By Charles Moore in The Telegraph-Journal. Charles W. Moore is a Nova Scotia based freelance writer and editor whose column appears weekly at the Telegraph-Journal.
Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe's attack on a Quebec Conservative candidate over her membership in the Catholic prelature Opus Dei, and lack of any consequential significant expression of media censure or popular outrage, further underscores that Christian-bashing is the one remaining socially-acceptable form of discrimination and intolerance in Canada.
While it's unremarkable that Mr. Duceppe, a former communist and still thoroughgoing left-winger, despises traditionalist Christianity, that his criticism of Nicole Charbonneau Barron, Conservative candidate in the Montreal-area riding of St. Bruno-St. Hubert, for her Opus Dei affiliation received only cursory and passing mention from the commentariat speaks volumes about popular acceptance of anti-Christian bigotry in our increasingly secular humanist culture.
Opus Dei, you see, adheres faithfully to official Catholic doctrine condemning abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage, unlike some (more socially acceptable) "cafeteria Catholics" who imagine they can legitimately pick and choose among which Church doctrines and moral teachings they will affirm or oppose. The mission statement of the organization, founded in 1928 by Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002, is "to spread the message that work and the circumstances of everyday life are occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society."
Opus Dei's first Canadian member was Jacques Bonneville of Montreal who established the group's work there in Canada in 1957 at the invitation of Cardinal Paul-Emile Léger. There are now an estimated 600 Opus Dei members in this country (some 87,000 worldwide), mostly married men and women, as well as approximately 1,600 co-operators who pray for the group's work and help with apostolic initiatives, including programs for young people, professionals, and families such as seminars for high school students, parenting courses, summer camps, and student residences at several universities intended to provide an environment for Christian formation and help participants become "sowers of peace and joy." There are now 16 Opus Dei centres in five Canadian cities: Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver.
Opus Dei was viciously slandered in Dan Brown's amateurishly-written but wildly popular pulp-fiction fantasy novel The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 Tom Hanks film derived from it, in which the organization is caricatured as a sinister, murderous cult, a stereotype Mr. Duceppe presumably sought to channel with his assault on Ms. Barron's religious beliefs.
While he didn't call for Ms. Barron to resign as a parliamentary candidate, Duceppe was clearly fear-mongering in attempting to portray her as a member of a "secret society" with an agenda to impose "fundamentalist" Christian views on Parliament. That's pretty much lib-left boilerplate referencing any devout Christian participating in public life, but what especially rankles is that had Mr. Duceppe delivered a similar critique of the religious beliefs of, say, a Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Sikh candidate, the political correctness brigades would have been over him like flies on a garbage truck, condemning him as an in tolerant racist. However, attack serious Christianity and the silence is deafening.
The double-standard is infuriating. It's become abundantly clear that at least among media chatterati, devout Christians are about as welcome in electoral politics as fire ants at a picnic, the message being that Christian social conservatives should be disqualified from holding political power and influence because in the estimation of lib-left self-appointed elites they are moral interventionists promoting hidden agendas - ideologically out of sync with a society allegedly comprised mainly of social liberals. The further implication is that religious people who actually take seriously and try to practice the principles, standards, and doctrines of their faith must be relegated to second-class citizenship. A topical example is the bleating from stage left over U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's evangelical/pentecostal faith affiliation.
To draw a clearer bead on just how offensive this trope is, try inserting the words "Jew" or "Jewish" in place of "Christian" or "social conservative," or "religious right" in news reports and commentaries expressing shock and alarm that "fundamentalist" Christians are actually participating in the political process.
Sounds ugly, doesn't it? So why do secular humanists think it's perfectly OK to say such things about Christians seeking office? It's nothing less than selective, left-wing, secularist bigotry.
No comments:
Post a Comment