It seems that the Toronto Star allows its columnists complete freedom in whatever they write. This is creating difficulties for pro-life people as well as Catholics who find their activities and their faith misrepresented, without having an equal opportunity to correct or to rebut. The most recent example is Lynda Hurst’s May 7 column headed “Catholics question Church’s stand on abortion,” which, however, is only one of a number of such incidents. In asking why this is happening, the key must be sought in the current dominance of radical feminism.
Lynda Hurst is a feminist journalist. She belongs to that category of writers and columnists who over the past dozen years have managed to corner the newspaper market on women’s issues for the radical feminist cause. They usually appear in sections of the paper devoted to “Women” or “Life” issues.
At the Toronto Star, Hurst is joined in the “Life” section by similar-minded columnists. One is Doris Anderson, former long-time editor of Chateleine. Another one is Lois Sweet, who came to the Star from the Edmonton Journal. At the Star, Hurst and Company can look back to predecessors such as Michelle Landsberg, whose antipathy towards pro-life is well-known. She is the wife of Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations and former Ontario NDP leader, Stephen Lewis, the first politician to introduce (in 1965) a “let’s-legalize-abortion” bill.
Common to these writers and, often, to their colleagues in other departments, is their commitment to the view that every pregnant woman should have the right to kill her unborn baby. Naturally, they don’t call it that. They call it “being pro-choice,” with some of them describing the abortion process itself as “removing the product of conception.” Hurst calls it “removing a fertilized egg.”
Since her return from a summer holiday in July 1984, Lynda Hurst has not missed an opportunity to hammer away at the abortion issue. She has been so pre-occupied with this task that, by my count, of her 37 columns and one article written between the latter part of July and the end of December 1984, no less than 17, in whole or in part, dealt directly with the subject; another dozen columns discussed immediately related issues. Her writing since January 1985 bears a similar character.
For a long time, being ignorant of feminist literature, I believed that the term “pro-choice” was a rather accidental one, mainly a device to cover up the brutal reality of abortion. However, I discovered that “choice” of any kind, but especially the choice to abort, is essential to the thinking of the radical feminist movement (not to be confused with moderate feminist thinking).
To them “pro-choice” is not merely a slogan, but an expression of their deepest philosophy of total independence. Pro-choice is not just a choice: it is a condition of membership.
Radical feminism insists on the “right to choose.” No choice is as fundamental to the movement as is the right to choose abortion. Leading feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millett, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, et al, have witnessed to this many times. They believe that women must have complete freedom to choose their lifestyle: marriage or free love; if pregnant, the right to end the pregnancy. Every woman should be able to, and want to, pursue a career and for this the contraception-abortion syndrome is crucial.
The natural consequence of this viewpoint is extreme hostility towards those who reject it. After all, it literally goes to the heart of society and family. Thus, pro-life is almost always referred to in terms of contempt and derision, mixed with vilification. Take for example, Lynda Hurst’s January 6, 1985, column mixing references to the bombing of abortuaries in the U.S.A and the picketers at Morgentaler’s Toronto “clinic,” of which, on occasion, I am one. This piece includes the following sentiments: “Anti-choice extremists;” “anti-choice fanatics… bombarding their enemies … with threatening, incoherent hate mail;” “dangerous lunatic fringe;” “blatantly illegal reign of terror;” “pro-life terrorists;” “deranged minority.” All this, as it were, to fulfill the words of the Apostle Paul: “taken for impostors while we are genuine… thought most miserable and yet we are always rejoicing.” (2 Cor. 9-10)
Lately, too, Hurst and colleagues have raged against a new women’s group, R.E.A.L Women of Canada, because it has dared to challenge the claim of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) to represent all the women of Canada. (NAC is not to be confused with the federal Advisory Council on the Status of Women.) Since the beginning of 1985, Hurst has attacked R.E.A.L Women on at least eight separate occasions. Sweet and Anderson have followed suit.
Where does the Catholic Church fit in? It is simple, of course. Anyone who has followed Henry Morgentaler’s utterances will know that he never ceases to denounce the Catholic hierarchy. Many Christians reject the radical feminist remaking of the family and society. Catholic teaching in particular rejects outright the secularist “religion” of de Beauvoir, Millett, Steinem, of Lynda Hurst, Norma Scarborough (of CARAL) and Chaviva Hosek (of NAC). There is no better evidence of this than the church’s total opposition to the abortionist mentality, that key element of “pro-choice.”
It will come as no surprise , therefore, that since Morgentaler began his crusade to make the world safe for abortion, Hurst and colleagues have seen fit to offer their strange interpretations of Catholic teaching, especially on authority, all the while assuming a sort of infallibility of their own.
Thus, on August 14, 1984, readers were informed by Lynda Hurst that “the (Catholic) Church… claims that the soul does not enter the embryo until the 40-day point, but somehow that doesn’t negate recognition of the fertilized egg as a separate being.” Ms. Hurst added: “I can’t quarrel with the Church’s belief because I am not a Catholic,” and then went on to state that she was quite prepared to challenge the Church’s moral superiority. After setting up one’s own straw man, it shouldn’t take much to knock it down.
Hurst’s attitude and that of some of her colleagues towards those who reject their right-to-abortion philosophy color their judgments. In one of her September 1984 columns, Ms. Hurst informed her readers how intrigued she was by the Pope’s visit, but not with his message. As an “Ulster born Protestant” she remarked, she remains “genuinely appalled by his directives… not least by the “fact” that “increasing the birthrate of Catholic children in all parts of the world has become John Paul’s chief goal in the six years of his papacy.” In an earlier, September 9 column, readers were told about the Pope’s “increasingly bizarre directives on the when and why of other people’s sexual activity.” To my knowledge, not a single letter of commentary was printed in response to these articles.
Tom Harpur, the Star’s Sunday religion columnist is, like Hurst, an admirer of Morgentaler. (See Nov. 25;Dec 30,1984; March 3, 1985) Harpur regards him among “the pioneers of a truly human, truly moral social environment in this country.” Meanwhile, Harpur himself manages to misinterpret Christian teaching and views in almost every column. In November, he represented the Pope as “a centralist authoritarian,” who issues “cruel restatements of outmoded rules,” and whose insensitivity led him to be “prodigal with money…for his Canadian tour…not (now) going to Ethiopia” and the poor. In December, readers were told that it is the Pope’s concept of “natural law…which is killing thousands by hunger in Ethiopia today.” In March 1985, Harpur judged that “the main factor behind the (Church’s) opposition to contraceptives, abortion, women priests and an end to compulsory celibacy for clergy, is one of power of control over the lives of the faithful.” And so the misrepresentation continues.
In January 1985, readers were treated to a refined exposition of “Catholic morality” from the pen of Lois Sweet. She related a bitter recollection from an unnamed source, who as a teenager in an unnamed town in the 1930’s suffered from the actions of a supposedly depraved priest and his depraved church community. The lesson was spelled out for the reader in the title of the column: “Moral certainty often a cover-up for hypocrisy.”
What about Lynda Hurst’s latest “Catholic” columns entitled “Catholics question church’s stand on abortion,” (May 7) and “Film takes candid look at life of Catholic Nuns,” (April 25)? In the latter, one discovers that hoary old legends such as those of a “Pope Joan” and of abbesses hearing confessions and being bishops, have now become facts of history because Women’s Studio D of the National Film Board has decided it is time they did.
In the former column, we are told , via former nun Marjorie Maguire now self-appointed “Catholic theologian,” that “many Catholics think that anything the Pope says on a moral issue is infallible” (I have never met any); that each individual decides what is a sin and what is not (so much for the ten commandments); and that “any good priest would tell her that (about abortion)” – except that “these days she’d have to shop around to find such a priest.” This “retrograde” step she attributes to John Paul II. What else is new, one almost asks?
Maquire’s opinionated mistakes, cleverly served up by Hurst, are dished out under the heading “Catholics question church’s stand on abortion.” Well, indeed, I was told as a youngster that with the Church as large as it is, one can always find some Catholics, including a theologian or two, self-appointed or not, to favour any subject, including the flat earth theory.
However, what is unpalatable in all this is to see these dissenting views which falsify
both history and the teaching of the Church, presented as perfectly legitimate and acceptable Catholic views. That, of course, is the purpose of the exercise, the reason why CARAL brought Maguire to Toronto, why the NFB used dissenting nuns, some of whom, like Maguire, have openly rejected their Church’s teaching on the killing of the unborn, and why Lynda Hurst seized the opportunity to comment and elaborate. The purpose is to
create division within the ranks of the Catholic Church, no doubt bearing in mind the Biblical observation, that a house divided against itself, cannot stand.
What is the point of my article? It is this. Readers should not be deceived. Reputable newspapers have the duty to present the facts with as little personal interpretation as possible. Advocacy journalism, where appropriate, should still respect the integrity of its readers, as well as its opponents. This is so not least, because readers have no response except by way of letters to the editor, which may or may not be printed. Hence they are left defenceless in the face of calumny and misrepresentation.
It would seem that the Star needs to revise its editorial policies.
This article was submitted to the Toronto Star, which on Tuesday May 21, printed two brief paragraphs of it.
