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Wednesday 6 February 2008

Attempts by Civil Authorities to Suppress Catholicism

A Government agnecy, targetting the teaching of Catholicism by seeking to punish those who proclaim the Truth.
And where is this happening? Myanmar? Communist China?

Nope, Canada.
http://www.zenit.org/article-21689?l=english

Catholic Insight, a Canadian magazine known for its fidelity to Church teachings, has been targeted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for publishing articles [containing statements] taken from recent Vatican pronouncements.
Other types of statements published by Catholic Insight on the topic of homosexuality include political statements, medical studies, news reports and other studies.
Many of the articles concerned addressed the campaign in Canada to legalize same-sex marriage, which Catholic Insight openly opposed."
The basic view of the Church is that homosexual acts are a sin, but we love the sinner," said [the magazine's editor], adding that opposing same-sex marriage is not the same as rejecting homosexuals as persons.

A homosexual activist files a complaint and bingo -
The process favors the complainant over the accused.... There is no cost to the one who files a complaint, and the commission provides legal support to the complainant. In contrast, the accused must pay his legal costs.
Additionally, contrary to the English legal tradition, there is a reverse onus requiring the accused to prove his or her innocence.
"There's a presumption of guilt," said Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary, who himself was subject to two complaints before the Alberta Human Rights Commission in 2005 after publishing a pastoral letter defending the traditional definition of marriage earlier that same year.
"I really feel that we are into a crisis situation here where we are experiencing a trumping of religious freedom," said Bishop Henry....
"Catholicism seems to be under attack for a variety of different reasons," he said. "I think one of the things is that we're not trendy; we don't easily kind of compromise on anything we consider to be essential."
So when you have very clear definitive teaching with respect to marriage and what marriage is all about, and with homosexuality as intrinsically disordered and contrary to natural law, closing sexual relations to the gift of life, I don't see where Catholics can say anything else that what our traditional teaching is."
"That is not a very popular, politically correct expression of views in our society," the bishop said. "If you can knock down that and kind of bring the Catholic Church to its knees, I would think the opponents would be very pleased to do so."
Bishop Henry lays part of the blame with an activist judiciary that has read "sexual orientation" into the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects against discrimination. "And further, they're reading in 'sexual practices,'" said the bishop....
Christian groups have a losing record before Canada's human rights tribunals for alleged discrimination.
In November 2005, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ordered a Knights of Columbus council to pay two lesbians $1,000 each in damages, plus legal costs, after the council declined to rent their hall to the couple for a same-sex marriage ceremony.
In 2000, the Ontario Human Rights Commission fined Scott Brockie, a Protestant print-shop owner, $5,000 for declining to print, on moral grounds, homosexual-themed stationary.
The same tribunal fined London, Ontario, $10,000, plus interest, in 1997 when Mayor Diane Haskett declined to proclaim a gay pride day for the city.

Okay, forget the Third World. We need missionaries to convert the pagan land to the north.

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