Equating religion, citizenship doesn’t add up

RE: I have stayed Canadian, and stayed Catholic (Oct 24.)

I consider Deirdre Pike a gift to the Hamilton community. We have all benefitted from her writing and her activism on issues of equity and social justice and interfaith harmony. I respect her decision to remain Catholic and the reasoning behind it, despite being a lesbian.

However, I take exception to her logic in equating staying Canadian with staying Catholic. Relinquishing one’s citizenship requires disruptive relocation, usually leaving family, traditions and values behind, not to mention the challenges of finding another country that better fits one’s ideals and beliefs. I speak from personal experience and have never regretted the decision to leave my country of birth and become a Canadian.

While presenting similar challenges, leaving the faith community I grew up with and finding one that better fits my current values (Unitarian Universalist), has been relatively less disruptive. I think a closer analogy for Deirdre’s logic would be to equate staying Catholic with remaining in a particular political party when one begins to question the alignment between that party’s fundamental beliefs and one’s current thinking and behaviour. Fortunately, in Canada we have both freedom and a range of choices that allow one to find a comfortable fit between personal beliefs and lifestyle and religious/political affiliation. Deirdre might want to try rethinking her logic based on political affiliation rather than citizenship, and see if her reasoning still holds as strong. Pat Dickinson, Waterdown