Begging McArthur’s pardon, some men are born stupid, some achieve stupidity, and others have stupidity handed to them in the form of a diploma.
How retired Royal Military College professor Bob Ferguson reached the exhaulted heights of stupidity from which he now pontificates is uncertain, but chances are education helped.
Mr. Ferguson has called upon the Canadian government to regulate religion in that country, especially the Roman Catholic Church. Succumbing to the whispers of the dark one, Ferguson let loose this commentary on CBC radio:
Given the inertia of the Catholic Church, perhaps we could encourage reform by changing the environment in which all religions operate. Couldn’t we insist that human rights, employment and consumer legislation apply to them as it does other organizations? Then it would be illegal to require a particular marital status as a condition of employment or to exclude women from the priesthood.
Of course the Vatican wouldn’t like the changes, but they would come to accept them in time as a fact of life in Canada. Indeed I suspect many clergy would welcome the external pressure.
Whatever. Unfortunately, for Ferguson, Andrew Sullivan, the Canadian government, and lots of ignorant Catholics, the Vatican didn’t make the rules about marriage–God did. If Canada has a problem with Him, they need to take it out on Him, not on the people who try to run His church on earth. God knows they have their hands full as it is.
When the Canadian government mandated acceptance of homosexual marriage, I predicted the beginning of martyrdom for many Canadian Catholics, especially priests. If Mr. Ferguson gets his way, that martyrdom could be quite fierce.
I pray for Mr. Ferguson’s ignorance, or, perhaps, his difficulty with Alzheimer’s. What else could account for this sickening re-ordering of Heaven and earth:
Yes religion can be a comfort and a guide, but we cannot take rules from our holy books and apply them to the modern world without democratic debate and due regard for the law.
No, Fergie, religion is most certainly not “a comfort and guide.” In the case of universal church, it is the new and eternal covenant God made with New Jerusalem. Its canon law is the law of the being that created you, Ferguson. The same one that will judge your soul’s worthiness to spend eternity with Him in heaven or in perpetual torture in hell. (And you should thank Him that I don’t get a vote.)