With the passage of Bill C-9 by the Senate yesterday, we’re now closer than ever here in Canada to the dystopias predicted by Orwell’s 1984 and Bradbury’ Fahrenheit 451, where books are banned and burned – at least, books of a certain sort. And not just books, but even opinions contained within or inspired by banned books. Nay, our very thoughts may soon be verboten! And what book is banned more than all? Well, the book of all books, the whose title simply means ‘the Book’ – the Bible, very Word of God.
Yes, dear reader, our sad, supine Senate, most of whose members settled into a lifetime sinecure, have been appointed by the past years of ideological Liberal Prime Ministers, passed Bill C-9 yesterday. The vote was not even close – 45 to 13 – with 35 of them not even bothering to show up. Would that you were hot or cold!
Bill C-9 is, of course, the so-called ‘hate speech’ law, making illegal any opinions that may ‘hurt another’s feelings’. The term ‘hate’ here is so vaguely defined that whatever one says might be criminal, subject to crushing fines and even jail sentences.
Yet is it really so vague? The only ones exempt from this law are Christians. And by ‘exempt’ I don’t mean as alleged perpetrators, but as victims. In fact, Christians are the one group who – we may predict – will never be victims. It’s unlikely anyone will ever be prosecuted in this legislation for disparaging, criticizing or blaspheming Scripture, the Eucharist, Christ, Our Lady, the saints, confession, monogamous marriage, moral principles, or anything true good and beautiful.
But woe is you if you criticize what was once quaintly known as ‘sin and error’. You know, all that God condemns in Scripture: homosexuality, pederasty, adultery, polyamory, idolatry, false worship, along with ideologies galore – we’re now entering the realm of paedophilia, or pardon me, ‘minor attracted persons‘, soon to have their own victim status. Even things not mentioned in the Bible, since they were so unthinkable, such as mutilating children to change their ‘gender’.
I wonder what the courts do if Muslims condemn the same things, for there is some overlap between the Koran and the Bible. In the hierarchy of the shibboleths of our culture, who trumps whom, homosexuals, Muslims or transgenders?
Does it matter? At the end of the day, this isn’t about combating hate, but censoring truth. Those who walk in darkness need something like ‘Bill C-9’, for the sake of their seared conscience:
As Christ Himself warns:
For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God. (John 3:20)
Of course, the light of Christ is not only revelatory, but healing, inviting those walking in the darkness of error to come to the fullness of truth, and so to the fullness of life and freedom, here and in eternity.
Those who do so live in truth want to bring others to the light, like the man who escapes the darkness of Plato’s cave to the sunshine above. What else can he do, but try to go back and bring others out as well? Look what you’re missing!
We can’t be silent – the very stones would cry out! Speak the truth, dear reader, but always in charity. Veritas in caritate. With patience, peace, love, good-will and joy.
In some ways, Bill C-9 may bear much fruit, for it is ‘apocalyptic’ in the sense of ‘revealing’ the light and darkness within each of us, as all persecution and trials do. Good and evil run through the heart of every one man, as Solzhenitsyn says.
But life is a pilgrimage with a destination, and each one of us must make a choice, whether to go along with the world, the flesh and the devil to hell, or conquer the evil within ourselves, by the grace and truth of God, and attain heaven. The ‘wheat and the tares’ and the ‘sheep and the goats’, mixed in this life, will one day be harvested and separated, and receive their fate for all eternity.
Behind the toxic brew of emotions prompting C-9 – a disordered mix of fear, compassion, empathy and just going along by sheer inertia with everyone else like lemmings – there are supernatural intelligences, the ‘principalities and powers’ roaming the world looking for souls to devour, to bring to their own realm of darkness and misery. They have their human agents, who know what they’re about.
Be not afraid. We’re not made for this world, but the next. For besides demons, we also have angels, who are far more powerful, and I dare say numerous, as goodness is greater than evil. It’s providential that this legislation was passed on the cusp of Saint Boniface’s day: Whatever fear he might have felt didn’t stop forging into the wilderness to bring the light of the Gospel to the pagans lost in darkness of his own day. At the ripe old age of 80, after a tireless missionary life, he was given the glorious crown of martyrdom.
Pope Benedict urges us to have the same zeal, especially in the face of possible persecution, and says of Boniface:
His ardent zeal for the Gospel never fails to impress me. At the age of 41 he left a beautiful and fruitful monastic life, the life of a monk and teacher, in order to proclaim the Gospel to the simple, to barbarians; once again, at the age of 80, he went to a region in which he foresaw his martyrdom.
By comparing his ardent faith, this zeal for the Gospel, with our own often lukewarm and bureaucratized faith, we see what we must do and how to renew our faith, in order to give the precious pearl of the Gospel as a gift to our time.
Why not end for now with the exhortatory words of the great Saint Boniface himself, from today’s Office:
Let us stand fast in what is right and prepare our souls for trial. Let us wait upon God’s strengthening aid and say to him: O Lord, you have been our refuge in all generations.
Let us trust in him who has placed this burden upon us. What we ourselves cannot bear let us bear with the help of Christ. For he is all-powerful and he tells us: My yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills, let us die for the holy laws of our fathers, so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them.
Amen to that. Bring on the good fight of the Faith.
