So what happened?

Catholic Insight's March editorial, "Should Rock be excommunicated?" made it to the front pages of the Calgary Herald and the Ottawa Citizen, and to page four of the National Post, on Monday, February 26. This, in turn led to two one-hour-long nation-wide phone-in radio shows. Thus, our general purpose of bringing the idea before a larger audience for discussion had been achieved.

Much better was to come. One of the 70 residential bishops in Canada decided that the question was indeed to be taken seriously, especially because he had in his own diocese a prominent politician, Mr. Joe Clark, who publicly affirms that he is a proabortion Catholic, indicating, moreover, that he didn't think that was all that unusual or even worthy of interest.

On Sunday, February 25, Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, in an article in the Calgary Sun, let it be known that he thought such behaviour of Catholic politicians "scandalous," that Catholics could not logically hold a position of approving abortion, that he might well prevent Mr. Clark from speaking to students in Catholic schools, and that if Mr. Clark pre deceased him he might find himself without a bishop willing to give him a Catholic funeral. However, he did think that excommunication was going a little too far.

During the following few weeks, Bishop Henry refused to budge from his position despite challenges and attacks in the media. Where Canadian Catholic weeklies had ignored Catholic Insight's February 22 news release and editorial, they felt obliged to report Bishop Henry's stand. There were more radio phone-in interviews with him, as well as full coverage of him and Catholic Insight's editorial in the monthly newspaper The Interim, and in the bi-weekly Report Newsmagazine. So what are we to make of all this?

Perspective

The present position of the bishops and the Church vis-a-vis abortion and other ethical controversies may be evaluated from a short-term perspective, or be seen in a much wider and much older historical context which can only be hinted at in this small space.

The shortest perspective is that Bishop Henry's action is a first for Canada. Never before in recent times has a Canadian bishop publicly laid down the law in reference to a specific erring Catholic politician. That moves Canada to the same level as the United States, where a number of bishops have made it clear to Catholic politicians that if they insist on being pro-abortion, they had better forget about using Catholic facilities for their political forums. The most direct and outspoken bishop was the late Bishop Austin Vaughan, auxiliary in New York, who publicly told New York State Governor Mario Cuomo that if he carried on with his pro-abortion politics, he risked going to hell.

Secondly, Bishop Henry's stand, I believe, is part of a growing awareness among our bishops that they cannot leave the provocations of Catholics like Chretien, Clark and Rock unanswered. The November 27, 2000, election campaign was a catalyst in this respect. Rock's campaign for taxpayer-funded abortions in private clinics added to the frustration, expressed, for example, by Archbishop Marcel Gervais. The Pope constantly reiterates that the attacks on the family must be countered. On a lesser scale, there was the World March of Women 2000 controversy.

As for a slightly longer perspective, just an item or two. In 1975 when I published a magazine called the Chelsea Journal, I printed an account of a diocese making an arrangement of convenience with local politicians. A visiting official from the national bishops' conference (CCCB) rebuked me. These things are not handled with publicity, he said; they are settled in quiet, private, one-on-one meetings behind the scene, as they have always been.

In 1980-1, I asked Archbishop Joseph MacNeil of Edmonton, then president of the bishops' conference, to make a public statement about the absence of a clause covering the unborn in the proposed Charter of Rights, in order to rally Catholics against it. He refused, and instead arranged for a private meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau and his deputy, Allan McEachen, whom he knew from St. Francis Xavier University. Later on he reported that the meeting was in vain. Both Ministers had their heads spinning so much with the political manoeuvreings of the day that they couldn't or wouldn't comprehend what he was saying.

Today the P.M. no longer even answers correspondence from bishops, as happened in 1996-7 when they wrote him seven letters without getting a response. The days of behind-the-scene contacts will probably never be over altogether, but it is public pressure that oils the wheels of office today.

A single point about the larger, more historical context. This relates to the question of what is a bishop: is he primarily an institutional manager who tries to safeguard the interests of the Catholic community with behind the scene deal-making as proved so necessary before the middle of the nineteenth century, or will he be an evangelical witness to the teaching of Christ? In the latter case he will want to exhort his Catholic faithful first of all. It is here that the developments of the last 150 years have moved both Pope and bishops more and more into the direction of witness rather than manager. This should be the subject of another article.