From Canada’s National Post comes this urgent message:

Stop the presses! Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, has created shock waves across Canada by ... reiterating conventional Church doctrine on the subject of abortion.

Now, it must be admitted that the good Cardinal was reiterating Church teaching on a point that is difficult for many to accept—that abortion is wrong even in cases of rape, that a child should not be killed for the crime of its father. Even many pro-life American politicians allow for rape and incest exceptions.

Mistakenly.

But the climate toward unborn babies is so . . . er . . . cold in Canada that the Cardinal’s comments have occasioned what the National Post refers to as a “freaked out reaction by many pro-choice politicians and pundits.”

How freaked out?

Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois said she was “completely outraged” by the Cardinal’s remarks. A columnist with Montreal’s La Presse newspaper, Patrick Lagace, said he wished that the Cardinal “dies from a long and painful illness.” Even Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Josee Verner—whose international maternal-health policies the Cardinal supports—declared that the man’s remarks were “unacceptable.”

The National Post thus asks a reasonable question:

When, exactly, did it become “unacceptable” for a man of faith to articulate his Church’s position on a controversial bioethical issue? Are there any other issues that Ms. Marois, Mr. Lagace and Ms. Verner would like Christians to shut up about? Gay marriage? Stem cells? Pre-marital sex? Perhaps they should make a list, just so everyone can keep track.

For years now, this newspaper and other conservative outlets have been warning Canadians that the trend toward liberal dogmatism among much of Canada’s political class—buttressed by an out-of-control human-rights constabulary—is serving to muzzle religious Christians who are doing nothing else than giving voice to their cherished beliefs. The appalling reaction to Cardinal Ouellet’s speech demonstrates how serious the problem has become.

Indeed.

While I hate to see our neighbor to the north playing the lead role for a cautionary tale, Americans also need to recognize that our country could go in the same hard anti-family, anti-faith direction that Canada has—if Americans don’t resist the same trends in our own culture that have seized the reins in Canada.

In fact, there has been a good bit of reins-seizing here in America of late.

Fortunately, there is an opportunity to correct some of this coming up in . . . oh . . . November.

What do you think?