It all began with Trudeau.

In the Vatican's "Considerations" regarding unions between homosexuals (July 31, 2003), the obligations of Catholic politicians are clearly stated:

"When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker 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."

Obligations of Catholic politicians

When they had an admonition from the Vatican concerning their responsibilities right in front of them, what did our political leaders do? Chretien, Martin, and Cauchon-the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister-in-waiting, and the Justice Minister--all ignored the warning. In 1999, they had all supported a parliamentary resolution defining marriage in traditional terms; now they did an about-face, defied the Holy Father and the Magisterium of the Church, and voted in favour of so-called same-sex "marriage". They were following a Liberal Party custom of setting aside the demands of religion when political convenience is involved. It all began with Pierre Trudeau.

St. Jerome's Conference

On May 9 and 10, 2003, at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, ON, there was a conference on The Hidden Pierre Trudeau: his spirituality, his faith, his life, his times. According to Michael Higgins, the organizer of the conference, Pierre Trudeau's Catholicism was philosophical, detached, and insular ("Religion vs. spirituality," Catholic Register, May 25/03). He adds that Trudeau and his contemporaries were puck shy when it came to religion and public life. "Religion is private property only. Beware!"

At the conference, Allan MacEachen, a former MP and influential member of Trudeau's cabinet, said: "I have never heard of a discussion bringing together the political realities of life in Canada and the spiritual dimension." This seems very odd, since before he entered politics, MacEachen was a professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, home of the Antigonish Movement which endeavoured to improve the situation of underprivileged people through reforms inspired by the Catholic Church. Its leaders were chiefly clergy. I spent three years teaching at St. F.X.; many times I was in the faculty coffee room when the human dynamo Monsignor Moses Coady swept in, fresh from telling the gommocks (halfwits) in Ottawa or Washington what he thought of them. If MacEachen never discussed with Pierre Trudeau the social and cultural background out of which he himself came, it was very strange. There were also many Westerners--such as Bible Bill Aberhart--whose political activities did have a religious foundation and motivation.

John Turner

One speaker at the conference was John Turner, Justice Minister in 1969 when Trudeau gave him responsibility for the changes to the Criminal Code which decriminalized abortion and homosexual activity done in private. Turner argued that the abortion reform merely gave a legal status to what was already happening in the courts. He also said that after he had received opinions about the abortion legislation from three prominent Catholic lawyers, he took these recommendations to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops through its then president, Bishop Alexander Carter. After his presentation, Turner said that Carter declared: "Gentlemen, I think John has convinced us. Let's go have a drink." The Catholic Church never intervened on that issue again.

I find it offensive that Turner should trivialize the Church's opposition to the abortion legislation and his own responsibility for it in this way. I know he consulted two theologians at Toronto's St. Michael's College about the question, and got two conflicting opinions. He chose the one and ignored the other. Moreover, the Church's official opposition to abortion had been made clear earlier.

Trudeau's faith and politics

The Catholic Register's report of the Waterloo conference by Joseph Sinasac is headed "The complex faith of Pierre." Turner was quoted as saying, "Pierre Trudeau was a committed Christian and conscientious Catholic with an ecumenical view of the Christian faith." Some of those attending the conference were evidently surprised to find that he took his religion much more seriously than he seemed to. He went to Mass on Sunday, and his wife Margaret said in her memoirs that he insisted that she not use birth control. Father John Madden, c.s.b., of St. Michael's College, told me that when he was in Africa--Ghana, I think--in 1958, Trudeau served his Mass every morning. But later on, he fathered an illegitimate child when he was in the sere and yellow leaf, and he brought in legislation which was not informed by Catholic principles but in defiance of them.

After Trudeau graduated in law from the University of Montreal, he went on to obtain a master's degree in political economy at Harvard. He followed this with further studies at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the London School of Economics, where the left-leaning Harold Laski was a major force. His time abroad may provide a context for his political views which the Waterloo conference perhaps did not adequately explore. French politics divides itself fairly rigorously into right and left, and after the Second World War when Trudeau was in Paris, the right was the party of Vichy and Petain and thoroughly discredited; the only opening seemed to be on the left. Trudeau was undoubtedly influenced by this kind of thinking.

In England, Trudeau was exposed to utilitarian ideas, reflected in the Wolfenden Report on homosexual offences and prostitution, presented to the British Parliament in 1957 and made the basis of legislation ten years later. Asking whether the law should be concerned with the enforcement of morals, the Wolfenden Committee replied that the purpose of law was to preserve public order, protect the citizen from what is offensive and injurious, and provide safeguards against exploitation and corruption. But it should consider individual freedom of choice and action in matters of private morality to be of the greatest importance. We have no right to say that homosexual behaviour is wrong, to this way of thinking; if it cannot be proved that it is injurious to consenting adults, then it should be allowed.

The Wolfenden Report became the basis of the Omnibus Bill which Trudeau brought forward when he was justice minister (1967-78) and handed on to John Turner to carry through when he himself became prime minister. In the abortion debate in Parliament, Turner mentioned the Wolfenden Report several times, and it clearly inspired his declaration of principle:

The problem of trying to render synonymous law and morality is that we then come down to the question: Whose morality? Whose standards of behaviour? Whose sense of morality? ... In a pluralistic society there may be different standards, differing attitudes, and the law cannot reflect them all. Public order, in this situation of a pluralist society, cannot substitute for private conduct. We believe that morality is a matter for private conscience. Criminal law should reflect the public order only (Hansard, Jan. 21, 1969).

The curious thing about this defence of moral relativism was that Turner was and is a Catholic--and the Catholic Church insists on the existence of moral absolutes.

In Waterloo, Trudeau biographer Ron Graham said that Trudeau, as much as he valued his religious beliefs, believed just as strongly in a pluralist democracy. "He used to argue it wasn't his role to impose his deeply held beliefs on other cultures and faiths." He had evidently managed to impose his own utilitarian principles on John Turner, and was going to use him to impose his own views of contraception, abortion, and homosexuality on the whole of the Canadian nation. First he had to impose them on his own caucus: well-informed Catholic members of Parliament who happened to be Liberal sat as if glued to their chairs when questions of Catholic morality came up in debate--brought forward chiefly by members of the Creditiste party. Catholic Liberals were not free to hold and express views which differed from those of their leader.

Abortion was brought into Canada under a Catholic prime minister, and flourished under a succession of other Catholic prime ministers who contradicted on Monday what they believed on Sunday. The Charter of Rights, for which Trudeau was given a great deal of credit at the Waterloo conference, was passed after he had convinced Cardinal Carter in March 1981 that it would not affect further the already permissive existing abortion law. Attemps to ensure the protection of life from conception to natural death were defeated by then Justice Minister Jean Chretien, following orders from Trudeau. Pro-lifers were horrified; they saw danger looming. They were right; Carter was wrong; and Trudeau had once again used his powers of persuasion to win someone else around to his point of view. In 1988 the Supreme Court scuttled the existing law because it supposedly contradicted the Charter. Imposing his will on the Liberal Party was perhaps Trudeau's greatest triumph.

David Dooley is associate editor of Catholic Insight. He is English professor emeritus of St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto.