{"id":6014,"date":"2006-09-09T00:49:45","date_gmt":"2006-09-09T00:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/ontario-again.html"},"modified":"2006-09-09T00:49:45","modified_gmt":"2006-09-09T00:49:45","slug":"ontario-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/ontario-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Ontario, again…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rocco points to <\/a>the very <\/em>interesting nugget that Vatican Radio has broadcast a little bit of the Pope’s words to the Ontario bishops on their ad limina.<\/em> <\/a><\/p>\n

The text of the adress, in case you missed it on Friday, is here. <\/a>The strong words against abortion and same-sex marriage have made news in Canada. <\/a>Like…we’re surprised<\/em> the Pope is against these things? Huh. Sort of like all those mock headlines Catholic bloggers gloried in after the papal election last year: "Shocker: Pope is Catholic."  Anyway:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

But the pontiff’s strong criticism Friday re-ignited a debate about the separation of church and state in Canada. Gilles Marchildon, executive director of gay-rights advocates Egale Canada, said politicians represent all Canadians of various faiths and should keep their personal beliefs out of the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of that, politicians have a responsibility to not be proponents of a particular faith when making decisions that affect everyone,\u201d said Mr. Marchildon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t have a state religion in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as government doesn’t instruct the Catholic Church how to celebrate communion, the church shouldn’t instruct politicians on who can get married, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m surprised the Pope doesn’t realize that gate can swing both ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Is that…a threat?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Pat O’Brien, the former Liberal London-area MP who resigned over his party’s stand on same-sex marriage, told CBC Newsworld there is no such thing as a separation between church and state.<\/p>\n

\u201cA morality of convenience is not much of a morality and if you’re going to leave behind your Catholic Christian beliefs and principles because you walk into a legislative chamber, to me that would be a morality of convenience,\u201d said Mr. O’Brien, who is now part of Vote Marriage Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoliticians who say they are practicing Catholics and practising Christians will hopefully very carefully consider the words of the Holy Father.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moira McQueen, professor of theology at the University of Toronto, said the Pope’s comments were justified. Many outside the Catholic community feel the same-sex marriage debate was rushed through, Ms. McQueen said, and was driven more by political pressure than conscience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was more a political push rather than a real need for the bulk of the population,\u201d said Ms. McQueen, who is also director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute. \u201cAny Catholic politician who was moving along the lines of same-sex marriage and totally ignoring what Pope Benedict was saying, isn’t really following their conscience from a Catholic perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pope’s message won’t go unnoticed by the Catholic community, Ms. McQueen said, especially come election time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he’ll have a fair amount of influence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rocco points to the very interesting nugget that Vatican Radio has broadcast a little bit of the Pope’s words to the Ontario bishops on their ad limina. The text of the adress, in case you missed it on Friday, is here. The strong words against abortion and same-sex marriage have made news in Canada. Like…we’re…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOntario, again... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/ontario-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ontario, again... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rocco points to the very interesting nugget that Vatican Radio has broadcast a little bit of the Pope’s words to the Ontario bishops on their ad limina. The text of the adress, in case you missed it on Friday, is here. The strong words against abortion and same-sex marriage have made news in Canada. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}