The Futility of Denial

Letters From Behind the Lines

Enemy-occupied territory – that is what the world is. … When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

- C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity, II-2

The Futility of Denial

by Gerry Hunter

Denial has always been a problem here behind the lines. Hans Christian Andersen gave us one of the best glimpses into its influence and effects in his children’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Strutting down the street, naked as a jay-bird, His Majesty came to grief at the hands of a young child who exclaimed, “But the Emperor has nothing at all on!” Now the reaction of the courtiers, at the very end of the story, was most interesting: “And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.” Behind the lines in Canada, as the clattering train of Paul Martin’s federal government policy speeds towards the open switch of legislating same sex “marriage,” and Michael Ingham, Anglican Bishop of New Westminster, continues to batter those who resist his efforts to place a pseudo-Christian blessing on the impending train wreck, it’s clearly becoming a case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

What we’ve had inflicted on us in these parts provides a striking parallel to the supposed fairy tale. Secular humanists, a militant anti-religious and in particular anti-theistic faction, have used the medium of pop psychology to erect an incredible façade. Marriage, they would have us believe, is something we humans invented. It exists because laws say it exists, and is what the laws say it is, and nothing more. Therefore law interpreters (a.k.a. judges) and law makers (a.k.a. politicians) are free to meddle with it, not so much as they see fit, but within the framework of laws and constitutions. To them, it is only in this framework that marriage has either existence or meaning. From these threads is woven the invisible raiment that politicians like Paul Martin, and revisionists like Michael Ingham don to impress anyone gullible enough to be taken in. And from the looks of the numbers of those flocking to carry the trains of their non-existent finery, P.T. Barnum of “there’s one born every minute” fame was a veritable prophet.

But every so often, in the most unexpected ways, the truth of the matter exerts itself. Mr. Martin got blind-sided by it during his trip to India, and from a source that must have come as a surprise. The Canadian Press reported, via The Globe and Mail,

Just two days before Martin arrived in New Delhi, the spiritual leader of Sikhism directed his religion's followers worldwide to reject the legalization of gay marriage, as proposed by Martin's Liberals.

The unprecedented edict by Joginder Singh Vedanti – likened by one Sikh Liberal MP to the Pope – followed a lively debate in the Indian press this month in which it was speculated that Mr. Martin had cancelled a planned visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar because of political concerns about the controversy.

The CBC gave further insight into the Sikh leader’s pronouncement:

Joginder Singh Vedanti, the holiest priest of the Sikh religion, ordered all practising Sikhs to oppose same-sex marriage, saying it is the product of sick minds and anti-human.

Vedanti criticized Canada's proposed legislation, saying he was concerned about the trend toward same-sex marriages in Western countries.

Poor Mr. Martin. He self-identifies as a Catholic Christian, but one wonders if he’d dare go near the Vatican. Now he can’t dare go near the Golden Temple, either. Pretty soon the only place left for him will be Michael Ingham’s cathedral, which is really quite a come-down. Meanwhile, he adjusted his invisible new clothes after a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. CP reports him as saying,

“I would point out that we are a country of ethnic and religious minorities,” Mr. Martin said in response to a question about the controversy at a news conference.

“And the purpose of the Charter of Rights is to protect minorities, to protect them against the oppression of the majority.”

One is left wondering: Does Mr. Martin, clad in his invisible robes, consider gays and lesbians who want to marry as an ethnic minority, or as a religious minority?

It seems clear, however, that atheistic humanism serves as a universal solvent which dissolves any belief system, whether is comes out of a search for God or out of faithfulness to His revelation in history, and in His Son Jesus Christ. Consider what Health Minister Ujjal Dossanjh, a Sikh and train-carrier for the Prime Minister in this matter, had to say about the turn of events, as reported by CP:

“I went to the temple not to explain anything to anyone. I represent a secular state, religion and politics are two separate issues for me.”

Mr. Dossanjh said the edict would have no influence whatsoever on the political views of Canadian Sikhs, who are heavily courted by the Liberal party.

“I mean, Prime Minister Martin and (former) prime minister [Jean] Chrétien both were Catholics, the Vatican (stand against same-sex marriage) didn't have an impact on them. And therefore no other religious institution would have an impact on anybody else.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Martin, when he claims to be a Catholic in the context of his actions around this question, he ends up having a faithful Catholic Bishop, like the Most Reverend Fred Henry of Calgary, pointing out the flimsiness of his raiment, in order to serve and protect the souls in his cure. As a Catholic myself, I can make no claims to being an exemplary son of the Church, but I do not prompt a successor of the Apostles to public comment when I assert my membership in Christ’s mystical body. One wonders if, although the invisible raiment is see-through to those who look at it, it is opaque when placed in front of the eyes of the wearer. Even if the train carrier is a Sikh, like Mr. Dossanjh, he appears subject to the same effects. We read in the CP report:

Gurbar Singh Malhi, a Bramalea, Ont., Liberal, says he is voting against his government's bill.

“Traditionally . . . everybody works under the guidelines of the Golden Temple,” Mr. Malhi said.

“For the Sikhs, (Vedanti) is next to God. So I think whatever he says, the people have to follow the rules and regulations of the traditions.”

Doesn’t sound as if religion and politics are any more separate to Mr. Malhi than they are to Bishop Henry of Calgary.

One of the worst things about the effects of atheistic humanism here behind the lines is that it brooks no rivals. In that regard, it is one thing when its effects prompt law makers and interpreters to turn on those who reject their bowing to its influence. After all, we have come to expect nothing less from them. It’s just part and parcel of price they are willing to pay to work the levers of secular power. But we now face a situation where even those who claim affinity to Jesus Christ, and a position of authority among His followers, are succumbing to the poison. For while Mr. Martin was being blind-sided by the leader of the Sikh religion, Anglican Bishop Michael Ingham was setting out to blind-side Anglican Christians, who, unlike him, were determined to hold to the truth they had been given. Hans Christian Andersen would have been proud of his efforts.

Ingham acted while the clergy of the parishes that would have none of him were attending a conference of others determined to hold to the truth they possessed. He targeted two parishes that had dismissed him, appointing erstwhile “priests-in-charge” of the parishes, and a pair of “bishop’s wardens” for each community. What he hoped to accomplish is indeed a mystery – as much of a mystery as the parade of the Emperor in Andersen’s story. The parishioners had voted to dismiss him in proportions that were at or bordering on 100%. They likewise followed their clergy out of the formation that either aided and abetted, or condoned, his persecution of them for their refusal to join in his denial of the faith, in like proportions. Now recall the observation of the child in the story: “But the Emperor has nothing at all on!” And, with respect to the folks who aided and abetted him by accepting his appointments: “And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.” It is one thing when life imitates art. It is indeed quite a spectacle when life imitates fairy tales. It seems that even the train-carriers, deep down, knew that, as last Sunday, none of them appeared at either parish. Artificial constructs are fine in cabinet meetings or council meetings, but they provide nothing at all for either a bishop or a prime minister to wear in a parade.

A question arises: How can any of this cloud-cuckoo-land scenario be coming to pass? How can an Anglican bishop who has, on the showing of both his actions and the contents of his last book, abandoned Christian belief, and a prime minister who calls himself a Catholic, but whose train-carrying minister can proclaim, in truth, that the Vatican’s teaching “doesn’t have an impact” on him (and whose own religious leader’s pronouncements have no impact on the minister, either) behave in such a baffling and inconsistent manner? There is an explaination, and it is one that the Catholic prime minister should know.

As a Catholic, Mr. Martin should know that the world is not as it is, and the things in it the way they are, simply because a bunch of politicians got together and decreed that it should be that way. In the words of Catholic theologian George Weigel:

None of this happens by Harry Potter‑like wizardry, but because the world was sacramentally configured by God "in the beginning" (cf. Genesis 1:1) ‑‑ and still is today (cf. everything around you). What we experience here in what skeptics call the "real world" is a window into the really real world that makes this world possible, the world of transcendent Truth and Love. The ordinary stuff of the world is the material God uses to bring us into communion with the truly extraordinary ‑‑ with God himself.

And surely, all Christian believers, although they might see fit to take issue with the particulars of Mr. Weigel’s assertion above, would agree with the Presbyterian hymnist Maltbie D. Babcock when he wrote:

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

This is my Father’s world: why should my heart be sad?

The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!

God reigns; let the earth be glad!

When the framers if the Constitution of the United States declared, “We hold these truths to be self evident,” they admitted that there exists in the world a reality and truth that is beyond that which man can create on his own, or even fully explain on his own. When Joginder Singh Vedanti, the holiest priest of the Sikh religion, ordered all practising Sikhs to oppose same-sex marriage, saying it is the product of sick minds and anti-human, he gave evidence that this reality and truth is accessible to all sincere seekers. When, in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul the Apostle wrote:

Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they have no excuse. (v 20)

he gave a warning to all – be they lay, clergy, baptized, or unbaptized – that mankind can, at best, work the levers of the reality in which he finds himself, not work the levers to define that reality. And men, women, and marriage were among “the things that have been made.”

So here behind the lines, what is coming to pass is much more than just an exercise in legislative action and the juris prudence that eventuates from it. A Sikh leader in India sees this. Catholic Bishops in Canada, and Christian leaders in other communities of baptized believers see this. But a prime minister, a Sikh cabinet minister, an Anglican Bishop, a number of jurists, various pop psychologists, among others, either refuse to see it, or turn a blind eye to it, and join with the atheistic humanists who deny it. So we are left to wonder: Do the people who work the levers really know what they are setting about to tamper with? Do they know that they will, for whatever reasons, deprive society of its very basis, marriage and the family as God gave them to his creatures, if they persist? Do they know how naked they are as they parade in front of the people, and how truly foolish they, and their train carriers look? Most importantly, do they know, as Joginder Singh Vedanti shows he knows when he observed that their actions were “anti-human,” that, in the words of French Jesuit Priest, Cardinal, and scholar Heni De Lubac, It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that without God, he can only organize it against man. Do they not know that their denial of these truths will do unimaginable harm, and in the end, that it is futile?