The reality of religion and politics

They say it’s impolite to discuss religion or politics, so to write about both together must be positively criminal.

It would certainly seem that way judging by the reaction of right-wing columnists and social media warriors recently after I wrote about Andrew Scheer’s conservative Roman Catholicism causing us to doubt his position on abortion and equal marriage.

Frankly, I believe the Tory leader when he says he won’t introduce legislation regarding either issue, but I don’t believe that if he becomes prime minister he’ll prevent his backbenchers from initiating bills that, in particular, try to incrementally limit women’s reproductive choice. His statements and scrums around social policy have been clumsy at best, and often downright misleading.

The point, and one that must be emphasized in a pluralistic democracy, is that Scheer has every right to believe in the Roman Catholic teaching that abortion is the killing of an unborn child and even to express this view in the public and political square, no matter how jarring it may sound.

But he also has an obligation to make his ideas clear to the Canadian people he wishes to govern. Otherwise, the electoral social contract between politician and voter is fatally splintered.

Scheer is the son of a Catholic deacon and a devout believer who accepts the catechism-affirmed and iron-firm teachings of his church: life begins at conception, and the only acceptable form of sexual union is within marriage, between one man and one woman. All else is profound sin.

It would be insulting to the leader of the opposition, as well as to his faith, to dismiss all of this as trivial, or as something that can be ignored. It matters to him, and it should matter to us.

Ironically, Scheer’s supporters don’t appear to want to hear or read any of this, and whenever it’s mentioned, their organized set of attacks consistently say the same things: what about Liberal MPs who are Muslim? What about Sikhs, and in particular NDP leader Jagmeet Singh? Isn’t Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau a Catholic, too? And you’re just an anti-Catholic, reminiscent of those bigots who attacked president Kennedy in 1960.

In fact, the Muslim faith doesn’t explicitly address abortion, and leaves the issue to be decided by individual countries and cultures. The general Islamic view, however, is that life begins at four months of gestation, when the fetus becomes a soul — perhaps a surprisingly progressive and permissive position. Liberal MPs who are Muslim are generally feminists, pro-choice, and pro-equal marriage, meaning the attack on their faith is little more than politicized Islamophobia and an attempt at digression.

Sikhism is theoretically opposed to abortion, but the Sikh code of conduct doesn’t refer to it, or other issues of bioethics for that matter. More to the point, the NDP leader has repeatedly stressed his commitment to choice, and of course to the integrity and dignity of equal marriage. Both Sikh and Muslim MPs have marched in Pride parades.

Trudeau is indeed a Catholic, but what his opponents don’t seem to realize is that while Catholicism may be rigid in its teaching, it is often light in its observance. Most Canadian Catholics make voting decisions with little reference to their faith, and whatever Trudeau may have said over the years, his actions on abortion and LGBTQ issues as prime minister have been the opposite of conservative and have often outraged Roman Catholic bishops. There have even been calls to deny him communion.

Scheer, however, is no such reformer. He is on the traditionalist wing of his church, and in some ways is to be respected because of it. Just as with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, he takes his religion extremely seriously and some would argue that it’s a greater motivator on his life than his party politics.

Those who insist that we ignore all of this are simply ignorant of the realities of religion and sometimes contemptuous of the significance of faith in people’s lives. It is they, surely, who need to examine their prejudice.

Oh, and as for me being a nasty old anti-Catholic, I’m an almost daily communicant who believes in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Ho hum.