More on the scandalous sabotage of Canadian Catholics and the Pro-Life cause by Canada's Bishops Conference

Yesterday's post, "Former employee reports, "Catholic Bishops complicit in Scandalous Sabotage of the Pro-Life Cause in Canada," links back to the genesis of this scandal. I originally posted my thoughts about our current election in Canada and an opinion on the Pro-Life movements record, not bound in all the facts. Steve Jalsevac of LifeSiteNews wrote me about my words and gave permission to publish his letter. That letter from Steve has been an incredibly valuable document. The blogpost by former CCCB employee Lea Z. Singh shines even more light on the scandal that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has committed - a scandal that began with the Winnipeg Statement dissenting from Humanae Vitae so many years ago. 

We, as Catholics in Canada are responsible too. We have been to easy to "go along to get along" and we have let our bishops off the hook. We have hidden behind their own weakness to excuse our sinful actions and our "choice" mentality.  

Steve has written to me again with some further information that was too long for the combox. I am posting it here with a few comments in brackets and italics for clarity for those who may not be familiar with the Canadian situation:

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Dear David,

Thanks for the gracious apology and the comments from others. Many have asked John-Henry and I to do a book, but we are stretched to the maximum all the time so I don’t know if that will be possible. However, we shall see. 

Steve Jalsevac

Former St Bonaventure's pastor Friar Rick also actively campaigned for openly homosexual United Church pastor Roy Oliphant  who was elected as Liberal MP for the parish riding of Don Valley West. (Friar Richard Riccioli was born in Montreal and is now in the Diocese of Syracuse. Long ago he silenced comments on his blog because Catholics in Toronto were taking him to task for his many of his statements in the Toronto press and his blog. The NDP is a Socialist Party and is aggressively pro-abortion, no candidates may hold a Pro-Life position. )

And of course your readers may be well aware of the huge efforts by Campaign Life Coalition, LifeSiteNews and others for many years to encourage the Catholic bishops to stop funding pro-abortion, pro-contraception and pro-homosexual, leftist groups through Development and Peace. While pro-life and pro-family groups have been working heroically across Canada and internationally, these groups, using hundreds of millions of dollars in donations directed to them from the aid organizations of the CCCB and other nations’ bishops conferences, have been actively undermining, all the work that we and others have been doing in Canada and around the world. In Catholic schools and parishes in Canada, Development and Peace has been indoctrinating generations of children and parishioners with its liberal Catholic (anti-Catholic), secularist, leftist world views. And it is still fighting back very hard against its faithful Catholic critics.

It is beyond any comprehension that this can still be going on. The latest word is that the CCCB is developing a new strategy to undermine and neutralize the Development and Peace critics. That is, to destroy the good name and reputation of the critics instead of dealing with the enormous amount of evidence that was given to them about serious problems with the decision making flaws of D&P funding decisions. (see this link for D & P's campaign to silence its critics:

http://voxcantor.blogspot.ca/2015/08/canadas-development-peace-and-canadian.html)

Another scandal has been the total lack of cooperation of the Ontario Bishops (with one known exception) with the faithful laity attempting to stop the implementation of the Ontario government's sex ed curriculum. CLC, LifeSite, REAL Women and numerous other groups of various cultural and religious backgrounds have undertaken historically unprecedented cooperative actions to try to stop the curriculum. However, the bishops insisted on taking the quiet, behind the scenes direct negotiations with the government route which was predictably a total failure, as such a strategy has always been on these kinds of issues. (The same failed approach I should add that allowed "Gay Straight Alliances" into our Catholic schools. More than one Toronto priest has told me that they were "forbidden" to speak on the issue from the pulpit!)

The bishops forbade all agencies and persons under their direct authority from publicly opposing the curriculum, or at least that is what happened in the Toronto diocese. They took for themselves the authority over the sex education of Catholic children while leaving those of other or no faiths in public schools abandoned to the certain harm of the curriculum. This was in direct violation of Catholic teaching where it is clearly stated that parents, not bishops, are the first educators of their children and have the main responsibility for that education and that bishops have a responsibility to assist them and persons of all faiths on such major and serious moral matters. 

All appeals for a meeting and other cooperation with the bishops from those publicly opposing the curriculum were ignored by the bishops and in some cases the parents and groups were told to stop being so vocal because it was interfering with the bishops' own unilaterally decided strategy. You can imagine the dismay and puzzlement of not just the Catholics, but also all others opposed to the curriculum in reaction to this Catholic institutional indifference and even hostility towards their efforts. Had the bishops instead decided to use their moral authority and roused the parishioners throughout the province to actively demand that the government withdraw the immoral curriculum, together with all the other opposing groups, I have no doubt whatever that it would have been withdrawn. But Church authorities decided completely against that, relying as usual on professional Catholic and well-connected and wealthy advisors and lawyers, etc. who cannot be trusted to have the protection of the faith as a high priority.

As was discovered, various Catholic agencies actually quietly, unknown to the Catholic population, took part in the development of the curriculum and completely supported it. Many also learned the that current Catholic Fully Alive program already incorporates many, but not all, of the elements in the government program and has done so for years. So no wonder the opposition to the program was so weak as to be almost non-existent. 

As the grassroots parents movement against the curriculum is growing and thousands show up to participate in the various events, one thing is becoming more disturbingly obvious every day. The Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese Christians, Russian and other Orthodox, Coptics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and many other cultural and religious group leaders are visibly present, but there are rarely ever any representatives of the Catholic Church at the events. It is a great embarrassment and shame for the individual Catholics who are taking part in this movement. Where is the Catholic Church all are saying - the largest religious denomination in the province, with the very best documented and presented teachings in the world in these issues? The one religious denomination with by far the most potential influence in the province.

Not only are they not there, they are actively opposing this parents’ movement and supporting the curriculum behind the scenes and sometimes in public. This is yet another great scandal.

One thing that the pro-life has been very grateful for is that a large number of Catholic bishops has been participating in a meaningful way in the March for Life for the past several years. We always want to give credit where credit is due and LifeSite is happy to report such positive, helpful actions assisting the laity on the great moral struggles of our time.

And I have never meant any of these comments to reflect badly on all the bishops. Here and there some bishops have done good things and there are some bishops much more faithful than others. Archbishop Prendergast has been faithful in so many ways as was now retired bishop Nicholas Di Angeles of Peterborough, a wonderful man who did the best that he could in many situations and was a faithful supporter of both CLC and LifeSiteNews. 

Also, the Catholic laity is not remotely aware of the intense pressure that is often put on outspokenly faithful bishops by the bishops conferences and other persons in in the Church to not "rock the boat." This really does happen and has often happened. The stories I have heard would curl your hair. (Put it in a book!) The dissident, worldly and especially the homosexual bishops, have been ruthless against their brother bishops who "step out of line” from the CCCB, Ontario Bishops or other provincial bishops' conferences unity of mediocrity or worse. They see these good bishops are being dangerous to their agendas.

But again, not all is negative, and LifeSite is always very happy to be able to report any good news regarding the Catholic Church in Canada.

Steve Jalsevac

LifeSiteNews

See the following LifeSiteNews Reports for some insight into this situation:

Ontario Catholic leadership meekly accepts Wynne Sex-ed while 70,000+ citizens oppose it

Ontario bishops’ general secretary has been actively supporting Wynne’s child abusive sex-ed

Official Catholic parents’ group challenged for backing Wynne’s sex-ed: ‘Are they simply a pawn?’

Catholic trustee on sex-ed: The gvmt ‘tells us what to do, and we need to do it’

Toronto Catholic trustees claim bishops’ support as they vote down motion to delay Wynne’s sex-ed

Parents urge pope’s envoy to push for stronger Catholic response to Wynne’s explicit sex-ed

Hamilton diocese cancels talk at Catholic parish criticizing Wynne’s explicit sex-ed