Morality and law in Canadian politics: opponents of abortion confused: Part II.

As the decade of the nineteen sixties moved into its last stage, the Catholic province of Quebec ceased to have influence in Ottawa. Since 1960 Quebeckers were on a nationalist track, with Catholicism receding rapidly as an intellectual force. That left the Catholic tradition in the bands of the English-speaking bishops in the Conference of Bishops, at a time when these men were interpreting the just-concluded (1965) Second Vatican Council in a manner that would weaken the Church's position in Canada.

This section is found in the original volume as chapter 8.

On March 6, 1968 the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare concluded its business with the hearing of the Canadian Catholic Conference delegation. Within a week the Globe resumed its pressure politics. It issued its strongest attack upon the Catholic Church yet, in an editorial entitled "Conscience and the Law." (1) The occasion was a proposal by the Catholic Health Minister Allan MacEachen that the vote on the abortion amendments be free rather than a vote on party lines as proposed by Prime Minister Pearson and Justice Minister Trudeau. Two months earlier a similar proposal had been made by the Catholic Canadian Register in the editorial: A Duty to Follow Conscience. (2)

At the same time that some people were disgruntled about the proposed party vote, the Government seemed to hesitate to proceed with the abortion legislation.

Announcing his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal party at a February press conference, Mr. Trudeau, speaking to a journalist of Le Devoir, mentioned the possibility that the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code on homosexuality and abortion might be held over to a later session of Parliament in order to give people more time to understand the proposed changes. (3)

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These hesitations undoubtedly disquieted the Globe. On March 11, it published an aggressive editorial starting with the sentence:

In the light of opposition to reform from Quebec's Liberal caucus, one wonders f once again, the conscience of some Roman Catholic Canadians will be allowed to violate that of millions of other Canadians.

Without further explanation on what other occasions the "conscience" of millions of Canadians had been violated, the reader was informed that "Mr. MacEachen's move toward a free vote and the Quebec caucus's pressure on Mr. Trudeau to delay reform "raises the ... thorny issue of Church and State."

"This issue," said The Globe, "first concerns the right of any group of citizens. For that is precisely what abortion laws do." The paper then pursued the theme which it had followed for five years or more, namely that abortion was not forbidden by law it because it was harmful to society, but that it was harmful to society because it was forbidden by law:

The Criminal Code ... forces all Canadians--including Protestants, Jews, agnostics and others--to accept the birth of unwanted or deformed children regardless of the mother's health or the family's ability to care for children. It obliges the 12-year-old girl who has been raped to endure a nine-month nightmare; and it orders a wife with German measles to wait out the horror of creating a mental or physical defective. The poor of any or no faith it obliges to deepen their poverty through new financial burdens which may warp or shatter the lives of whole families.

The paper went on to repeat the distinction between morality and law found in the 1966 statement on contraception issued by the bishops, who had also noted that it was the business of Parliament to decide whether or not the common good required that a crime be made punishable by law. It then charged that:

The bishops are opposing abortion reform not because it threatens public order or the common good. They oppose it on essentially moral and theological grounds. Their imposition of Catholic morality and dogma on the rest of Canada is incompatible with their own distinction between moral and civil law.

Carefully hedging, yet at the same time claiming certainty that this morality was now being 'imposed'--"the contradiction displays itself most concretely and inadmissibly in the pressure that has apparently been brought on Catholic politicians ..."--The Globe remarked:

It would be regrettable if a coherent and vociferous opposition to reform from Quebec MPs were to unleash old demons of anti-French-Canadian prejudice in English Canada. Exasperated English Canadians who strongly wish for a civilized abortion law might tempted to blame a failure on the "priest-ridden Quebeckers."

It concluded by rejecting the spectre which it had conjured up, finishing with one more parting shot at the Catholics:

Such a view would not only be unfortunate; it would be wrong. For the man who champions reform is a French-Canadian and a Quebecker ... At stake here is neither Mr. Trudeau nor English-French relations. It is a certain high conception of liberal democracy. That means a tolerant respect for the conscience of all--not just the consciences of the most dogmatic.

The General Secretary of the Canadian Catholic Conference, Rev. Gordon George, expressed his "surprise and dismay" at the editorial in a letter to the editor four days later. (4) Underlying the text of this editorial, said Father George, is "the suggestion that the Roman Catholic Bishops of Canada do not have the right to issue a pastoral statement opposing a change in a law that deals with the safe-guarding of human rights ..." At best, he said, this article, "should be dubbed ill-tempered; at worst it is consciously or unconsciously mischievous." The Canadian Register phrased its comments somewhat differently. The editorial, it said, "provides classical examples of the use of the half-truth, the smear, the vicious innuendo and the technique of the Big Lie, not to speak of the quite reprehensible effort ... to fan the dying flames of racial and religious bigotry." (5) The Globe reported these comments to its own readers. (6)

Imposing of Views

The conviction that the Church had no right to impose its views played an important, perhaps even decisive role in the passage of new abortion legislation. According to the Oxford dictionary, to impose means: to take advantage of (person); practise deception (upon). 'To impose views' clearly conveyed the meaning of forcing beliefs upon people by undue means. For six or more years the Globe had been accusing the Catholic Church of 'imposing' its views and although it had been the most vociferous and the most persistent in doing so, it had not been alone. For instance, an August 1962 editorial in the Toronto Daily Star, reprinted in the Prince Albert Herald and the Ontario Medical Review, stated that while the Roman Catholic view on contraceptives should be respected, it should "not be imposed by law on many other Canadians who disagree." (7) A few years later the Catholic bishops had, in fact, ceased to oppose civil law changes in birth control and divorce legislation.

The changed attitude of the Canadian bishops on birth control and divorce found two different explanations, an official, and an unofficial one. The bishops themselves explained that once they were convinced that existing civil law no longer served the common good, they could resort to distinguishing between moral and civil law, relinquishing opposition to a change in civil law, while maintaining objections to contraceptives and divorce on moral grounds. From then on the Church's view on these subjects was to be reflected only in the behaviour of its faithful and no longer in the laws of the country. On the other hand, the unofficial and more popular explanation disregarded the discussion on the nature and requirements of the common good; it tended, rather, to take the change in attitude simply as factual proof that the Church was withdrawing from the public forum, and that it had finally recognized that it had no right to be there in the first place.

From the early sixties on, the word 'impose' increasingly implied a denial of the right to influence legislation, a denial which was directed especially against the Churches and against religious leaders. In August 1967, the monthly editorial in Chatelaine claimed that if the government "bowed" to the request of the Roman Catholic Church to delay legislation on abortion while the Church prepared a report, "one segment of society will have imposed its views on the whole society again." (8) At the hearing of March 5, 1968 Mrs. MacInnis wanted to know from the Bishops' delegation why the Church insisted on imposing its views upon the rest of society. And the Anglican monthly, the Canadian Churchman wrote in April 1968:

In the area of abortion, contraception and homosexuality the choice is government by the individual's conscience. If his church is opposed then he has a moral obligation to obey his church's rules but he has no right to impose these rules on people of other faiths or no faith at all. There is a clear distinction between moral and civil law. (9)

Thus, there appeared to be agreement among a considerable number of Canadians that somehow or other the behaviour of the Roman Catholic Church was improper. Yet while this accusation was heard more and more frequently, the reasons why this behaviour was supposed to be improper remained vague, unmentioned and unexplained, just as if every right-thinking person could do no other than agree. Whatever these reasons were they seemed related to the notion that the Criminal Code should not reflect 'religious' morality and that appeared to be the meaning of the Churchman's "clear distinction between moral and civil law" and of the Globe's "certain high conception of liberal democracy ..." (10)

In view of their stand on abortion, the Catholic bishops obviously did not agree that abortion was a matter of private concern only. Yet, in a country with nearly half the population professing membership in the Roman Catholic Church, the new legislation on abortion passed easily and with a large majority. Taking into account the fact that, despite the claims of the Globe and Mail and others, abortion was opposed not only by Catholics but by others, there ought to have been a comfortable majority against amendment of the law. Nevertheless the opposite was true.

The explanation for the easy passage of the abortion legislation in Canada must be found principally in the confusion of its opponents. This confusion was directly related to the turmoil within the Catholic Church. As the New York Times observed when the state of New York passed new divorce legislation: every politician agreed that the new law would never have passed if the Catholic clergy and laity had not been in a "state of ferment, in which old dogmas were undergoing an agonizing re-examination." (11) What was true for New York State in the matter of divorce was true for Canada in the question of abortion. Radical changes are not brought about merely because of increased strength and mounting pressure; they succeed almost as much because of crumbling opposition and confused resistance. In order to understand the crumbling resistance to abortion among the Canadian Catholic population, it is necessary to examine in some detail the causes and nature of the unsettled frame of mind in which the Church found itself during this period.

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Vatican Council and Religious Liberty

The state of ferment among Catholics was brought about by the second Vatican Council, the first such Council to meet in nearly a hundred years. During the four years of 1962 to 1965, it brought over 2000 bishops from across the world to Rome every fall. Unlike many other Councils of the past which had been called for the formulation of doctrine or the discussion of theological and intellectual problems, this Council was pre-eminently concerned with pastoral affairs and the relationship of the Church to the world. Its liturgical-religious theme was summed up officially by its pontiff, Pope Paul, as simplification and participation, while its political efforts were summarized unofficially by one of the participating bishops as the end of "the trilogy of clericalism, triumphalism and legalism." (12)

In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World, one of the sixteen documents it solemnly promulgated, the Vatican Council condemned abortion and infanticide as "unspeakable crimes." It did so on the general grounds that it was impossible that there should exist a contradiction "between the divine laws pertaining to the transmission of life and those pertaining to the fostering of authentic conjugal love," (13) But abortion was not explicitly discussed in the assembly since this was not an issue at the time. Moreover, from the point of view of abortion as a political issue, the Council's most important contribution was not this condemnation which was hardly noticed as the time but two other documents: the section on "The Life of the Political Community" in the same Pastoral Constitution, (14) and the Declaration of Religious Liberty. These two documents were part of an attempt to redefine the Church's relationship with political society and with other religious communities, to 'declericalize' the bonds with the one and strengthen the ties with the other. Their general tenor rested on greater trust in the effects of practical goodwill and charity, and less on the effectiveness of legalism and dogmatic self-consciousness. Both documents were meant to induce greater respect for the autonomy of these other jurisdictions and, therefore, stressed the dignity of man, personal responsibility, personal rights, and the distinctive roles of state and Church.

The Pastoral Constitution's section on Political Life touched upon both the autonomy of the political order and the roles of the clergy and the laity. It emphasized that the desire for a political-juridical order which protects the rights "of free assembly, of common action, of expressing personal opinions, and of professing a religion both privately and publicly ..." was justified. (15) It went on to say that "the role and competence of the Church should in no way be confused with the political community, nor bound to any political system ..." Priests, it said, should use means and helps proper to the gospel which "differ from the supports of the earthly city ... (16) Aside from the remark that the Church retained the right to pass moral judgments even on matters touching the political order--"whenever basic personal rights or the salvation of souls make such judgments necessary"--the main thrust of the documents was to bring out more clearly the autonomy of the political order which was basically the affair of the laity, not the clergy. (17) Thus it re-affirmed that "secular duties and activities belong properly although not exclusively to laymen ...": The function of laymen, it said, is "to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city ..." While they might look for spiritual light from their priests, they ought not to expect them to have a concrete solution "to every problem which arises." Instead, the layman should "take on his own distinctive role." (18)

This emphasis on a just measure of autonomy for the political order as well as for the layman who maintained this order, was paralleled by the Declaration on Religious Liberty with its emphasis on the right to freedom of other religious communities. Religious freedom, the Council said, had "its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed Word of God and by reason itself." (19)

Religious liberty was the most controversial issue of the four-year-long Council. The preceding, century-long, tradition had been one of opposition to 'absolute' freedom for 'any and all' cults. The Syllabus of Pius IX declared "that the civil liberty of all cults and the right of all to manifest openly and publicly all their thoughts and opinions precipitate peoples into the corruption of morals and spirits, and propagate the plague of indifferentism." (20) In a similar vein Pope Leo XIII stated in the encyclical, On Human Liberty of 1888, that "... Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness--namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges." (21) Both views were consistent with the Church's teaching on the nature of moral liberty which it does not interpret as the freedom to do whatever one likes, right or wrong. Wrongful acts or sinful acts, it teaches, are not acts of liberty, but acts of ignorance, a falling into slavery. Moral liberty, consists "in choosing that good only which is in conformity with the judgment of reason," which in turn conforms the will to the authority of God commanding good and forbidding evil. (22) Still, while the views of the popes were theologically consistent, their frequent repetition by lesser authorities were often the result of an exaggerated pessimistic evaluation of existing political and cultural conditions. In what countries, after all, did any and all cults demand absolute freedom to manifest all their thoughts at any time everywhere?

In the Declaration on Religious Liberty the Church took a more optimistic view of existing conditions without denying the earlier statements of the popes. Leaving aside the question what will happen if everyone contradicts everyone else all at once, it stressed the fact that, ultimately, every person is responsible for his own life and that nobody should be forced to believe against his free will. Even so, in his presentation of the first draft of the religious liberty document in the fall of 1963, Bishop de Smedt was careful to reject not only a kind of Machiavellianism (demanding the free exercise of religion for Catholic minorities but denying it to others when Catholics are in a majority), but also the errors of "religious indifferentism," and "doctrinal relativism," so much feared by the nineteenth-century popes.

The Declaration bypassed the endless and complicated theoretical arguments of the past most effectively with its biblical inspiration. Revelation, it said, shows that "God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth; hence they are bound in conscience, but they stand under no compulsion." It went on to say that man is to be guided by his own judgment and that he is to enjoy freedom: "In attracting and inviting his disciples, Christ acted patiently ... His intention was to rouse faith in his hearers ..., not to exert coercion upon them ..." Christ, it pointed out, "refused to be a political Messiah, ruling by force" and refused "to impose the truth by force on those who spoke against it ..." The apostles, it continued, followed the same way, making it plain "that each one of us is to render to God an account of himself (Rom. 14:12) and for this reason is bound to obey his conscience ... They followed the example of the gentleness and respectfulness of Christ ..." (23) The Declaration concluded:

... in order that relationships of peace and harmony may be established ... it is necessary that religious freedom be everywhere provided with an effective constitutional guarantee ... (24)

In view of the contrast with previous attitudes, it was inevitable that the positions affirmed by the Council would acquire overtones in the popular mind which were not in harmony with its original intentions. One feature which almost entirely escaped attention was that the Council did not identify freedom of religion with freedom of conscience. When the document was first presented in the fall of 1963, religious liberty was defined as "the right of the human person to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of his conscience." (25) When, after two years of postponements and controversy the Schema was finally accepted, however, religious liberty was based on 'the dignity of man' and referred to freedom from coercion, not to freedom of conscience. (26) As one of the architects of the Declaration, John Courtney Murray, emphasized the Declaration did not ground the free exercise of religion on "freedom of conscience":

Nowhere does this phrase occur. And the Declaration nowhere lends its authority to the theory for which the phrase frequently stands, namely, that I have the right to do what my conscience tells me to do, simply because my conscience tell me to do it. This is a perilous theory. Its particular peril is subjectivism--the notion that, in the end, it is my conscience, and not the objective truth that determines what is right or wrong, true or false. (27)

It was this "perilous theory" which seemed to increase in popularity to the same degree as the Council removed or simplified rules, regulations and legal obligations.

In North America, the two documents had an additional consequence, namely that a number of Catholics, too, began to adopt the idea that it was improper to influence legislation according to one's religious principles because that would be equivalent to 'imposing' views on those who differed in religion or ideals. In February, 1965, an editorial in the United States Catholic weekly, America, first drew attention to this. It observed that while "no group in society may demand that its religious beliefs or even its moral principles be accepted by the whole community as the norm of public policy," still, no one should be required to "check his conscience at the door when he entered the public forum to take a position on one of society's common concerns." "If a person is convinced that abortion is an attack on human life," it noted, he has as much right and duty to say so as he has to denounce racial discrimination." (28) Fully two years later, in 1967, the same periodical was forced to return to the subject. This time it devoted an entire page to the issue with a quote from a New York Catholic politician who said that "... We're only asking them not to dictate to the rest of the population what they can and cannot do." (29)

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Describing it as "typical of an argument being heard more and more frequently," the magazine rejected as unsatisfactory such answers as, "When the rest of the population stops telling Catholics what to do, Catholics will stop trying to tell anybody else what to do." The real question, it observed, was to what extent the Declaration on Religious Liberty meant "that Catholics should not seek to legalize their morality in a pluralistic society?" After explaining that there was no requirement that everything immoral be made criminal and, indeed, that human freedom and public order pointed "quite the other way," it took its own stand on the grounds that abortion pertains to the type of situation where an immoral act may legitimately be made criminal, namely when it has a harmful effect on someone else, other than the doer.

A second American Catholic weekly, the liberal Commonweal, edited by laymen, also felt compelled to face the issue at about the same time. Commonweal defended its opposition to abortion as perfectly acceptable in a pluralistic state, as long as political pressure was "applied openly, democratically and in a sensible, non-hysterical way." (30) But it observed that Mr. William F. Buckley, a Catholic and a conservative, had argued "that surely the principal meaning of the religious liberty pronouncements of Vatican II is that other men must be left free to practise the dictates of their own conscience ... it would appear to contradict the burden of the Vatican's position to put pressure on the law to maintain the supremacy of one's own position." Commonweal noted that "many Catholic liberals have argued in a similar way." The weekly itself refused to do so on the grounds that the issue of human life makes all the difference. As a consequence it was attacked in its own letter-to-the-editor column as well as in the Protestant weekly Christianity and Crisis. (31)

Another result of the Council discussions was the disappearance of the 'argument from authority.' As late as 1964 the American professional quarterly, The Catholic Lawyer, had observed that as long as the Church's Canon Law provided a penalty for cooperation in abortions, to vote for the liberalization of present abortion laws would be 'material cooperation. (32) It concluded that even if there were a grave reason for so doing, it appeared that "a Catholic legislator would be prohibited voting for a more liberal abortion law." (33) This article was about the last time the point seems to have been mentioned. With the new emphasis on the personal responsibility of the laity and, therefore, of the legislators, no one thought it desirable to return to a relationship of religious and political authority which was characteristic of pre-Vatican Council days.

The editorials gave evidence of a popular interpretation of Council documents which conservative bishops at the Council had foreseen and feared. The Declaration of Religious Liberty was not interpreted as a declaration in favour of freedom from coercion, but as a confirmation of everybody's freedom of conscience; the latter, in turn, was interpreted by some to mean that each person could believe 'whatever he liked'; by others, that nobody had the right to 'tell' anyone what to do. Catholics, so it appeared, should not try to impose their views upon the nation. Moreover, the de-emphasis of the role of the clergy in affairs of the world and the clarification of the layman's autonomy in this area was now interpreted by some to mean that Church leaders should not only keep out of politics but that they had no right to express an opinion at all. This interpretation was further strengthened and broadened by the sudden growth of the idea among some people within the Church that as celibates, pope, bishops and clergy were not qualified to express opinions on marital questions. Finally, as if to confuse everyone completely, there sprang up a contradictory demand that the clergy and hierarchy intervene in politics and condemn specific political and social conditions.

A similar confusion about the meaning and interpretation of the Council declarations was noticeable throughout the Church in Europe and America, including Canada. The confusion was simply "in the air" and an integral part of a new climate of opinion. It cropped up in letters to the editor of the Catholic weeklies. It was found for instance, in the contribution of Mr. Mark MacGuigan, Member of Parliament and Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, to the book, One Church, Two Nations? (34) Describing Pope Paul's expression of displeasure at the proposed recommendation for civil divorce in Italy in January 1967 as an "unwarranted intrusion into Italian politics," he hailed the Canadian Catholic Bishops' brief on contraception of October 1966 with its distinction between moral and civil law, as displaying "a much more profound understanding of the legitimate separation of Church and State." Yet, noting that in the same document the bishops expressed their opinions on the projected reforms, he referred to that as "ironic." In support of his objections to this "derogation from principle," he quoted an editorial in the Canadian Register which claimed that there was " a degree of contradiction between the responsible freedom of legislators and citizens as described in the first part of the statement and the actual intervention of the bishops." (35)

References:

(1.) March 11, 1968.

(2.) January 13, 1968.

(3.) Western Catholic Reporter, Feb. 29, 1968, p.1. "Abortion Law may be delayed," Canadian Register, Feb. 24, 1968.

(4.) Globe and Mail, March 15, 1968, p. 7.

(5.) "Two standards of Liberty?" Canadian Register, March 16, 1968.

(6.) "Used half-truth-Catholic paper attacks editorial on abortion," Globe and Mail, March 18, 1968, p. 5.

(7.) Reprinted in Prince Albert Herald, Aug. 20, 1962. O.M.R., October 1962.

(8.) "The snail-like battle for progress," Chatelaine, August 1967, p. 1.

(9.) Editorial, "A clear Distinction," April 1968.

(10.) For further analysis of these statements, see last chapter.

(11.) Quoted in Western Catholic Reporter, May 5 1966, p. 2.

(12.) Bishop E. de Smedt of Brugge (Bruges), Belgium. Henri Fesquet, The Drama of Vatican II, New York, Random House, 1967, p. 88.

(13.) See W. Abbot, The Documents of Vatican II, New York, American press, 1966, p. 255.

(14.) Paras. 73-76, Abbot, op. cit., p. 202ff.

(15.) Ibid., para. 73, p. 283.

(16.) Ibid., para. 76, pp. 286-8

(17.) Ibid., p. 289

(18.) Ibid., para. 43, pp. 243-5.

(19.) Declaration on Religious Liberty, the John La Farge Institute, New York, 1966, p. 10

(20.) Proposition 79. The Syllabus used the double negative, here omitted. (The following proposition is condemned: It is false that the civil liberty ...)

(21.) "Libertas Praestantissimum," 1888. See E. Gilson, ed. The Church Speaks to the Modern World, Doubleday Image Books, p. 70.

(22.) Ibid., see introduction, p. 55.

(23.) Declaration, op. cit., paras. 11-12.

(24.) Ibid., para. 15.

(25.) Quoted by Henri Fesquet, The Drama of Vatican II, Random House, 1966, p. 24

(26.) See Bishop de Smedt's interim report, November, 1964. Ibid., pp. 540-542.

(27.) See marginal notes by John Courtney Murray, S.J. in Declaration ... op. cit., p. 11

(28.) Editorial, "Morality and Policy I," America, Feb. 27 1965, p. 280

(29.) America, Feb 25, 1967, pp. 273-4.

(30.) Editorial, "Abortion and Pluralism," Commonweal, Feb. 24, 1967, pp. 582-3.

(31.) See Editorial, "Abortion and Dialogue, Commonweal, March 17, 1967, pp. 667-8.

(32.) "Material cooperation means that one, without giving approval, aids another by an action which is not in itself sinful," Catholic Lawyer, Spring, 1964, p. 173. footnote 110.

(33.) Ibid., p. 173. 34. Philip Le Blanc and Arnold Edinborough, ed., Longmans, 1968. M. MacGuigan, "Unity in the Secular City," pp. 146-162.

(35.) Ibid., Canadian Register, Oct. 22, 1966, p. 153.

CONCLUDING NOTE:

Mark McGuigan was very wrong in thinking the Canadian bishops had a better understanding of Church and state than Pope Paul VI. The tragedy was that the Canadian bishops themselves shared this opinion.

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Contrary to the wishes of the Pope, therefore, they relented their opposition first to contraception (1966-7), and then to divorce (1967), using the distinction between moral and civil law to argue that Catholics would continue to oppose these measures in their own lives, while the rest of Canadians could go ahead and adopt them. The Pope, on the other hand, continued to teach that the use of contraceptives is an intrinsic moral evil, that is to say, it is a moral evil For all people, not just for Catholics; therefore Catholics must continue to oppose it on behalf of all people. Similarly, divorce is a disaster For all Families, not just for Catholics.

The tragedy deepened when Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical against birth control (Humanae vitae, On human life) in June 1968, and the majority of Canadian bishops--logically enough From the stand they had taken earlier--issued their Winnipeg statement in September 1968 dismissing-for pastoral reasons--the thrust of the Encyclical just published by the Chief Pastor of the Catholic Church. At least, that is how the ordinary men and women in the street interpreted their Statement. When eight I months later, Prime Minister Trudeau and Parliament formally legalized abortion on May 14, 1969, the Catholic population did not raise much of a Fuss except For the French-speaking Creditistes.

Out of 35 Cabinet Minister, 28 were Catholics, as indeed was most of the governing Liberal Party all of whom except one voted in Favour. The Conference of Bishops issued a terse Press Release repeating that, as they had said before, they would never be able to accept this measure and that was that.