World Youth Day Inspires Surge of Orthodoxy North of the Border

OTTAWA—It is safe to say not all of Canada's bishops are comfortable in the media limelight, issuing bold declarations of Catholic orthodoxy.

But in the 12 weeks since Pope John Paul II's visit for World Youth Day, those who broke ranks were enough to keep resurgent Catholicism continually in the news. With bishops in Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary breaking pro-life ground, observers sense a renewed confidence.

For the first time, a Canadian bishop said last month that “liberalism” in the Church may be to blame for the decline of cultural Catholicism, once deeply rooted in Canada and particularly in Québec.

In a Sept. 20 homily at the start-of-term Mass for St. Paul University in Ottawa, one of Canada's most liberal institutions, Archbishop Marcel Gervais lamented that “the culture which we labeled ‘Catholic' has gone.”

Citing members of his own family and flock, he implied that the young have been deprived of basic teaching. “I have a delightful grandniece,” he said, “who never had any catechesis at all, knew nothing about the Eucharist, went up the aisle with everyone else to receive the Host, tasted it and said,‘Ugh! That tastes awful!'” Another boy, he said, pointed to a crucifix and said, “Who's that guy?”

Archbishop Gervais, 71, linked the loss of faith with the rise of material comfort during his lifetime. He then named an unexpected culprit. “Perhaps it's not just the improvement in our material well-being,” he said. “Perhaps it is the liberalism that we all adopted.”

He quoted Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago and a graduate of St. Paul's, who said in 1998, “We are at a turning point in the life of the Church in this century. Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project. Essentially a critique, even a necessary critique at one point in our history, it is now parasitical on a substance that no longer exists. It has shown itself unable to pass on the faith in its integrity.”

Young Catholic observers are delighted. “In what seems to be a miracle of World Youth Day,” said John-Henry Westen, editor of the online pro-life Lifesite News service, Church leaders “have been bolstered in their courage to boldly proclaim the truth by the ... joy and genuine faith shown by hundreds of thousands of youth.”

Bishops Speak Out

On Sept. 19, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, the archbishop of Toronto, refused to attend the annual cardinal's dinner hosted by the city's Thomas More Lawyers Guild upon learning organizers had invited Joe Clark, the ex-prime minister who now leads an opposition party, to be the guest speaker.

Two years ago, Clark said on CBC radio, “I am a Roman Catholic, I am pro-choice. ... Anyone who knows anything about the Roman Catholic Church knows that [abortion] has been an issue of division for quite some time.”

However, while he skipped the lawyers guild dinner, Cardinal Ambrozic said Mass for them. And, with Clark in the front pew, he said in the homily, “Somehow the people who are pro-abortion ... think [the unborn] don't feel the horrible pain that accompanies every death. I don't know one piece of living flesh that doesn't feel the pain when life is being gouged out of it.”

On Sept. 29, Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary startled Calgary Suntabloid readers with a column charging that “a deadly blindness has come over our land.”

“What was once seen as an act of desperation—the killing of one's own child—is now fiercely defended as a good decision and promoted as a right,” Bishop Henry wrote. “Some behaviors are always wrong, always incompatible with our love of God and the dignity of the human person,” he added.

Pro-abortion activists who regard themselves as Catholics also perceive the trend—and they don't like it.

“What the bishops have been saying is symptomatic of the whole move to the right,” said Joanna Manning, author of Take Back the Truth: Confronting Papal Power and the Religious Right and Is The Pope Catholic? A Woman Confronts Her Church.

“There is a trend to more sectarian conservative Catholicism in the hierarchy,” Manning said, “and it's coming from the top. ... But I suspect that it's more of a power play to maintain control.”

Manning said it is not liberalism that is to blame for the decline in Canada's Catholic culture, but the marginalization of its “more radical theological offspring”—what she calls “creative” feminist and liberation theology.

“The lay Church has grown up since Vatican II and they're not going to follow what they can see is a corrupt hierarchy,” said Manning, a retired teacher who, despite her dissenting views, received the 1995 Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association award for outstanding contributions to Catholic education.

Not everyone shares this view of the laity. “Young people are saying things like, ‘Why didn't someone tell me this was wrong?'” said Marilyn Bergeron, founder of Canadian Alliance for Chastity, referring to some World Youth Day participants' belated discovery of authentic moral teaching in Toronto.

“As long as we explain and help them understand why the Church teaches certain things,” Bergeron said, “the young are willing to take up their cross and carry it with joy. ... They will work for social justice but they want the truth first.”

Bishop Henry said activists like Manning fail to understand that not everyone in the Church speaks authoritatively on matters of doctrine: “As Vatican II confirmed, you have bishops for that—you cannot set up your own magisterium.”

But he denies there is a new trend in the hierarchy to make this clear. “From my vantage point,” he said in an interview from Calgary, “there has been no conscious decision, no plot. We have been consistent all along.”

Last year, pro-abortion Catholic politicians, including Prime Minister Jean Chretien, came under episcopal fire. Bishop Henry vowed that, “should Joe Clark predecease me,” he would likely refuse to bury Clark (who lives in the diocese) in hallowed ground.

Signs of Renewal

Archbishop Gervais himself said on Sept. 20 that signs of renewal “are numerous enough to give me hope that things are going to get better.” The building of “a new Catholic, a new universal culture,” he said, is under way.

“The future of the Church,” said Lifesite editor Westen in agreement, “is embodied in vibrant Catholic youth who are totally in love with Christ and his Church, loyal to the Pope and willing to sacrifice all—popularity, riches and even their lives—to defend the hope that is within them.”

Chris Champion writes from Ottawa.