WCR Letters to the Editor

Excommunication and 'morning after'

Although all birth control pills are abortive in nature, the "morning-after" pill is, more than any other birth control pill, an obvious form of abortion. The Catholic Church not only forbids Catholics from co-operating in an abortion, but automatically excommunicates any member that co-operates in this evil act.

Canon 1398 of the Code of Canon Law states: "A person who actually procures an abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication." Canon 1314 defines "latae sententiae" as a penalty that "is incurred automatically upon the commission of an offence."

The majority of Catholic pharmacists would incur excommunication when providing the "morning-after" pill, or when referring a client to a pharmacist that will provide it.

It would then seem that Catholic pharmacists would have to choose between their faith, and their employment.

Canada Safeway has stated that "If the objecting pharmacist cannot . . . provide service consistent with the requirements of their position, the pharmacist will not be scheduled to work in any store during any period of time when he or she would be the sole pharmacist on duty."

This statement is quite clear that any pharmacist that refuses to provide the "morning-after" pill will receive penalties regarding their employment. The choice is money/excommunication vs. faith/loss-of-money.

Bill 12, a private member's bill introduced recently in the Alberta legislature, would protect health care workers who refuse services on moral grounds. This bill is urgently needed, but should be unnecessary in the case of a Catholic pharmacist providing the "morning after" pill.

Providing the "morning after" pill is not a moral dilemma for Catholics, but a denial of their rights to practise their religion.

If a Catholic provides the "morning after" pill, they incur excommunication regardless of whether they morally agree or disagree with the Church's teaching on this matter. Employers that attempt to force any Catholic employees to provide the "morning after" pill are forcing them into excommunication.

Catholic pharmacists should receive no penalties from their employer whatsoever by remaining Catholic. Canadian law forbids any such penalties.

R.J. Grigaitis
Leduc

A Christian duty to oppose Bill 11

In 1997, the Conservatives were re-elected on their record, not to establish private surgical hospitals. Their slogan was, "He (Klein) listens, he cares," and they received just over 30 percent of eligible votes or 51 per cent of the popular vote.

We passively accept government by top-down management from disproportionately elected MLAs. In a real democracy, citizens would work with governments to decide policy on important issues such as health-care and education. After all, it's our money.

The government, with its corporate mind-set, and unrestrained by democratic principle - no free vote in the assembly - has blamed "left-wing nuts," and the peccadilloes of a few protestors as evidence for blindness to the righteousness of its cause.

Unfortunately, our servants are operating under at least five false assumptions:

1. That we can't afford the current system - the best in the world. The fact is that wealthy Alberta has spent the same amount on health-care for the past 20 years - 4.5 per cent of GDP.
2. That private industry is better than public enterprise and would mean shorter waiting lists. Efficiency doesn't always mean effectiveness. The private U.S. medicare system is over 40 per cent more costly than ours, and we have no deductibles.
3. That medical costs will skyrocket because of an aging population. A study by the Economic Council of Canada found that the overall increase in medical expenditures is only one per cent per capita per year. The economy is growing faster than that.
4. That under NAFTA, U.S. corporations will not sue for the right to sell us more two-tier health care services. International law experts disagree. A lawsuit by the Ethyl Corporation forced the federal government to lift its ban on a toxic gasoline additive (MMT). A California company has sued the B.C. government over water exports.
5. The most damaging assumption is the government's willful self-delusion that Bill 11 and some of its other policies are democratic.

Our Christian duty is to tell the government to pull Bill 11 and stop their attack on working people and the poor.

Fred Douglas
Edmonton

Prayers needed to end abortion

Our so-called health care system spends millions of dollars on the abomination yearly, which can only destroy our health care system, and Canada, because the Providence of God will certainly not aid us, (and may punish us by natural disasters) in our "health-care" crises when we so blatantly disregard his commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."

We urge everyone now to say three rosaries a day in atonement for this and all other abominable acts.

Our prayers of atonement are most necessary to mitigate our sufferings (when God permits them for our chastisement) or puts them further into the future.

M.J. LaBrie
Dolores Flaskay
The Jesus Mary & St. Anne Abortion Atonement Society
Calgary

The persecution of pro-lifers

The abortionists are allowed to report these heroes and heroines to the police who deliver them to judges, who cite their simple presence and protests as against the law.

In other words, it is legally deemed not only that abortion is a legal right, but that Canadians must accept it silently without any effective protest. It is not a question of obeying the law or of trespass in the protesting of it.

It is rapidly becoming a question of giving abortion free and unprotested operation within Canadian society. The only public and vocal opinion to be allowed in this collaboration between the abortionists and the courts and the police is that which is pro-abortion.

Abortion is receiving a privileged and protected position through the judicial persecution of pro-lifers.

The right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly, the right to defend life, the right to prevent a natural crime of murder are being denied, with the pretext that not only is abortion legal, but that no one should be allowed to make the case to the contrary.

The saddest part of the whole affair is that these heroes and heroines are undergoing a real martyrdom - insulted, fined, imprisoned and marked as mentally unbalanced - without any word of support from those who are considered leaders of religious truth and arbiters of morals.

The bishops who signed statements against wars and weapons, against exploitation of the poor, against economic power against the less powerful - these are all silent about the war on life, against judicial power oppressing pro-life protestors.

Abortion is killing more than the unborn. It is killing justice, equity, rule of law, respect for law, respect for the system; it has completely devastated the moral order and our very spiritual dimension has been seriously eroded.

By doing so it is surely killing Canada itself.

Leo Coyle
Gibbons

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