This summer NDP MPs Charlie Angus and Joe Comartin claimed to have been deeply hurt by the Roman Catholic Church. The first was told that he could not receive communion. The latter has been prevented from teaching marriage classes in his local church.
The reason is that both men actively supported and voted for the government's same-sex marriage legislation. One would have hoped they would have the courage of their convictions and realized they could not simultaneously hold two mutually contradictory views.
It really is quite extraordinary that politicians who want to make revolutionary changes to the nature of family and culture should then complain when one of the bastions of that family and culture, the Roman Catholic Church, tries to defend itself.
The real issue is why Joe Comartin was allowed to teach about Catholic marriage in the first place and why Charlie Angus wasn't denied communion earlier.
I happen to know Comartin and he is a profoundly decent man. I have no reason to think otherwise of Charlie Angus. But decency is hardly the point. There are many decent Jews, Muslims and atheists, but they are similarly unqualified to teach Catholic ideas or receive the Catholic eucharist because, yes, they reject Catholic beliefs.
Marriage is regarded within Catholicism as a sacrament and as such as the very epicenter of Catholicism. To want to distort the sacrament of marriage is akin to distorting any other sacrament. Like, for example, a person who claimed to be Catholic but denied that Jesus was present during the sacrifice of the mass.
If you don't believe it, move on. But don't criticize the Catholic Church for being Catholic.
Actually the Roman Catholic Church allows all sorts of disagreement. It positively encourages it in many circumstances and has founded numerous schools and universities where debate is made possible.
So a Catholic can, for example, support the war in Iraq, contrary to the Vatican position. Can support the death penalty, contrary to the Vatican position. Can be opposed to forgiving Third World debt, contrary to the Vatican position.
They could also differ from the church on issues of celibate clergy and all sorts of vital subjects. But within Catholic thought there are some non-negotiables. And humanity's openness to life is one of them.
Yet one does not have to be Catholic to realize that the gay marriage issue is not about two people loving one another, about human rights or about equality. It is about each individual being open to God's plan for creation and being open to life.
Sex between people of the same gender can by its very nature never result in new life and is in the final analysis a selfish act. It becomes an end in itself and never a means to that most glorious of ends, God-given life.
Even if the parties involved are in love, their love is not rooted in creation and in God's exquisite plan for his creatures. Again, you don't have to believe this. But to be a Catholic in good standing you do. As for many within various other denominations, I'm no longer entirely sure.
This does not mean we stop loving homosexuals, or even confused NDP MPs, but it must mean that we do not expect the Catholic Church to destroy a sacrament for the sake of the latest legal and liberal fashion of charter equality.
Nobody is forcing any person to be a Catholic but it might be nice if various MPs did not try to force Catholics to be something else.
It is at heart a case of pride. The teachings of Jesus Christ, of the disciples and apostles, of the early church fathers and doctors and of the deposit of faith contained within the catechism are all less important to some alleged Catholics than their own opinions.
One last point, exposing deep hypocrisy. An NDP MP who voted against party policy on same-sex marriage was demoted, has been widely attacked by party members and is in danger of losing the party's official support.
This is for disobeying Jack Layton. Surely the consequences are a little more serious when one disobeys God. Just a thought.
