Thursday, January 27, 2011

Pro-Life, Canadian - Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Catholic Insight Newsletter

In my email, I received this piece this morning, from Catholic Insight.  Father Alphonse De Valk, its head is unabashedly pro-life from conception to natural death.  He is a somewhat in your face supporter of life, and has been pilloried for it in polite society, human rights claims, emotional beat downs, etc.  But, he is a priest and man of God, committed to the truth, and committed to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on life.

Acknowledging that at some time in the not too distant future, Canadians will go to the polls again, here is his advice for voters who care about life.  In Canada, unborn life has little value, unless you, individually want it too. No protective legislation exists in our country for the unborn.  Thank you Pierre Elliott Trudeau, though had it not been you, it would have been another leader.

What will you do the next time the opportunity to cast your vote comes up?

Father De Valk views the honouring of life as the most basic issue facing us as human beings and as Canadians (or Americans).  How you treat the least of our society, the voiceless is how you will ultimately treat those higher up the food chain.  Read what he has to say:
January 27, 2011

Dear Friends,

It is not known when the federal election will be called, but we had better think hard about how we will vote. By “we” I mean the people whom politicians call “social conservatives” and the media, anti-abortionists. We call ourselves “pro-life.”

In Canada, politically speaking, pro-lifers are between a rock and a hard place. We have no political leaders in office, no political party in Parliament and no power-brokers who champion our cause, decent and honourable though it is. We are orphans in every sense.

We defend the right and dignity of life of all human beings, including the unborn, the elderly, the poor, women, parents and families, but government ignores us. Of the four political parties, three are pro-abortion by constitution and principle and the fourth, the Conservatives, by decision of its leader.

Society

There are still many who do not understand what is happening to society. They perceive the decline in moral standards, but they do not see the connections between one thing and another.


Let me present the briefest outline. The first serious setback to the Canadian moral standard, which also governed the whole Western world, came in 1931, when the Anglican church approved contraception and thereby shattered the age-old unity against contraception that had existed among otherwise-divided Christians. Within 20 years, practically every Protestant church adopted the Anglican position. This was followed in 1960 by the invention of the birth control pill.


Contraception, including the pill, had two consequences: it created the false belief that people could follow their own course of action in matters concerning procreation; secondly, that there was no longer much need for religion. By 1975, many countries, including Canada, had changed their laws to allow contraception, abortion, divorce, homosexual relations, sterilization, suicide, pornography, artificial insemination and bio-ethical experimentation.


Contraception, abortion and same-sex “marriage” are all of one piece. All three are united in their refusal to acknowledge the primacy of God in creation. All three refuse to allow the act of pro-creation to follow its natural course. The first makes it subject to the will of humans instead of God; the second snuffs out the delivery of the child; the third denies the natural pro-creative function. The other legal changes complete the evils of the first three.

Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, however, does not grasp the magnitude of the issue. On January 18, 2011, the CBC interviewed him. While he favoured a return of capital punishment, he said, he refused to touch abortion. CBC: “Would you re-open the abortion issue?” Stephen Harper: “No, no. Look, Peter, I have spent my political career trying to stay out of that issue. It is one on which people, including in my own party, have passionate views. They’re all over the map … What I say to people, if you want to diminish the number of abortions, you’ve got to change hearts and not laws. And I’m not interested in having a debate over abortion law.”


Well, a return to capital punishment has little or no support in Canada. The number of people erroneously convicted for capital crimes and then set free is sufficient to quash that idea. But on abortion, a majority of Canadians want restrictions on numbers, (110,000-115,000 a year) and their cost ($300 million annually).
Pro-Life: What to Do?


1. Vote for a pro-life Conservative in your riding. Why? Because Conservatives minus Harper provide theonly solution.


2. Do not vote for a Conservative who is not pro-life, even if there is no other pro-life candidate.


3. Do not accept a candidate’s claim that he/she is pro-life without checking how he/she voted.


4. Check with CampaignLifeCoalition.com for the candidate’s voting record.


5. Tell your Conservative pro-life candidate to retire Stephen Harper after the election, regardless of the outcome (majority or minority).


6. The pro-life issue is the most important issue Canada faces. Continued abortions will kill Canada economically, socially, morally, culturally and religiously.


7. If there is no pro-life Conservative, try another candidate, but only if he/she is pro-life. Check record as above under 4.


Stephen Harper has expressed his view often enough for us to know he means what he says. He has chosen to build his “legacy” on tinkering with economics and finance, instead of transcending the daily cut and thrust of venal politics and challenge the root issues that gnaw relentlessly at society: killing our children, destroying our families and rotting away our principles.


He does not understand that changing hearts and minds requires changing laws and leadership. He won’t do it; hence, retire him and find someone who will.

No comments: