Columnist calls for Cardinal Ouellet to die a slow painful death

Wow. Check this out. The Quebec political and media establishment is aflame because Cardinal Marc Ouellet said something in Quebec City about Catholic teaching on abortion in the case of rape. And, gee, he actually defended Catholic teaching! Go figure.

My bolds:

Quebec's airwaves and cyberspace were aflame with far more extensive commentary Monday. The Ouellet remarks quickly became one of the country's top trending topics on the social networking site, Twitter.

In one particularly virulent reaction, a Montreal La Presse columnist expressed his wish that Ouellet would die a slow and painful death. Columnist Patrick Lagace compared Ouellet to the Iranian imam, Kazem Sedighi, who recently suggested scantily-clad women were to blame for natural disasters. The column was titled, "The Scorn of Kazem Ouellet." "We're all going to die," Lagace wrote. "Cardinal Ouellet will die someday. I hope he dies from a long and painful illness. . . "Yes, the paragraph I've just written is vicious. But Marc Ouellet is an extremist. And in the debate against religious extremists, every hit is fair game." A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Quebec City says Ouellet was simply stating Church doctrine when a reporter asked him about rape and abortion. The National Catholic Reporter cited Ouellet, in 2005, on a list of about 20 candidates considered possible replacements for the late John Paul II. On the weekend, Ouellet was speaking to an audience of about 200 people when he applauded the Harper government's G8 move and added, with respect to rape: "Why should we push a woman who has been the victim of a crime to commit one of her own?" In an exchange with reporters later he said: "I understand very well that a woman who's been raped is dealing with trauma and that she needs to be helped. But she needs to do so with respect for the being that is in her womb. It is not responsible for what happened. It's the rapist who is responsible. But there's already a victim. Do we we need to have another one?" He said taking a human life "is always a moral crime" and, he added, a fetus is a human life.

Who is the extremist here? I think it is Patrick Lagace, who is in effect cursing the Cardinal.

And he's calling extremist anyone who believes in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

You know, Marci McDonald calls the so-called "religious right" divisive, but I think it's the secular fundies who lack all civility.

The picture shows Cardinal Ouellet greeting the wife and one of the children of pro-life MP Jeff Watson.