The Humanists' war on Christians.

What is the agenda of MP Svend Robinson and the secular Humanists? Mr. Robinson presented to Parliament a petition from the Humanist Association of Canada calling for "the Supremacy of God" to be removed from the preamble of the Canadian Constitution.

Robinson and the Humanist Association are not just looking for fairness for atheists. Rather, they seek the elimination of the Christian foundation of Canada.

In 1996, when Catholic MP Roseanne Skoke spoke out against "sexual orientation" being added to the sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code, Robinson demanded that she retract her "hateful comments" and suggested that her "hateful conduct" had no place in the House of Commons.

In short, Robinson attempted to silence Mrs. Skoke for taking a position on homosexuality that was firmly based on Christianity, which he rejects.

Humanist Association

Colin Downie, past president of the Humanist Association of Canada, was on the Hill when Robinson tabled the antiGod petition. He, of course, agreed. Like Robinson, he reveals his wider aims. In a letter published in the Ottawa Citizen some time ago (Feb. 2, 1998), he claimed that Catholic schools are unfit places for children to be taught. Humanists, he stated scream at indoctrinating children with irrational beliefs and suppressing their capacity to exercise reason and critical thinking."

Anyone who uses words this kind of language is not interested in alternative points of view. If Mr. Downie and his ideological friends ever formed a government in this country, religious education and religious freedom would quickly disappear.

The Canadian Humanist Association was co-founded by the abortionist Dr. Henry Morgentaler, another militant atheist, one who has no trouble blaming the Catholic Church for the Jewish Holocaust, no matter what proof to the contrary.

In his address to a Humanist convention in 1995, Morgentaler described Catholicism as "a culture of death", clearly in retaliation for Pope John Paul's earlier use of the term in describing the collective anti-life elements, including abortion, in Western societies. On other occasions, too, Morgentaler has expressed hatred for the Catholic Church. Both Robinson and Morgentaler are popular media cult figures. Fortunately for us, the Humanist crowd represent only a small faction in Canadian society.

Courts and Commissions

But beware. Those who oppose Christian faith and morality are gaining more influence, not least by making use of the new trend to allow unelected courts, human rights commissions, and other such bodies to widely re-interpret and change laws, or even make new laws out of old ones.

Today, Christian positions on many important issues such as homosexuality, abortion and pornography are often at odds with our provincial and federal judges, who have been empowered by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to "read into the law" what prove to be the fashionable views of persistently vocal factions.

To obtain a preview of what could happen once "sexual orientation", one of their fashionable hobby horses, is added to the grounds for laying hate crime charges, one need look no further than what Msgr. Dermot O'Keefe was subjected to two years ago, after a parish bulletin was distributed in a Catholic church in Bay Bulls, Nfld.

Mindful of what the Church has taught through the centuries, Msgr. O'Keefe wrote that "the orientation or inclination towards bodily union between two men or two women is evidently a disorder in human nature, and it results from Original Sin." He stated that homosexuality "can and must be controlled and conquered with God's supernatural help, through His Sacraments prayerfully received."

Echoing the 1992 guideline issued by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Msgr. O'Keefe asserted that Catholics should not be forced to rent an apartment to a homosexual couple or accept homosexuals as teachers. He described homosexuality not as a "human right, but an inhuman wrong." And he stated that "people with this tendency deserve respect as persons, especially if they are fighting against it."

Reaction to the parish bulletin was not long in coming. Quoted in the St. John's Evening Herald, Brian Hodder, co-chairman of Newfoundland Gays and Lesbians for Equality, described Msgr. O'Keefe's remarks as a "virulent attack against our dignity as human beings. The statements of this priest should be investigated by the police to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant charges."

The executive director of the province' s Human Rights Association, Jerry Vink, reacted in a similar way: "It gets very close to actual hate literature propaganda. If someone wants to have certain views like that you don't start propagating it."

Provincial premiers, such as Mike Harris or Ralph Klein, have made it clear they will not invoke the notwithstanding clause to restrain these court rulings.

In a recent edition of the largely Christian-based Canada Family Action Coalition newsletter, organization president Roy Beyer stated that "Canadians do not like to rock the boat," and Church-going Canadians "are, unfortunately, no exception."

If Canadian Christians do not change their apathetic past record, and change it very soon, we may find our freedom of expression and even freedom to worship severely restricted.

Robert Eady is a contributing editor of Catholic Insight, and an Ottawa director of the Catholic Civil Rights League. The above is based on two op-ed pieces published Jan. 2 and June 20 of 1999 in the Ottawa Citizen.