By DONALD DeMARCO
If Mortimer Adler, after writing his classic, How to Read a Book, authored How to Read the Newspaper, he probably would have warned his readers that newspapers convey something other than news. They convey, he would advise, propaganda carefully concealed within what the inattentive reader might assume to be mere news. Consider the following three newspaper items culled recently from the same newspaper.
1) Gretta Vosper, an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, has declared that she believes neither in God nor in the Bible. When she decided to abandon the Lord’s Prayer, 100 of the 150 members of her congregation left in protest.
She claims that belief in God can motivate bad things. Rev. Vosper has expressed “shock” that her position is now under review since, as she states, her congregants support her view that how you live is more important than what you believe. The board chairman who hired her says that he has had no complaints from congregants and avers that people enjoy engaging in critical thinking as they explore new ways of expressing their faith and values.
The 57-year-old Rev. Vosper is depicted in the newspaper as flashing an engaging smile, an image that will win her support against the an alleged conservative elite that opposes “rich and alive” discussions. Her being “victimized” is sure to win her national sympathy.
The notion that how you live is more important than what you believe is deceptive since how one lives is based on what one believes. A person acts in accordance with his beliefs. Take away those beliefs and a person will not know how to act. In one sense, the fruit is more important than the seed. Yet, if there is no seed, there is no fruit.
Moreover, Vosper was given the responsibility of preaching Gospel values. The fact that she has rejected them has not, at this point, led to her dismissal, but to her status as a national celebrity who has shown the gumption to stand for her own values. The message of liberal autonomy overrides ministerial integrity.
2) An Ontario Court has upheld a lower court ruling not to accredit an evangelical Christian law school. The reason for denying accreditation is the school’s policy that forbids students from having sex outside of marriage. The court ruled that Trinity Western University failed “to balance the applicants’ rights to freedom of religion with the equality rights of its future members from two historically disadvantaged minorities (LGBTQ persons and women).”
According to the court, the law school’s policy discriminated against these minority groups: “in order to attend TWU, (LGBTQ) persons must sign a document in which they agree to essentially bury a crucial component of their very identity, by forsaking any form of intimacy with those persons with whom they wish to form a relationship.”
Neither gender nor sexual inclination disqualifies a person from being a Christian. Trinity Western’s Christian mandate does not discriminate against anyone. Nor does it violate anyone’s freedom. Any person has the freedom to enroll or not enroll in the law school. Furthermore, people are equally free to attend a school that, consistent with its Christian values, prohibits sexual intimacy apart from marriage. What appears to be discriminatory is not allowing a Christian school to operate according to its own Christian mandate.
The issue of minorities is a red herring. Certainly women do not constitute a “minority.” No doubt there are other minorities for whom the school’s policy is not an issue. In addition, can it be said that sexual intimacy is any more crucial to the identities of LGBTQ persons than it is for heterosexual people? Here, the court is, in the interest of equality, ruling in favor of inequality. Once again, the veiled message is that certain people, because they are allegedly victims, should enjoy preferential treatment.
3) The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform has been mailing out fliers to residents of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that include a picture of an aborted fetus and one of Prime Minister hopeful Justin Trudeau. The fliers, packaged within a white envelope that reads, “Important Election Information Enclosed,” state that the candidate for the country’s highest office supports abortion until birth and that “a vote for Justin Trudeau is a vote for this [referring to the aborted fetus].”
Postal workers have complained about the “violent, graphic material” that they are delivering which is contrary to “family values.” Some of the postal workers have balked at delivering the fliers.
The real violence is the abortion of unborn children, not its depiction. The message contained in the fliers is truthful and even educational. If there is any threat to family values it is the deliberate destruction of one of its members, not that a young person (who may be witnessing violent images courtesy of the media on a daily basis) might see a picture of an aborted fetus.
The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform is presented as “anti-abortion” rather than “pro-life.” It is painted as dangerous, as opposed to the complaining postal workers who are honorifically portrayed as being opposed to disseminating images of graphic violence and in favor of protecting family values.
Once again, we find an inversion of values wherein the responsible people are presented as being irresponsible while the dubious complainers are vested with praise.
The distinguished American novelist James Fenimore Cooper was not only being unusually insightful but uncommonly prophetic when he penned these words in the American Democrat:
“As the press of this country now exists, it would seem to be expressly devised by the great agent of mischief, to depress and destroy all that is good, and to elevate and advance all that is evil in the nation. The little truth that is urged, is usually urged coarsely, weakened and rendered vicious by personalities; while those who live by falsehoods, fallacies, enmities, partialities, and the schemes of the designing, find in the press the very instrument that the devils would invent to effect their designs.”
What more can be added to that perspicacious remark than “amen”?
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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