As usual Liberal Party activist Adam Goldenberg doesn’t get it. He says in the Globe and Mail that Justin Trudeau is right to demand a pro-abortion litmus test on candidates for the Liberal Party and religious leaders are wrong:
It’s one thing for clergy to express their views on a policy issue, but it’s quite another for them to assert that their parishioners have no choice but to listen to them. Want to live in a country where legislators answer to clergy? Try Iran …
Trudeau’s edict allows Catholic Liberal candidates to believe what they like about abortion as a spiritual matter, provided that they promise to vote the party line on abortion, as on every other core policy issue. Catholic leaders, by contrast, would require their flock to vote a different party line: Rome’s.
What the bishops are doing is very simple. They are not imposing the Catholic Church’s teaching on politics or society, they are insisting that Catholics behave (including vote) as Catholics. As Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast reminded the faithful earlier this month, the Catholic Church is unambiguously pro-life, from the moment of conception to natural death. One cannot be a member in good-standing of the club, so to speak, if one contradicts this belief in action.
Goldenberg’s dichotomy that politicians are allowed to be pro-life as a “spiritual matter” but cannot act on it is ridiculous. On what other issues (like killing the already born or stealing) are people told they can hold views as a personal matter, but not political? The Catholic Church can — indeed must — insist that Catholics be Catholic. Always. Including those who choose a career in public life.
It is not the Catholic bishops who insist that Catholics not be Liberals; Justin Trudeau and Adam Goldenberg are doing that.
