The Interim
By Rory Leishman
At a White House ceremony on July 19, President George Bush explained his decision to veto a bill to fund embryonic stem cell research. He pointed out: “Embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that are destroyed for their cells. Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value."
To underline this point, Bush introduced several families with adoptive children whom he had invited to the White House. All of these children were born from so-called “surplus” frozen embryos that were no longer wanted by their natural parents for in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Bush contended: "These boys and girls are not spare parts. They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals."
On this issue, German Chancellor Angela Merkel agrees with Bush. Her conservative government, like its social democratic predecessor, prohibits all production of embryonic stem cells, whether publicly or privately funded.
In conformity with this policy, German Research Minister Annette Schavan persuaded the European Union on June 29 to cease all funding for research that destroys human embryos. "We must conserve human life from its conception,” she said. “We want no financial incentives to kill embryos.”
In contrast to the Bush and Merkel administrations, the Conservative government of Canada funds the destruction of human embryos for the purposes of research on reproduction and embryonic stem cells. This policy was initiated by the previous Liberal government of Canada and authorized by Bill C-6, the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act.
While most Liberals, New Democrats and members of the Bloc Quebecois supported the passage of Bill C-6, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and most of his Conservative colleagues were opposed. Speaking for the Conservatives during debate on the legislation, Rob Merrifield denounced the Bill as an attack on the sanctity of human life. He affirmed: “Human life is special; it is not to be disregarded. It is not to be created for the sake of destruction. We should respect life right from conception to natural death.”
As it is, section 5(1)(b) of Bill C-6 stipulates that: “No person shall knowingly create an in vitro embryo for any purpose other than creating a human being or improving or providing instruction in assisted reproduction procedures.” In conformity with this provision of the law, the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), the federal agency responsible for regulating stem cell research, directed that embryonic stem cell researchers can only use embryos that were created for human reproduction through IVF, but are no longer wanted by the parents for this purpose.
Many researchers chaffed at this ruling, because it is easier to harvest stem cells from freshly created embryos rather than frozen embryos left over in an IVF clinic. As a result, the CIHR has reversed course. In a ruling on June 28, it held that patients who are about to undergo assisted reproduction can be asked to consent to the creation of fresh embryos for both reproduction and stem cell research.
This new regulation is patently illegal. It clearly violates the plain words of Bill C-6. Yet neither Health Minister Tony Clement nor Justice Minister Vic Toews has done anything to get the regulation quashed.
In 2004, Harper, Toews, Merrifield and other Conservatives opposed Bill C-6, because it did not go far enough to uphold the sanctity of human life. Now, they should at least insist that all researchers must respect the express will of Parliament in that legislation that no one shall deliberately create a human life for the purpose of destroying that life in stem cell research.
Ideally, Parliament should improve upon Bill C-6, by following the German example in outlawing all death-dealing embryonic stem cell research. The money used for this malign purpose could be put to much better use in funding in Canada the kind of promising lines of research underway in the United Sates, Australia and Japan that aim to create embryonic-like pluripotent stem cells by ethical means that do not entail the killing of human beings.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Pride and Prejudice in relation to IQ findings
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Prof. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario psychology department has demonstrated yet again his exceptional capacity for engendering controversy in the pursuit of truth; this time, with a paper on sex and intelligence which suggests that the average IQ for men is 3.6 points higher than the average IQ for women.
As usual, most of Rushton’s critics have committed the ad hominem fallacy: Instead of undertaking the difficult task of refuting his conclusions with reason and evidence, they have resorted to the easier expedient of casting aspersions on his motives, character and competence.
Some have suggested that Rushton is stupid. Others have dismissed him as a misogynist. The most strident detractors seem to have overlooked the fact that he is not the sole, or even the leading, author of the paper in question -- an article in the current issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal Intelligence entitled “Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test.”
The lead author was the late Prof. Douglas Jackson, a colleague of Rushton’s in the psychology department at Western who died in August, 2004. In an introductory note to the jointly written article, Rushton relates that after Jackson’s death, he completed the write up presented in the paper based on statistical analyses which Jackson had carried out and initially presented to the International Society for Intelligence Research in 2002.
By any measure, Jackson was a brilliant scholar. He accumulated a long list of scholarly publications and taught at Pennsylvania State University and Stanford University prior to accepting an appointment in 1964 as Senior Professor of Psychology at Western.
Besides, as Jackson and Rushton acknowledge in their paper, it is not just they who suggest that males have marginally higher average IQs than females. In recent years, several other scholars have also published scientific papers that point to essentially the same conclusion.
While it might be supposed that a difference of just 3.6 points in average IQs between men and women is essentially meaningless, that is not the case. For both men and women, the distribution of IQs resembles a bell curve, with most people having close to average IQs and progressively fewer scoring at the high and low extremes. Therefore, even a relatively small difference in average IQs between men and women can denote a large difference in the proportions of men and women who have IQs above the average of 100 for men and women combined.
Specifically, Jackson’s data suggest that there are about 55 men for every 45 women with an IQ above 100. And Rushton estimates that if the standard is set at 115 – the minimum needed to qualify for select departments at Western -- there are about 60 males for every 40 females. And for entry into graduate schools at elite institutions, the ratio of qualifying males to females is much higher again.
Of course, a study of adult IQs based on the test scores of college applicants can only be suggestive. Rushton concedes "only more data can determine the true nature of sex differences in cognitive ability. However, people should not be made to feel afraid to study controversial issues."
Daniel Seligman has no such fear. He is the author of A Question of Intelligence: The IQ Debate in America. Among the many intriguing features of this book is a discussion of recent research suggesting that the average IQ for European Jews is 10 to 15 points above average; findings that go a long way toward explaining how the world’s tiny minority of Jews have won close to 30 per cent of the Nobel prizes for science.
Samuel Johnson, the scholar who single-handedly compiled the first comprehensive English dictionary, was one of the greatest geniuses in recorded history. And he put his talents to good use, by distinguishing himself not just as a lexicographer, but also as an author and critic.
Yet Johnson was profoundly humble. As a Christian, he understood that his high intelligence was a gift of God. Far from taking pride in his extraordinary powers and accomplishments, he was mindful of the truth that from those to whom much has been given, much is expected.
By Rory Leishman
Prof. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario psychology department has demonstrated yet again his exceptional capacity for engendering controversy in the pursuit of truth; this time, with a paper on sex and intelligence which suggests that the average IQ for men is 3.6 points higher than the average IQ for women.
As usual, most of Rushton’s critics have committed the ad hominem fallacy: Instead of undertaking the difficult task of refuting his conclusions with reason and evidence, they have resorted to the easier expedient of casting aspersions on his motives, character and competence.
Some have suggested that Rushton is stupid. Others have dismissed him as a misogynist. The most strident detractors seem to have overlooked the fact that he is not the sole, or even the leading, author of the paper in question -- an article in the current issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal Intelligence entitled “Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test.”
The lead author was the late Prof. Douglas Jackson, a colleague of Rushton’s in the psychology department at Western who died in August, 2004. In an introductory note to the jointly written article, Rushton relates that after Jackson’s death, he completed the write up presented in the paper based on statistical analyses which Jackson had carried out and initially presented to the International Society for Intelligence Research in 2002.
By any measure, Jackson was a brilliant scholar. He accumulated a long list of scholarly publications and taught at Pennsylvania State University and Stanford University prior to accepting an appointment in 1964 as Senior Professor of Psychology at Western.
Besides, as Jackson and Rushton acknowledge in their paper, it is not just they who suggest that males have marginally higher average IQs than females. In recent years, several other scholars have also published scientific papers that point to essentially the same conclusion.
While it might be supposed that a difference of just 3.6 points in average IQs between men and women is essentially meaningless, that is not the case. For both men and women, the distribution of IQs resembles a bell curve, with most people having close to average IQs and progressively fewer scoring at the high and low extremes. Therefore, even a relatively small difference in average IQs between men and women can denote a large difference in the proportions of men and women who have IQs above the average of 100 for men and women combined.
Specifically, Jackson’s data suggest that there are about 55 men for every 45 women with an IQ above 100. And Rushton estimates that if the standard is set at 115 – the minimum needed to qualify for select departments at Western -- there are about 60 males for every 40 females. And for entry into graduate schools at elite institutions, the ratio of qualifying males to females is much higher again.
Of course, a study of adult IQs based on the test scores of college applicants can only be suggestive. Rushton concedes "only more data can determine the true nature of sex differences in cognitive ability. However, people should not be made to feel afraid to study controversial issues."
Daniel Seligman has no such fear. He is the author of A Question of Intelligence: The IQ Debate in America. Among the many intriguing features of this book is a discussion of recent research suggesting that the average IQ for European Jews is 10 to 15 points above average; findings that go a long way toward explaining how the world’s tiny minority of Jews have won close to 30 per cent of the Nobel prizes for science.
Samuel Johnson, the scholar who single-handedly compiled the first comprehensive English dictionary, was one of the greatest geniuses in recorded history. And he put his talents to good use, by distinguishing himself not just as a lexicographer, but also as an author and critic.
Yet Johnson was profoundly humble. As a Christian, he understood that his high intelligence was a gift of God. Far from taking pride in his extraordinary powers and accomplishments, he was mindful of the truth that from those to whom much has been given, much is expected.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Gross betrayal of the rule of law
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
More than six months after Mr. Justice David Marshall of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered aboriginal protestors to end their occupation of a proposed housing project on disputed land in the town of Caledonia, the land still remains under occupation.
Meanwhile, the Ontario Provincial Police have laid 14 charges arising out of this dispute including attempted murder, assaulting a police officer and forceable confinement; and the law-abiding citizens of Caledonia live in continual fear of violence between aboriginal and non-aboriginal demonstrators.
Still, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant has no intention of upholding the rule of law in the town. Instead, he and colleagues in the Liberal government of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty are bent on trying to assure the peace by appeasing the aboriginal protestors.
To this end, the McGuinty government bought the disputed land from the developer last June. Given that neither the developer nor the government now has any objection to the occupation of the land by aboriginals, Bryant takes the view that there is no longer any need for him to enforce Marshall’s court order to end the aboriginal occupation.
Marshall disagrees. It was in response to a request by counsel for the Attorney General and the Ontario Provincial Police that he found last March that the aboriginal protestors were in criminal contempt of his court. In an additional ruling on August 8, he pointed out that the failure of the Attorney General and the police to uphold this finding of the court in the face of mob violence constituted a grave attack on the rule of law.
In his reasons for judgment, Marshall observed: “The citizens of Caledonia may well ask why – why should I pay a fine which a judge has ordered when the protestors do not have to obey the court’s order? To that person, this court has no teeth. To that person, this is not a court at all.”
While acknowledging that the Attorney General and the police have wide powers of discretion in deciding when and how to enforce the lawful orders of a court, Marshall emphasized: “They must not use their discretion to defeat the court’s orders.” In the context of the Caledonia dispute, he advised the government, (but did not order, as is commonly reported) that “negotiations should cease until the rule of law returns and the barricades come down.”
The McGuinty government has rejected that advice. It is continuing to negotiate with the aboriginals; the barricades remain up in Caledonia; and there is no prospect of any early revival of the rule of law in the town.
Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory is justifiably scandalized. In a commentary published last week in The National Post, he wrote: “It is a fundamental rule of society that the law is the same for everybody. No matter how passionate the belief in a cause, nobody has the right to ignore the law just because they disagree with it or find it inconvenient. It does not matter whether you are in Caledonia, downtown Toronto or anywhere else in Canada.”
Tory takes the view that McGuinty should insist on the removal of the barricades that divide Caledonia and agree to negotiate only with those who “hold respect for the rule of law and for each other.” Tory suggested that in this way, the premier would be “encouraging everyone to uphold and promote respect for our laws and the cherished processes we have in place to deal with them.”
Tory is right, in this instance, but he should be more consistent. If he sincerely believes that the rule of law should apply “in downtown Toronto or anywhere else,” he should summon the Attorney General to bring charges against all the men who routinely violate the criminal code, by parading stark naked through the streets of Toronto during the city’s annual gay pride parade.
Marshall underlined in his August 8 ruling that the rule of law is “the pre-eminent condition of freedom and peace in a democratic society.” It follows that the breakdown of the rule of law in Caledonia, as in so many other instances in Canada, should be a matter of utmost concern, not just to judges like Marshal, but to all Canadians.
By Rory Leishman
More than six months after Mr. Justice David Marshall of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered aboriginal protestors to end their occupation of a proposed housing project on disputed land in the town of Caledonia, the land still remains under occupation.
Meanwhile, the Ontario Provincial Police have laid 14 charges arising out of this dispute including attempted murder, assaulting a police officer and forceable confinement; and the law-abiding citizens of Caledonia live in continual fear of violence between aboriginal and non-aboriginal demonstrators.
Still, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant has no intention of upholding the rule of law in the town. Instead, he and colleagues in the Liberal government of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty are bent on trying to assure the peace by appeasing the aboriginal protestors.
To this end, the McGuinty government bought the disputed land from the developer last June. Given that neither the developer nor the government now has any objection to the occupation of the land by aboriginals, Bryant takes the view that there is no longer any need for him to enforce Marshall’s court order to end the aboriginal occupation.
Marshall disagrees. It was in response to a request by counsel for the Attorney General and the Ontario Provincial Police that he found last March that the aboriginal protestors were in criminal contempt of his court. In an additional ruling on August 8, he pointed out that the failure of the Attorney General and the police to uphold this finding of the court in the face of mob violence constituted a grave attack on the rule of law.
In his reasons for judgment, Marshall observed: “The citizens of Caledonia may well ask why – why should I pay a fine which a judge has ordered when the protestors do not have to obey the court’s order? To that person, this court has no teeth. To that person, this is not a court at all.”
While acknowledging that the Attorney General and the police have wide powers of discretion in deciding when and how to enforce the lawful orders of a court, Marshall emphasized: “They must not use their discretion to defeat the court’s orders.” In the context of the Caledonia dispute, he advised the government, (but did not order, as is commonly reported) that “negotiations should cease until the rule of law returns and the barricades come down.”
The McGuinty government has rejected that advice. It is continuing to negotiate with the aboriginals; the barricades remain up in Caledonia; and there is no prospect of any early revival of the rule of law in the town.
Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory is justifiably scandalized. In a commentary published last week in The National Post, he wrote: “It is a fundamental rule of society that the law is the same for everybody. No matter how passionate the belief in a cause, nobody has the right to ignore the law just because they disagree with it or find it inconvenient. It does not matter whether you are in Caledonia, downtown Toronto or anywhere else in Canada.”
Tory takes the view that McGuinty should insist on the removal of the barricades that divide Caledonia and agree to negotiate only with those who “hold respect for the rule of law and for each other.” Tory suggested that in this way, the premier would be “encouraging everyone to uphold and promote respect for our laws and the cherished processes we have in place to deal with them.”
Tory is right, in this instance, but he should be more consistent. If he sincerely believes that the rule of law should apply “in downtown Toronto or anywhere else,” he should summon the Attorney General to bring charges against all the men who routinely violate the criminal code, by parading stark naked through the streets of Toronto during the city’s annual gay pride parade.
Marshall underlined in his August 8 ruling that the rule of law is “the pre-eminent condition of freedom and peace in a democratic society.” It follows that the breakdown of the rule of law in Caledonia, as in so many other instances in Canada, should be a matter of utmost concern, not just to judges like Marshal, but to all Canadians.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The dangers of home-grown Islamofascism
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
The arrest last week of 24 British-born Muslims implicated in an alleged terrorist plot to blow up airliners flying from Britain to the United States has underlined once again the perils posed by home-grown Muslim terrorists.
Sohail Raza, national security director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, is alive to the danger. As reported in The Free Press on Saturday, he warns that some of Canada's mosques are breeding grounds for home-grown terrorists. He said: "It's a tiny percentage of Muslims, but the message is being broadcast widely. It's very tragic that a minority of so-called Muslims can hold the whole community hostage."
In contrast, Aly Hindi, an imam who holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Western Ontario and presides over the Salheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, maintains: “Nobody in any mosque in Canada encourages terrorism." However, coming from Hindi, such a declaration is hard to credit, inasmuch as he is a self-professed friend of the notorious Khadr family.
Ahmed Said Khadr, the family patriarch, was killed in a shootout with Pakistani soldiers near the Afghanistan border in 2003. All four of his Canadian-born sons are believed to have undergone terrorist training in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Currently, one of these sons, Omar Kadar, is in detention in Guantanamo Bay, charged with the murder of a United States soldier in Afghanistan.
Like Raza, Tarek Fatah contends that there are extremists among Muslim leaders in Canada. Indeed, on August 3, Fatah announced that he has resigned as the communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, because he fears for his life and the safety of his family.
While Fatah claims to have received many death threats, he was particularly upset by an article published on June 30 in which Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, denounced him as one of four people who are “behind today's wave of anti-Islam vitriol” in Canada. (For the record, the three others listed by Elmasry were Margaret Wente, a columnist for The Globe and Mail; David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; and “Rory Leishman who writes for The London Free Press.”)
Elmasry alleged in his article that Fatah “is well known in Canada for smearing Islam and bashing Muslims.” In response, Fatah contends that this statement is akin to the issuance of a fatwah pronouncing blasphemy -- a crime punishable by death under sharia law.
The Muslim Canadian Congress is clearly a fringe group on the left among Canadian Muslims. It has renounced sharia law and endorsed same-sex marriage, but it hardly qualifies as a voice of Muslim moderation in foreign policy. In a recent press release, the Muslim Canadian Congress denounced Israel for “acting like an unleashed pit bull set loose among the innocent children of Lebanon.”
Elmasry is no less vitriolic. In an article published in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on July 25, he wrote: “The merciless killing of innocent Lebanese civilians (including women, children, the elderly, and the disabled) and the savage destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure are testimony to Israel’s criminal malevolence.”
With supposedly moderate Muslim leaders resorting to such inflammatory rhetoric is it any wonder that we have a problem with homegrown Muslim terrorists in Canada?
As in Canada, so in Britain, there is profound concern about the degree of alienation and disaffection within the country’s Muslim population. In a major speech on national security last week, British Home Secretary John Reid said mass migration can bring benefits, but warned that it “can also carry insecurity into the heart of our communities.” He added: “We have to get away from the notion that anyone who wants to talk about immigration is somehow a racist.”
Michael Portillo, a Conservative and former British defense minister, concurs. In the Times of London on Sunday, he wrote that Britain had imported terrorism unwittingly “by pursuing liberal policies on immigration (and) extending asylum to those who faced ‘persecution’ without much reflection on why they found themselves in that position.”
Are any members of the Parliament of Canada likewise concerned about the urgent need for immigration and refugee reform? If so, will they please also stand up and speak out on these vital issues of national security?
PS: The aforementioned Elmasry article is available on-line at: http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/ar/opeds.php?id=2933
By Rory Leishman
The arrest last week of 24 British-born Muslims implicated in an alleged terrorist plot to blow up airliners flying from Britain to the United States has underlined once again the perils posed by home-grown Muslim terrorists.
Sohail Raza, national security director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, is alive to the danger. As reported in The Free Press on Saturday, he warns that some of Canada's mosques are breeding grounds for home-grown terrorists. He said: "It's a tiny percentage of Muslims, but the message is being broadcast widely. It's very tragic that a minority of so-called Muslims can hold the whole community hostage."
In contrast, Aly Hindi, an imam who holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Western Ontario and presides over the Salheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, maintains: “Nobody in any mosque in Canada encourages terrorism." However, coming from Hindi, such a declaration is hard to credit, inasmuch as he is a self-professed friend of the notorious Khadr family.
Ahmed Said Khadr, the family patriarch, was killed in a shootout with Pakistani soldiers near the Afghanistan border in 2003. All four of his Canadian-born sons are believed to have undergone terrorist training in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Currently, one of these sons, Omar Kadar, is in detention in Guantanamo Bay, charged with the murder of a United States soldier in Afghanistan.
Like Raza, Tarek Fatah contends that there are extremists among Muslim leaders in Canada. Indeed, on August 3, Fatah announced that he has resigned as the communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, because he fears for his life and the safety of his family.
While Fatah claims to have received many death threats, he was particularly upset by an article published on June 30 in which Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, denounced him as one of four people who are “behind today's wave of anti-Islam vitriol” in Canada. (For the record, the three others listed by Elmasry were Margaret Wente, a columnist for The Globe and Mail; David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; and “Rory Leishman who writes for The London Free Press.”)
Elmasry alleged in his article that Fatah “is well known in Canada for smearing Islam and bashing Muslims.” In response, Fatah contends that this statement is akin to the issuance of a fatwah pronouncing blasphemy -- a crime punishable by death under sharia law.
The Muslim Canadian Congress is clearly a fringe group on the left among Canadian Muslims. It has renounced sharia law and endorsed same-sex marriage, but it hardly qualifies as a voice of Muslim moderation in foreign policy. In a recent press release, the Muslim Canadian Congress denounced Israel for “acting like an unleashed pit bull set loose among the innocent children of Lebanon.”
Elmasry is no less vitriolic. In an article published in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on July 25, he wrote: “The merciless killing of innocent Lebanese civilians (including women, children, the elderly, and the disabled) and the savage destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure are testimony to Israel’s criminal malevolence.”
With supposedly moderate Muslim leaders resorting to such inflammatory rhetoric is it any wonder that we have a problem with homegrown Muslim terrorists in Canada?
As in Canada, so in Britain, there is profound concern about the degree of alienation and disaffection within the country’s Muslim population. In a major speech on national security last week, British Home Secretary John Reid said mass migration can bring benefits, but warned that it “can also carry insecurity into the heart of our communities.” He added: “We have to get away from the notion that anyone who wants to talk about immigration is somehow a racist.”
Michael Portillo, a Conservative and former British defense minister, concurs. In the Times of London on Sunday, he wrote that Britain had imported terrorism unwittingly “by pursuing liberal policies on immigration (and) extending asylum to those who faced ‘persecution’ without much reflection on why they found themselves in that position.”
Are any members of the Parliament of Canada likewise concerned about the urgent need for immigration and refugee reform? If so, will they please also stand up and speak out on these vital issues of national security?
PS: The aforementioned Elmasry article is available on-line at: http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/ar/opeds.php?id=2933
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
On the supreme authority of Scripture
The Interim
By Rory Leishman
In a statement on June 27, the Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, presented a plan for expelling the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church of the United States from constituent membership in the worldwide Anglican communion. Specifically, Williams suggested that any Anglican church that unilaterally flouts Anglican doctrine should be reduced to the status of an “associate” member of the Anglican Communion that would “have no direct part in the decision making of the ‘constituent’ Churches.”
While the immediate cause of this impending schism is a dispute over the blessing of same sex unions and the morality of homosexual sexual behaviour, the underlying reasons for the fracture go to the heart of the Christian doctrine on the supreme authority of Scripture.
In an official statement on contraception, the Church of England suggests that the Anglican and Catholic churches have “different ways of approaching questions of Moral Theology. Roman Catholics have tended to look to the 'Magisterium', the official teaching of the Church, typically articulated by the Pope, as the source of authority on moral, as in doctrinal, questions. Anglicans have tended to call on 'Scripture, Tradition and Reason'.”
This statement is incorrect. Unlike liberal bishops of the Anglican Church, the Pope always undertakes in his doctrinal statements to uphold tradition and reason in conformity with the supreme authority of Scripture.
In 2002, a group of distinguished theologians associated with the consortium Evangelicals and Protestants Together issued a joint statement entitled Your Word of Truth, in which they explained that both Catholics and Evangelicals affirm “that Scripture is the divinely inspired and uniquely authoritative written revelation of God; as such it is normative for the teaching and life of the Church. We also affirm that tradition, rightly understood as the proper reflection of biblical teaching, is the faithful transmission of the truth of the gospel from generation to generation through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
In contrast, many Anglican bishops typically pay only lip service to Scripture, tradition and reason. As the statement of the Church of England on contraception acknowledges: “Increasingly these approaches are being supplemented by appeals to 'human experience'.”
It was appeals to human experience that prompted the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops to condone contraception. In doing so, the Anglican bishops broke with the hitherto uninterrupted tradition of the Christian church. And within a few decades virtually every Protestant denomination followed this Anglican lead.
To the manifest dismay of many liberal Catholic bishops, priests and laity, the Catholic Church has stood firm. It continues to uphold the viewpoint expressed by the 1908 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in a resolution declaring that it “records with alarm the growing practice of the artificial restriction of the family and earnestly calls upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare.”
In the meantime, a similar division has developed within many Christian churches over the traditional ban on abortion. While liberal Anglicans and Protestants now condone abortion under at least some conditions, Evangelicals and Catholics continue to invoke Scripture, tradition and reason as authority for their view that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies no less to babies in the womb than to all other innocent human beings.
Today, these same divisions are compounded by disagreement over homosexuality. While theologically orthodox Christians affirm the clear and unequivocal passages of the Bible against homosexual sexual activity, some liberal clerics attempt to explain away these same Biblical passages, while others contend that the Bible was wrong about homosexuality and that Jesus would recognize in the light of recent human experience with homosexual behaviour that he, too, was wrong to oppose all forms of sexual intercourse outside the bond of marriage between a man and a woman.
In the face of such far-reaching theological disagreement within the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Williams is surely right: A church so divided against itself cannot stand. And given the collapse in membership of all the liberal Anglican and Protestant churches, it’s also evident that no church can long survive that fails to uphold the primacy of Scripture in conjunction with tradition and reason on all questions of faith and morality.
By Rory Leishman
In a statement on June 27, the Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, presented a plan for expelling the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church of the United States from constituent membership in the worldwide Anglican communion. Specifically, Williams suggested that any Anglican church that unilaterally flouts Anglican doctrine should be reduced to the status of an “associate” member of the Anglican Communion that would “have no direct part in the decision making of the ‘constituent’ Churches.”
While the immediate cause of this impending schism is a dispute over the blessing of same sex unions and the morality of homosexual sexual behaviour, the underlying reasons for the fracture go to the heart of the Christian doctrine on the supreme authority of Scripture.
In an official statement on contraception, the Church of England suggests that the Anglican and Catholic churches have “different ways of approaching questions of Moral Theology. Roman Catholics have tended to look to the 'Magisterium', the official teaching of the Church, typically articulated by the Pope, as the source of authority on moral, as in doctrinal, questions. Anglicans have tended to call on 'Scripture, Tradition and Reason'.”
This statement is incorrect. Unlike liberal bishops of the Anglican Church, the Pope always undertakes in his doctrinal statements to uphold tradition and reason in conformity with the supreme authority of Scripture.
In 2002, a group of distinguished theologians associated with the consortium Evangelicals and Protestants Together issued a joint statement entitled Your Word of Truth, in which they explained that both Catholics and Evangelicals affirm “that Scripture is the divinely inspired and uniquely authoritative written revelation of God; as such it is normative for the teaching and life of the Church. We also affirm that tradition, rightly understood as the proper reflection of biblical teaching, is the faithful transmission of the truth of the gospel from generation to generation through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
In contrast, many Anglican bishops typically pay only lip service to Scripture, tradition and reason. As the statement of the Church of England on contraception acknowledges: “Increasingly these approaches are being supplemented by appeals to 'human experience'.”
It was appeals to human experience that prompted the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops to condone contraception. In doing so, the Anglican bishops broke with the hitherto uninterrupted tradition of the Christian church. And within a few decades virtually every Protestant denomination followed this Anglican lead.
To the manifest dismay of many liberal Catholic bishops, priests and laity, the Catholic Church has stood firm. It continues to uphold the viewpoint expressed by the 1908 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in a resolution declaring that it “records with alarm the growing practice of the artificial restriction of the family and earnestly calls upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare.”
In the meantime, a similar division has developed within many Christian churches over the traditional ban on abortion. While liberal Anglicans and Protestants now condone abortion under at least some conditions, Evangelicals and Catholics continue to invoke Scripture, tradition and reason as authority for their view that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies no less to babies in the womb than to all other innocent human beings.
Today, these same divisions are compounded by disagreement over homosexuality. While theologically orthodox Christians affirm the clear and unequivocal passages of the Bible against homosexual sexual activity, some liberal clerics attempt to explain away these same Biblical passages, while others contend that the Bible was wrong about homosexuality and that Jesus would recognize in the light of recent human experience with homosexual behaviour that he, too, was wrong to oppose all forms of sexual intercourse outside the bond of marriage between a man and a woman.
In the face of such far-reaching theological disagreement within the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Williams is surely right: A church so divided against itself cannot stand. And given the collapse in membership of all the liberal Anglican and Protestant churches, it’s also evident that no church can long survive that fails to uphold the primacy of Scripture in conjunction with tradition and reason on all questions of faith and morality.
Hezbollah is responsible for the carnage in Lebanon
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
That was an appalling tragedy in the town of Qana, southern Lebanon on Sunday, when more than 50 people, many of them women and children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Like many European leaders, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign minister, was quick to blame Israel, saying that “nothing can justify” the bombing of Qana.
Is that so? Over the past three weeks, Hezbollah terrorists have fired more than 1,900 rockets into Israel, most of them launched from within towns and villages like Qana, and almost all aimed at civilian populations in Israel. Moreover, these same terrorists began this conflict in Lebanon, by killing two Israeli soldiers and taking two others hostage during a raid into Israel on July 12.
What would Solana have Israel do – simply allow the Hezbollah bombardment of Israeli towns and cities to continue for fear that any attempt to suppress the rocket fire could kill Lebanese civilians? If men, women and children in Spain were being killed and injured by rockets fired from towns in Morocco, it’s hardly likely that Solana would counsel the Spanish armed forces to do nothing to stop the carnage for fear of killing Moroccan civilians.
Why the double standard for Israel? Why are so many people quick to blame the Israeli armed forces for the Qana tragedy instead of the Hezbollah terrorists who started this conflict and are bent on continuing it? On Sunday alone, Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets into Israel.
In response to the Qana tragedy, Israel has curtailed its airstrikes for 48 hours and agreed to coordinate plans with the United Nations for the safe evacuation during this period of civilians still in the war zone of southern Lebanon. When was the last time that an army displayed such concern for non-combatants? Did the Allied Powers suspend their bombardments along the Rhine in 1945 to allow for the safe evacuation of German civilians from that battle area?
In another tragedy earlier last week, the Israeli air force bombed a UN observation post in Lebanon, killing four unarmed soldiers assigned to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, including Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, a brave officer of the Canadian armed forces.
Like Solana, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was quick to blame Israel, saying he was “shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a UN Observer post in southern Lebanon." This allegation is absurd and outrageous. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Israeli air force deliberately targets either innocent civilians or unarmed observers in a UN observation post.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sensibly refrained from blaming Israel for the death of Hess-Von Kruedener. In commenting on this tragic incident, he said: "We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war and during obvious danger to these individuals."
Interim Liberal leader Bill Graham has denounced Harper’s reasonable remark as “completely unacceptable.” Yet even Annan has belatedly admitted that there is no point to posting unarmed truce observers in the middle of a war zone. On Friday, the UN withdrew all 50 of its truce observers from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Now, Harper is criticized for refusing to join with French President Jacques Chirac and other European leaders in calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Lebanon. Together with Canada’s closest allies – the United States and Britain – Harper points out that there can be no enduring ceasefire until Hezbollah stops firing rockets at Israel and returns the two Israeli hostages.
In a meeting at the White House on Friday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United States President George Bush also summoned Hezbollah to admit an UN intervention force into southern Lebanon with a mandate to enforce Security Council Resolution 1559 adopted in 2004, which calls for “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” and “the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory.”
Should the Hezbollah terrorists refuse to accept these fair and reasonable conditions, the war and all its carnage will continue. And sensible people will know whom to blame.
By Rory Leishman
That was an appalling tragedy in the town of Qana, southern Lebanon on Sunday, when more than 50 people, many of them women and children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Like many European leaders, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign minister, was quick to blame Israel, saying that “nothing can justify” the bombing of Qana.
Is that so? Over the past three weeks, Hezbollah terrorists have fired more than 1,900 rockets into Israel, most of them launched from within towns and villages like Qana, and almost all aimed at civilian populations in Israel. Moreover, these same terrorists began this conflict in Lebanon, by killing two Israeli soldiers and taking two others hostage during a raid into Israel on July 12.
What would Solana have Israel do – simply allow the Hezbollah bombardment of Israeli towns and cities to continue for fear that any attempt to suppress the rocket fire could kill Lebanese civilians? If men, women and children in Spain were being killed and injured by rockets fired from towns in Morocco, it’s hardly likely that Solana would counsel the Spanish armed forces to do nothing to stop the carnage for fear of killing Moroccan civilians.
Why the double standard for Israel? Why are so many people quick to blame the Israeli armed forces for the Qana tragedy instead of the Hezbollah terrorists who started this conflict and are bent on continuing it? On Sunday alone, Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets into Israel.
In response to the Qana tragedy, Israel has curtailed its airstrikes for 48 hours and agreed to coordinate plans with the United Nations for the safe evacuation during this period of civilians still in the war zone of southern Lebanon. When was the last time that an army displayed such concern for non-combatants? Did the Allied Powers suspend their bombardments along the Rhine in 1945 to allow for the safe evacuation of German civilians from that battle area?
In another tragedy earlier last week, the Israeli air force bombed a UN observation post in Lebanon, killing four unarmed soldiers assigned to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, including Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, a brave officer of the Canadian armed forces.
Like Solana, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was quick to blame Israel, saying he was “shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a UN Observer post in southern Lebanon." This allegation is absurd and outrageous. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Israeli air force deliberately targets either innocent civilians or unarmed observers in a UN observation post.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sensibly refrained from blaming Israel for the death of Hess-Von Kruedener. In commenting on this tragic incident, he said: "We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war and during obvious danger to these individuals."
Interim Liberal leader Bill Graham has denounced Harper’s reasonable remark as “completely unacceptable.” Yet even Annan has belatedly admitted that there is no point to posting unarmed truce observers in the middle of a war zone. On Friday, the UN withdrew all 50 of its truce observers from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Now, Harper is criticized for refusing to join with French President Jacques Chirac and other European leaders in calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Lebanon. Together with Canada’s closest allies – the United States and Britain – Harper points out that there can be no enduring ceasefire until Hezbollah stops firing rockets at Israel and returns the two Israeli hostages.
In a meeting at the White House on Friday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United States President George Bush also summoned Hezbollah to admit an UN intervention force into southern Lebanon with a mandate to enforce Security Council Resolution 1559 adopted in 2004, which calls for “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” and “the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory.”
Should the Hezbollah terrorists refuse to accept these fair and reasonable conditions, the war and all its carnage will continue. And sensible people will know whom to blame.
A measure of Liberal decadence
Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman
It’s a measure of the decadence of the Liberal Party of Canada that one of the foremost candidates to succeed Paul Martin as leader is a morally benighted Harvard professor and darling of the left, Michael Ignatieff.
In the 2000 Massey Lectures broadcast by the CBC and later published as The Rights Revolution, Ignatieff outlined the evolving understanding of human rights over the past 40 years without mentioning the most basic right of all – the right to life. Moreover, the omission seems to have been deliberate. Like almost all contemporary liberals, Ignatieff is an unabashed exponent of a woman’s so called right to choose to have her baby killed by abortion.
In The Rights Revolution, Ignatieff states: “Abortion rights have increased the freedom of women, while at the same time raising bitter and contentious debate about our right to terminate the life of the unborn.” As authority for this last statement, he refers in a footnote to English-speaking Justice, a treatise written in 1973 by the late Canadian philosopher and Anglican theologian George Grant. In this prophetic work, Grant warned: “If tyranny is to come in North America, it will come cozily and on cat's feet. It will come with the denial of the rights of the unborn and of the aged, the denial of the rights of the mentally retarded, the insane, and the economically less-privileged. In fact, it will come with the denial of rights to all those who cannot defend themselves.”
Except to cite Grant’s book in a footnote, Ignatieff has nothing to say about the sanctity of human life in The Rights Revolution. He does not discuss, let alone refute, Grant’s compelling arguments for the right to life of all human beings. On the basis of no reason or argument whatever, Ignatieff arbitrarily upholds the court-imposed regime of unrestricted access to abortion in Canada that abets the wholesale slaughter of babies in the womb.
Ignatieff is just as irresponsible in dealing with so-called “gay rights.” In The Rights Revolution, he regrets that in 2000, homosexuals still did not have the same rights as heterosexuals to marry and adopt children. As for the rights and well-being of children, he states: “Same-sex parents have taught us that there is no necessary relationship between heterosexuality and good parenting.”
In support of this assertion, Ignatieff also cites no reason or evidence whatever. He seems to be so infatuated with the gay rights ideology that he is unwilling even to consider all the compelling evidence from time immemorial that children thrive best in a united home under the care and guidance of their own natural mother and father.
Ignatieff argues that women need “abortion rights” and homosexuals need “marriage rights” to enjoy agency. He explains: “Agency is the key idea in rights. The word ‘agency’ just means the capacity of individuals to set themselves goals and accomplish them as they see fit.”
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and the majority of her colleagues on the Supreme Court of Canada have embraced this same perversion of human rights. In December’s Labaye ruling, for example, they decreed that despite the ban on indecency in the Criminal Code, perverts have a right to engage in group sex in a public place as they see fit.
How can Ignatieff and these judges be so wrong about human rights and morality? The answer lies in the rejection of religious faith. Like most liberal intellectuals, Ignatieff describes himself as a “secular liberal.” Instead of renewing his mind so that he might know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God, he conforms to the world.
In conformity with the ideology of secular liberals, Canada has descended into a new dark age. First, we had legalized contraception and easy divorce. Then, we had legalized abortion on demand and same-sex marriage.
And now, as Grant foresaw, we have tyranny in Canada. Our so-called human rights tribunals are so out of control that even a bishop of the Catholic Church risks persecution for stating the truth about marriage and the natural family.
Under these circumstances, any Christian who supports the leadership of a secular liberal like Ignatieff is guilty of an inexcusable betrayal of the faith and the church.
By Rory Leishman
It’s a measure of the decadence of the Liberal Party of Canada that one of the foremost candidates to succeed Paul Martin as leader is a morally benighted Harvard professor and darling of the left, Michael Ignatieff.
In the 2000 Massey Lectures broadcast by the CBC and later published as The Rights Revolution, Ignatieff outlined the evolving understanding of human rights over the past 40 years without mentioning the most basic right of all – the right to life. Moreover, the omission seems to have been deliberate. Like almost all contemporary liberals, Ignatieff is an unabashed exponent of a woman’s so called right to choose to have her baby killed by abortion.
In The Rights Revolution, Ignatieff states: “Abortion rights have increased the freedom of women, while at the same time raising bitter and contentious debate about our right to terminate the life of the unborn.” As authority for this last statement, he refers in a footnote to English-speaking Justice, a treatise written in 1973 by the late Canadian philosopher and Anglican theologian George Grant. In this prophetic work, Grant warned: “If tyranny is to come in North America, it will come cozily and on cat's feet. It will come with the denial of the rights of the unborn and of the aged, the denial of the rights of the mentally retarded, the insane, and the economically less-privileged. In fact, it will come with the denial of rights to all those who cannot defend themselves.”
Except to cite Grant’s book in a footnote, Ignatieff has nothing to say about the sanctity of human life in The Rights Revolution. He does not discuss, let alone refute, Grant’s compelling arguments for the right to life of all human beings. On the basis of no reason or argument whatever, Ignatieff arbitrarily upholds the court-imposed regime of unrestricted access to abortion in Canada that abets the wholesale slaughter of babies in the womb.
Ignatieff is just as irresponsible in dealing with so-called “gay rights.” In The Rights Revolution, he regrets that in 2000, homosexuals still did not have the same rights as heterosexuals to marry and adopt children. As for the rights and well-being of children, he states: “Same-sex parents have taught us that there is no necessary relationship between heterosexuality and good parenting.”
In support of this assertion, Ignatieff also cites no reason or evidence whatever. He seems to be so infatuated with the gay rights ideology that he is unwilling even to consider all the compelling evidence from time immemorial that children thrive best in a united home under the care and guidance of their own natural mother and father.
Ignatieff argues that women need “abortion rights” and homosexuals need “marriage rights” to enjoy agency. He explains: “Agency is the key idea in rights. The word ‘agency’ just means the capacity of individuals to set themselves goals and accomplish them as they see fit.”
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and the majority of her colleagues on the Supreme Court of Canada have embraced this same perversion of human rights. In December’s Labaye ruling, for example, they decreed that despite the ban on indecency in the Criminal Code, perverts have a right to engage in group sex in a public place as they see fit.
How can Ignatieff and these judges be so wrong about human rights and morality? The answer lies in the rejection of religious faith. Like most liberal intellectuals, Ignatieff describes himself as a “secular liberal.” Instead of renewing his mind so that he might know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God, he conforms to the world.
In conformity with the ideology of secular liberals, Canada has descended into a new dark age. First, we had legalized contraception and easy divorce. Then, we had legalized abortion on demand and same-sex marriage.
And now, as Grant foresaw, we have tyranny in Canada. Our so-called human rights tribunals are so out of control that even a bishop of the Catholic Church risks persecution for stating the truth about marriage and the natural family.
Under these circumstances, any Christian who supports the leadership of a secular liberal like Ignatieff is guilty of an inexcusable betrayal of the faith and the church.
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