Lavender hue for the Globe (& Mail).

The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper has had a rough year. Major changes have been ongoing since last September and the frumpy matron is scheduled for a colour makeover this June. Other changes have been more significant. The "great, grey lady" of Canadian journalism has taken on a distinctly lavender hue, and she doesn't go to church anymore.

The Globe is increasingly hostile to readers of a Catholic sensibility. Rarely does a week go by without an article patronizingly dismissive of orthodox belief, or deliberately provocative on the moral front. Nowhere is this more evident than in the robust promotion of homosexuality. "Jewish-Gay Novel Comes Out Strong" ran a recent book review headline, demonstrating that being constantly provocative can be a strain.

June 1997 editorial

This is not provocation for the sake of circulation alone. The animating philosophy of the Globe on faith and morals was laid out in a little-noticed editorial last June. The Globe declared deism to be its official creed. Noting that some archaeologists had claimed that the battle of Jericho did not happen, the Globe seized the opportunity to ask the big question. "What does faith have to do with scientific proof?" the editors asked, noting that, "The story of Joshua is just one of many that have withered under the scrutiny of scientific investigation."

Dismissing "fundamentalists" who close their eyes to science, the Globe wrote, "thoughtful and introspective people have learned to separate belief in God from systems buttressed by fact."

"To a modern sensibility," they wrote, "Faith is not a repeated recitation of events that happened thousands of years ago. It is imprecise, unregulated and elusive, full of abstract wonder rather than concrete certainty, inspired by the heady miracle of existence rather than validated through religious wars and theological conflicts."

Religious warfare can hardly compete with the wonder of existence. This wonder arises from natural science, which, in a very limited way, leads to God. "We may need to make room for something else out there on the cutting edge of neuroscience and cosmology, something inexplicable, unsystematized, irreducible to dates in history, but a kind of Creator all the same: God, for lack of a better word."

Deism

This is deism of the purest kind. The Globe's editorial was the deist equivalent of printing the Nicene Creed. Deism acknowledges a "kind of Creator", but he is "something else" that exists "out there", and while he may have created in the past, he has no role in the here and now. The God of the deists lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Deism is wholly otherworldly, but is convenient in this world. The challenge of reconciling science with religion is neatly avoided by excluding revelation altogether. Even better, the deist God does not act in history, and certainly does not judge. Judgement and moral law is alien to the "imprecise, unregulated and elusive" world of the deists.

Loose morals often follow upon false doctrine. The Globe's first priority is, of course, sex. Deism gets God out of the bedrooms of the nation, allowing the Globe to burst in, notebooks in hand. The Globe is particularly taken with homosexuality.

Homosexuality

Last November a two-page spread on the sudden ubiquity of homosexuality in the popular culture announced, "We're here. We're queer. You love it." It was as if the Globe itself had come out. In gentler times the old lady would have had to ask what a lesbian was.

Editor-in-chief William Thorsell's remarks to an "alliance of gay businessmen" were published. He cautioned them against the "charming and dreadful trap of being square." The businessmen probably were "boring and mediocre" but Globe staffers took the hint. The arts, travel, books and opinion sections regularly feature homosexual themes, the more outlandish the better; a February travel piece offered a quick-and-very-dirty tour of Calgary's (!) gay scene.

Catholic readers have been forewarned by the Globe. It has declared itself at best non-Christian, at worst opposed to revealed religion. In her old age the great, grey lady has lost her faith and become a tart.

Raymond de Souza has a M. Phil. in Economics from Cambridge University. His first contribution to C.I., on the Eucharistic Congress in Poland, was published in November 1997.