treated the subject of contraception as follows:

   "Pope Paul VI in his encyclical on birth control
   (Humanae vitae) reaffirmed the earlier position of
   Pope Pius XII ... Current polls indicate that many
   adult Catholics do not follow the Pope's teaching
   regarding birth control. For each married couple
   this is a matter of individual conscience, however.
   In several documents Vatican II has repeated the
   teaching of the Church that every person is bound
   to follow his or her conscience 'in order that he (she)
   may come to God,' and that everyone will be
   judged by his or her conscience.... Having {considered
   papal teaching, family size, health of parents,
   financial situation} the couple could be in a
   position to decide if, because of some particular circumstance
   of their family life, they would be morally
   right in not acting in accord with the Pope's
   teaching." (emphasis added)

The same high school religion course used in the 1980s introduced students to the idea of avoiding "homophobia" by including in the lessons the following letter written by a lesbian:

   "... recently I became totally incensed {when}
   city council passed a sexual orientation bill which
   simply said that it was not legitimate grounds to
   fire an employee solely on the basis of sexual orientation.
   Well, I never comprehended there could be
   so much hatred in people! The petitioners were
   out, a referendum came about, and the measure
   was defeated 2 to 1. However, prior to the election,
   the local paper was bombarded daily by letters to
   the editor from righteous people who usually quoted
   from the Bible or other religious teaching as justification
   for their hatred! ... I think I've grown a
   lot in my own consciousness. I feel good about
   being gay, but angry about the narrow bigotry and
   prejudice which still infects our society and casts a
   cloud of fear and secrecy unnecessarily over the lives
   of many gay people....

Which brings us to the situation we face in Canada in the year 2003. A letter from a gay Catholic high-school student published by the London Free Press August 8, 2003 shows how the ideas taught in the 1980s have been amplified and transmitted to a new generation of students:

   "I am a gay teen living in a Catholic world and
   in a Catholic school that is run by people like the
   Vatican and the Pope.... This is the prayer that I
   am going to pray tonight , not just on my behalf
   but on behalf of every other gay teen and adult in
   the world: Dear God, ... I feel betrayed and I feel
   the hatred and the venom that spew forth from the
   'church officials'. The Pope is supposed to be the
   one who talks to you, and relays your ideas and
   thoughts to us. God, how is it that you hate so
   much? ... Why, God, are you going to send the
   prime minister of our country to hell? I feel utterly
   saddened for the Pope and all church officials. If
   hate and betrayal are sins, then I am sure they will
   not be getting into heaven either.... Please God,
   forgive the Pope, the Vatican, and all those who
   hate, for their sins ... Love, Shane Lee"

A homily delivered August 17, 2003 in St. Andrew's parish in Thunder Bay by pastor Scott Gale (published in full by The Toronto Star Aug. 24. 2003) is another example of the direct influence of the Winnipeg Statement on the present generation:

   "The Vatican's harsh language in the document
   Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal
   Recognition to Unions between Homosexual persons is
   very hurtful to our gay and lesbian relatives and
   friends and their families.... The ... document
   states that '... the Catholic lawmaker has a moral
   duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly
   and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so
   harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.'
   And yet how do we reconcile this statement with
   what the Second Vatican Council states about the
   dignity of one's own moral conscience? Vatican II's
   document of {sic} Religious Liberty states, '... {Man}
   is bound to follow his conscience faithfully
   in all his actions so that he may come to God, who
   is his last end. Therefore he must not be forced to
   act contrary to that conscience.' I believe that
   Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Paul Martin are
   right in stating that, although they are Roman
   Catholics, in acting as members of Parliament, they
   must take into account a much wider range of factors
   than the Vatican's directive on same-sex marriage."

Msgr. Vincent Foy has pointed out that the Winnipeg Statement has affected not only Catholic education, but the entire realm of social life in Canada. In an unpublished manuscript, Msgr. Foy says, "In a chain reaction, {the Winnipeg Statement} has lowered the level of ethics among Catholic politicians, judges, lawyers, pharmacists, nurses, hospital staff, teachers and catechists. It has facilitated immoral government legislation as predicted by Pope Paul VI (Humanae vitae, no. 17)." (Editor: see also Msgr Foy's article, "50 Reasons why the Winnipeg Statement should be recalled." C.I. October, 2003, pp.20-25).

For 35 years, the Canadian bishops have seemed blissfully unaware that a chain reaction has been taking place. And now a new generation of bishops is trying to play "catch-up" by calling on the laity to fight a political battle without informing that same laity about the root cause of the problem: the average Canadian Catholic today knows no more about Humanae vitae than what was taught in the MOSAIC course 30 years ago. But, on the other hand, the majority of Catholics today have been well-formed in the belief that conscience formation consists in following the norms laid out in the Winnipeg Statement.

After 35 years of enforced ignorance among the Canadian laity, it would be understandable if the bishops now fear a backlash by too sudden an introduction of Humanae vitae from the pulpits. But they seem to forget (or perhaps never noticed in the first place) that Pope John Paul II, within months of taking office, began a catechesis that would, if more widely known, prepare Catholics to accept the teaching of Humanae vitae. The Pope called that catechesis "the theology of the body." Over a period of five years, between 1979 and 1984, he patiently presented that theology in 129 public discourses given during his weekly general audiences. Why have Canadian Catholics never heard of the Theology of the Body? Why is it not preached from every pulpit? Why are there no programs of catechesis established to disseminate its wisdom to teenagers and adults? An obscure web site is definitely not the place for bishops to begin.

If the bishops hope to make any impression at all on those who are now attacking the Church, they will have to begin by courageously revoking the Winnipeg Statement, and then using the Theology of the Body as a preparation for introducing the real message of Humanae vitae. Until they decide to do so, the best they will be able to do is to issue the type of statement reproduced above, in which, like two warring groups of children on a playground, they try to shout more loudly than the opposing side that it is "we"" not "you" who are being discriminated against. In trying to win the battle without reference to the Theology of the Body, and merely proclaiming instead that the opposing side has "missed the point", they fail to see that both sides in the controversy have missed the point. As for the charge (made by Tom Harpur and others) that the Vatican should be concentrating on correcting the sexual abuse within the Church instead of entering into the political fray in the secular realm, it is clear that in both cases, whether dealing with calamities inside or outside the Church, the bishops will need to make reference to the Theology of the Body if they expect to direct people to the root cause, and then the cure, of our present problems vis-a-vis sexual behavior.

There is a crying need for every Canadian bishop, each in his own diocese, to formally, publicly, and loudly state that the Winnipeg Statement was wrong, and then to establish programs of adult catechesis based on the Theology of the Body. Only in this way will the benighted laity, who have been deprived for 35 years of the Church's teaching, come to see that Humanae vitae, in its defence of the dignity of every human person, is the only basis for fending off politicians and lobbyists who wish to change the Christian foundation of our country.

While they're at it, the bishops--and all Catholics in Canada--will need to stop using the term "Catholic schools" when referring to institutions that reject Catholic teaching while operating under the auspices of the Church. The time has come to follow the suggestion of a close friend of mine who is a registered nurse. She recently told me that when a new bishop was appointed to her diocese six years ago, she met with him to complain about the scandal of tubal ligations being routinely performed in the Catholic hospital where she worked. The new bishop promised to "clean up" the situation, but six years later, nothing has been "cleaned up." My friend now muses that if the bishop has lost control of the hospital, he should say so, and at the very least, issue a statement informing the laity that such a hospital no longer has the right to use the name "Catholic."

A similar admission should be made by every Canadian bishop who has lost control of the "Catholic" schools in his diocese (as seems to be the case in 95 percent of Canadian dioceses). It is high time for every bishop, each in his own diocese, to make clear to the laity that schools in his diocese which employ personnel opposed to the Magisterium are no longer to be designated "Catholic." Any bishop who has an ounce of concern for the salvation of young souls (As Bishop Henry declares he has for the Prime Minister's soul), will see the necessity for such action.

I, along with other Catholics, have talked to my MP, attended the "Sanctity of Marriage" rally, written letters to newspaper editors, and joined in prayers for our politicians. However, the above examples are sufficient to show that we cannot turn the tide unless the bishops will back us up by courageously standing up in the pulpit and explaining to the Canadian laity that the Winnipeg Statement has not only harmed individual souls but has also severely restricted the mission of the Catholic Church in Canada, and that only by renouncing that infamous statement can the Church in Canada regain the strength that will enable it to provide the light so urgently needed by Canada's secular society.

Lorene Collins lives in Sarnia Ontario. She is the author of Salvation Redefined: Catholic parents and religious education in post-Vatican 11 Canada, describing the struggle between parents and bishops about the Canadian Catechism.