Further Thoughts on Pat and Sam
As I mentioned in the slightly revised version of my Sam against the Leviathan article, young Sam Oosterhoff, as the balanced but unsympathetic Michael Den Tandt makes clear this morning, is being vilified for his rather moderate traditional views, with one commentator spewing out that an hour in a massage parlour should cure what he likely sees as the uptight young prude.
As others have pointed out, it was curious and rather inexplicable that Sam’s swearing in was delayed until just the day after the vote on the momentous Bill 28, which basically re-wrote our notion of what constitutes a ‘family’ in Ontario. Was this Patrick Brown trying to ensure a unanimous support for this law, to shed once and for all what he sees as the socially conservative albatross hanging around the neck of the Conservatives, who want to be seen as sort of only slightly less-liberal Liberals?
Of course, all these terms are nonsense. Laws like this, described as ‘socially progressive’, are in fact socially regressive, undermining the family as the ‘basic cell of society’, without which no society has ever survived. As Pope Saint John Paul II pointed out, as the family goes, so goes society.
I don’t think Patrick Brown has figured out that the reason the Conservatives have consistently lost elections to incompetents like Dalton McGuinty and deviant-incompetents like Kathleen Wynne is that they have not been conservative enough. Of course, there are other reasons, of which I have written before, not least the fact that the Liberals can ‘buy’ most of their votes, bribing all those who work for or are dependent upon the government paycheque or dole (and there are ever-increasing legions of them), which has led us to the so-called tyranny of socialism predicted by de Tocqueville.
Perhaps, just maybe, there are enough disaffected ‘social conservatives’ out there to swing the tide a little, as Sam Oosterhoff discovered, a 19-year old homeschooled kid who grew up on a farm, as Den Tandt points out with I detect as some slight underlying derision. But not a bad resume for others.
Is there, perchance, a viable and fitting leader in the wings of the current federal Political Conservative leadership? I think there may be, but what chance has he? Alas, I would not hope for a ‘Trump’ effect here in Canada anytime soon. Any nation that could elect Justin Trudeau to the highest office is far gone indeed, and our youth, and that includes all those well into middle-age, indoctrinated in all the inanities and insanities of the modern university, a veritable right-of-passage of mind and behaviour control, mouth all in unison the ‘liberal’ platitudes, unhinged from reality.
As I always say, however, reality has a way of bringing us back to, yes you know it, reality. As Nietzsche pointed out, the test of a man is how much of the truth he can take. Too many of us in Canada don’t seem able to take much, but we may be in for a bit of a dose soon.
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→
An Ideological and Improper Translation
I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→
Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle: A Teacher for Teachers
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651 – 1719), a French nobleman, ordained a priest, founded the first order in the Church’s history entirely without priests, and this came about almost by accident. I say ‘almost’, for, of course, there are no accidents with God. Destined for ordination from an early age, Jean-Baptiste never looked back, even[…]Continue reading→