(Everyday for Life Canada) — Dear bishops of Canada,
We are humbly and faithfully writing to ask you to give Canada’s Catholics a special gift this Christmas. As we celebrate the birth of Our Lord and Saviour, we ask that you admit the Winnipeg Statement was not a sound moral decision based on Catholic doctrine. It opened the door to the evil of abortion and euthanasia. Please openly declare that you erred and repeal that Statement. Do it as the Christmas welcome and spiritual present to the Child Jesus.
A mere two months after Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae was issued on July 25, 1968, Canada’s bishops met in Winnipeg and you made your opposition to the encyclical public. In short, the encyclical banned the use of contraception in the sacrament of marriage. Married couples needed to be open to life and to avoid artificial contraception.
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However, the bishops didn’t even give themselves the time to properly read and study the document. You answered in only three months, and the meeting to discuss and respond to the encyclical took just three days. However, the moral harm done by the statement continues to this day, nearly 60 years later.
We remind you that the main dissent is found in paragraph 26:
Counsellors meet others who, accepting the teaching of the Holy Father, find that because of particular circumstances they are involved in what seems to them a clear conflict of duties, e.g. the reconciling of conjugal love and responsible parenthood with the education of children already born or with the health of the mother. In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely, but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assured that whoever chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.
Canadian Catholics have been following the “in good conscience” morality of the Winnipeg Statement for decades and decades and what are its fruits? We have abortion on demand. We have euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide on demand. We have easy divorce and same-sex marriage on demand. In Canada, abortion has killed around 5 million babies since 1969, when it was first approved by the government.
We note that abortion was legalized just a year after the Winnipeg Statement was released. It’s also eight years since Canada legalized euthanasia, and about 65,000 Canadians have been intentionally put to death. The slippery slope of evil knows no limits. Indeed, the bowels of hell are bottomless.
Minus immigration, Canada is currently experiencing a demographic winter. As more restrictions are removed to expand the culture of death with chemical abortion and home style euthanasia, what other horrors await?
In public schools, both secular and Catholic, we have also followed the path of “in good conscience.” So, children are now taught that a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy. Elementary school children can change their names and learn about consent to sex. Boys can play in girls’ sports and use the same bathrooms. Trans-humanism and all the sexual letters of the alphabet can be taught across the school curriculum, even to children who have not yet learned to read. Marriage is not just the union of a man and a woman but has been redefined to include numerous other arrangements.
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According to an article in The Catholic Register, Cardinal Michael Czerny has given this advice to Toronto’s new Cardinal Francis Leo and to parishes that want to pursue the synodal path: just do it.
So, we respectfully ask Cardinal Francis Leo and the Canadian bishops to return Canadian Catholics to their baptismal mission to live the full Catholic life. Let it begin by repealing the Winnipeg Statement. The time has come to confess the moral error. Canada’s faithful will support and love you for doing so. And you will give the greatest of gifts to baby Jesus this Christmas: the gift life and truth.
Wishing Canada’s bishops a peaceful, healthy, and grace filled Christmas.
Everyday for Life Canada.
Reprinted with permission from Everyday for Life Canada.