The exclusion of women from the priesthood amounts to sexual discrimination in the workplace. That will be the angle of attack on the Catholic Church. It's coming. Just a matter of time.
Canadian National Public Radio Broadcasts Call for State Control of Religion
You know...we really need to guard that Northern Border ALOT better. We don't want that nonsense floating our way.
Like they accept the National Patriotic Church in China.
It's lovely to see national socialist concepts grow to maturity in Canada. Re-education camps, anyone?
Bob-a-loo! Why don't you start with the imams and get to the Catholics later? See how it goes? Work out the bugs in the system (that should appeal to an old engineer). They seem like a rational lot. Take a run at them for a start. While you're at it, insist that the genders should attend Friday prayers with no segregation.
And check all the locks on the doors before you tuck in to bed that night.
So his solution is force the church to obey the state, under penalty of law?
Lies are truth, slavery is freedom, war is peace ... Orwell was a prophet.
When the state determines religious doctrine and practices, it is usurping God. He might have in mind the old days in Europe when, in an attempt to end religious conflict, the monarch's creed became the creed of the country. (That's probably giving him too much credit, though, and the analogy doesn't exactly fit.) But this reminds me more --as our Senator Durbin might put it--of the Nazis, the Soviets and their Gulags, or some mad regime such as Pol Pot.
When Hell freezes over, Professor. Wake up, Canadians.
SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!
Are you sure that Dave Barry didn't write this commentary?
Although the introductory comments are (apparently) a bit more serious and provide some chilling thought as to the mindset of the Canadian press, I hope that the author of this commentary didn't injure his tongue too severely when he embedded it in his cheek.
Those wacky Canadians!
Assuming this whole thing is not tongue-in-cheek ...
This betrays a serious ignorance of history. Catholicism has been outlawed in England [the most recent example ended only a little more than a century ago], and severely persecuted in various Communist regimes, among others. "The Vatican", and ordinary members of the faithful, did not acquiesce to these pressures. The doctrine was not changed to suit the Zeitgeist, nor was the practical application of that doctrine to daily life changed. People simply accepted their sufferings and quietly resisted. And, ultimately, the opposing regimes sickened, and the Church endured.
The Church does not belong to any earthly power, but to Christ. And we are not at liberty to alter His truth to suit political whims. The state may proclaim that 2+2=5 all it wants, the delusional populace may find immediate advantage in agreeing with such error, but no force can make the statement other than false. Denying the ontological nature of a thing will, eventually, have negative repercussions. The process during which those repercussion are played out will be extremely painful, but truth will eventually prevail. And the Church will still be there, after it's all over, to pick up the pieces and start the arduous task of rebuilding civilization.
When Popes crowned kings, it was a reminder that the state existed at the pleasure of God. Nothing the king could do in the civil realm could overturn the moral law, which is divine in origin. Naturally, this chafed, and temporal rulers were quick to find ways to avoid such limits to their power.
But, just in modern times, we've survived the Protestant Deformation, which was the first attempt to make the Church subservient to the state, the murderous excesses of the Endarkenment, the Kulturkampf, the rise of nihilistic Fascism, and sundry manifestations of atheistic Marxism. I expect we'll survive the Age of Hedonism as well.
What the advocates of the Culture of Death never seem to realize is that their "philosophy" is self-limiting. It contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It is cultural suicide, though it will murder a good number of innocents in the process. One has only to wait long enough, and the Culture of Death will be dead. The Catholic Church always wins by simply enduring, and it will be there again to pick up the pieces after this latest human folly has collapsed under the weight of its own nonsense.
Does this guy not understand the whole concept behind 'religion'?