PhilPaine.com

The Pope has just denounced Cana­da for its pop­u­lar and polit­i­cal sup­port for gay mar­riage. Cana­da has, through­out its his­to­ry, been a coun­try with a Catholic major­i­ty, at least in the­o­ry. But, in fact, the prac­tice of “pri­vate reli­gion” — the search for some per­son­al phi­los­o­phy inde­pen­dent of any orga­nized sect or author­i­ty — is what actu­al­ly pre­dom­i­nates in Cana­da, as well as an ingrained belief that church­es should stay out of pol­i­tics. This has long been a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence between Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. Most Cana­di­ans would not like­ly know the reli­gious affil­i­a­tion of any of their politi­cians, and would not think it of any inter­est. Canada’s for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Paul Mar­tin, who is a prac­tic­ing Catholic, remarked today that the Pope’s opin­ion did not in the least affect him. “It’s the job of the courts to apply the Char­ter of Rights, and it was my job as Prime Min­is­ter to see that those rights were respected.” 

Our cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter, Stephen Harp­er, long ago announced that he will, some­time in the future, chal­lenge the Supreme Court’s rul­ing on gay mar­riage. How­ev­er, this appears to have been mere noise to please a small seg­ment of his con­stituen­cy. He can­not get much sup­port on the issue, even with­in the ranks of his own par­ty, and he knows that such a chal­lenge would not get any­where with­in the frame­work of the Cana­di­an con­sti­tu­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, the rul­ing par­ty has been very vague about how or when it will act on this. My bet is that they will backpedal on this.

Regard­ing Harper’s pol­i­cy in Lebanon, his­to­ri­an (and old friend) Steve Muhlberg­er writes me: “When enu­mer­at­ing the sins of Stephen Harp­er nev­er for­get his sup­port for a for­eign gov­ern­ment bomb­ing and killing Cana­di­an cit­i­zens in an illegal,aggressive cam­paign.”

I agree whole­heart­ed­ly. I was appalled that the media in this coun­try did not seem to think it was very impor­tant that Cana­di­an cit­i­zens were killed by the Israeli mil­i­tary. Four chil­dren, ages one, four, six and eight, were among those killed. After some pub­lic pres­sure from ordi­nary Cana­di­an cit­i­zens, Israel did issue an apol­o­gy. But it cer­tain­ly was not the result of Stephen Harp­er speak­ing up for his nation. On the con­trary, Harp­er has made it plain that, as far as he is con­cerned, any for­eign pow­er is wel­come to kill as many Cana­di­an chil­dren as it wants, as long as the pro­ce­dure is approved by the White House.