The Hidden Pierre Elliot Trudeau: The Faith Behind the Politics.

The Hidden Pierre Elliot Trudeau The Faith Behind the Politics

Edited by John English, Richard Gwyn, & P. Whitney Lackenbauer Published by Novalis Press, Ottawa, 2004, ISBN: 2895075506, Softcover, pp. 219, $24.95 CAN

This book is a compilation of presentations and discussions delivered at St. Jerome's College and the University of Waterloo on the so-called "hidden" side of Pierre Trudeau, namely his Catholic faith. The contributors are determined to prove that this "hidden" side was really important in the life of Trudeau the politician. I agree, not in the sense the contributors and organizers mean it but in the negative sense, as when an impaired Catholicism leads to grave errors.

The subject is certainly worth discussing if for no other reason than that Trudeau's heritage is very much alive among our contemporaries. Currently, the opinion moulders who dominate the media are determined that religion be relegated to the margins of society and kept out of politics. But this hostility refers to authentic Christianity. On the other hand, the media loved Trudeau because he spurned authentic Catholicity, allowing the shallow and secular pontificators to intrude upon the most serious moral-religious issues and distort them by their lack of principles and knowledge. Thus political and legal fictions misconceived "rights," "equality" and "freedoms," thereby damaging parliamentary democracy through hubris and fickleness, with Trudeau crowning the whole affair in a disastrous 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the organizers of the symposium should be given credit for at least trying.

Nevertheless, the book is not successful and this for two reasons: the contributors are all similar-minded to Trudeau himself and, therefore, cannot see clearly; secondly, factual information about Trudeau's personal life which undermines the book's thesis is omitted.

The contributors are, by and large, apologists for Trudeau. Some are Trudeau former collaborators (Turner, MacEachen, Lang, Axworthy); others are like-minded writers (Stephen Clarkson, John Godfrey, Ron Graham, Michael Valpy--unbelievers all, and Richard Gwyn, of late returned to the Church; others again have adopted a view of the Church similar to that of Trudeau himself. In short, there is not one contributor who looks at Trudeau from an orthodox Catholic point of view and finds him wanting.

Yes, it is true that, before the early sixties, Trudeau, having received a classical Catholic education, was a Church-going Catholic; yes, during the years following, he maintained a Catholic outlook and worldview; while in his retirement years he regularly went to Church, though he did acknowledge that in the two years between the death of his son Michel (1998) and his own death (Sept 2000) he found himself unable to pray.

In the years between, however, the political years, Trudeau abandoned any meaningful relation with the Church as teacher and moral guide. He directly followed in the footsteps of John Kennedy who as presidential candidate promised in 1961 that, if he ever had to choose between the principles of his Catholic faith and the American constitution, he would not hesitate to choose the latter. In December 1967, as the new Justice Minister, Trudeau informed the House of Commons that, as far as he was concerned, in these modern times religious principles have no bearing on the affairs of state. He acted accordingly by disregarding Catholic moral and natural law teaching both in public and private life.

In public life he committed the crime of legalizing abortion, of which he remained proud throughout his career. In taking his distance from the Church he was John Kennedy's Canadian imitator even though he may have arrived at that position independently. Via Trudeau the same attitude prevailed through Catholic Prime Ministers Clark (1979), Turner (1984), Mulroney (1984-1992), Chretien (1993-2003), and so to our present PM, Paul Martin. "What," Martin was asked at the G-8 summit meeting in Georgia, USA, by CTV television on June 9, 2004: "what if it came to choosing between his religion, or the Charter of Rights on the issues" (sodo-matrimony)? Martin: "I'll take the Charter." Paul Martin, just like John Kennedy and Pierre Trudeau, goes to Mass on Sundays and thinks of himself as a "religious" Catholic person. Unlike Kennedy and Trudeau he is not a regular womanizer, so perhaps he does not yet qualify for the same full status of a Catholic bimbo in politics.

As noted, the book disappoints mostly for what it does not provide: a serious analysis of Trudeau's changing Catholicism from the early fifties till his resignation as PM 25 years later in 1984. Parallel to that, there is his steady womanizing over an even longer period, a feature completely ignored in this book but which has come to light more clearly in recent years. In his private life Trudeau, even before he joined the Pearson cabinet in 1967, had become known as a "lady's man." Peter Newman recalls him roiling on his living room floor in the early sixties with his then "soul mate," Madeleine Gobeil. He soon became known as "a rakish sex symbol who made women swoon."

As Prime Minister (1968-1979; 1980-1984) he married a wealthy young socialite, Margaret Sinclair (she was 22, he 51) in a secret Catholic church wedding in March 1971. She was not a Catholic and the three boys eventually attended an Ottawa public school. The marriage lasted a little more than five years, followed by seven years of separation (divorce was granted in April 1984.) By that time Trudeau had a number of lovers, some for brief liaisons, others continuing for one or more years. Liona Boyd's trysts went on over an eight-year period, 1976-1983. "We spent many glorious days and nights at the lake (Harrington Lake)," she tells us. And she knew she was not the only one.

Margot Kidder, for example, was a favourite during the same time. Kim Cattrall (today of the "Sex in the City" TV program) was 22 in 1979, he 59, when they too had an affair lasting a year or so. Trudeau wanted them all. In 1990, at the age of 70, he had a fling with Newfoundland lawyer Deborah Coyne, who gave birth to his daughter Sarah in May 1991.

A man dominated by lust is not a man seeking redemption by Christ. Lust is a disordered desire for sexual pleasure and, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, weakens the will and darkens the mind.

Kim Cattrall says of Trudeau that he had an epicurean view of life. Margot Kidder thinks there might have been as many as 40 lovers. She also asked him once why a man of his intelligence continued to believe in the Catholic Church. Answer: "I use it as a place of meditation. I do believe. Well, I believe in most of it. I don't believe that I have to go to some priest in order to talk to God. I'm more than capable of talking to him directly all by myself."

And that is how it ended. The church was fine for ceremony but, in reality, quite unnecessary. That is why the Catholic pomp and circumstance at his Montreal funeral was another false move. A low-key service conducted by his parish priest in his own parish church should have sufficed.