Outing and hounding Christians out of public life

Marci McDonald's Armageddon Factor is triggering a wave of McCarthy-style attacks on Christians who are in public life or who work in the public sector. David Warren adds his take in today's Ottawa Citizen (my bolds):

Now, let me confess I have given McDonald's book, The Armageddon Factor, only a quick peruse. Being familiar with several of the Christian, semi-Christian and non-Christian organizations she is lumping together in some fundamentalist conspiracy, I could see immediately that she does not know what she is talking about. Life is short, and I refer my reader to the National Post and elsewhere for articles that detail how reckless the book is with facts.

Yet the author takes only softball questions from like-minded colleagues when she appears on air for the publicity rounds.

Imagine the outrage the same hosts might express had she instead attacked gay or feminist activists or had alleged dark Jewish or Muslim conspiracies. Except, in that case, she wouldn't be invited to appear on CBC. Nor would the book have been published by such as Random House Canada.

But the nonsense here goes deeper than mere indifference to fact. Beneath the rubbish on the surface is a profoundly malicious and bigoted attack on the legitimacy of Christian belief. And foolish on its own premises: for the Christian reader is almost invited to consider what steps, if any, may be necessary to defend himself, his family and his co-religionists against what amounts to a call for persecution.

The notion that, simply because people are Christian, they should be "exposed" and hounded out of public life, or dragged before human rights tribunals, is becoming a commonplace of "progressive" thinking. It is hardly confined to Canada: the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing an astounding case (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez), in which the most basic right of free association could be denied to Christians on university campuses; the ACLU has made the removal from public property of all visible evidence of America's Christian heritage an expression of "civil rights."

In Ottawa this week, a "scandal" has been alleged because the member of Parliament for Regina-Qu'Appelle (a Catholic!) arranged a lunch with colleagues (not all of them Catholic) to meet the Canadian vicar of the Catholic lay organization Opus Dei. Neither the organization nor the lunch was in any way secret, unprecedented, nor otherwise abnormal, and yet it was presented in Le Devoir with the gravity of the Spanish Inquisition.

This is an example of the sort of thing that promises to become, in the shadow of McDonald's much-touted book, a "meme" of agenda-driven, liberal journalism: "outing" those who quite openly practice the Christian religion and advocate for its long-received views as if they were subversives.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/McCarthyism/3086591/story.html#ixzz0pKRAhoOP


Yesterday, after Question Period, NDP MP Pat Martin said the following about the meeting with Opus Dei Vicar Msgr. Fred Dolan and some parliamentarians.

"I think Opus Dei is creepy and, you know, you can’t account for some people’s taste but I can’t imagine why a Member of Parliament would invite them for a meeting on Parliament Hill. I certainly wouldn’t attend, you know, anything associated with them. I think they – they give me the creeps," he said.

Then when asked why, he answered: "Opus Dei gives me the creeps because I don’t trust these kind of, you know, creepy fundamentalist types and, you know, I’m a Catholic myself and I’ve got no use for the Opus Dei."

You can watch Msgr. Dolan on Power and Politics with Evan Solomon here. Ezra Levant also weighs in.

What a picture of grace Msgr. Dolan is on that program. No rancor, no anger, no hitting back, just an offer to meet with Duceppe and Martin.

I took the photo of Msgr. Dolan in Dec. 2008 after a luncheon in the Parliamentary dining room.