It is my experience, as a lawyer, that many people are threatened in schools. Many feel that their beliefs and convictions are under attack from within the very bodies that currently hold sway within the schools themselves.
Canada has become rather impatient with public manifestations of religious belief. Having decided we are a secular society, we assume that all institutions should follow secular rules, even if those rules keep changing. When religious beliefs collide with individual rights, we tend to come down on the non-religious side, if necessary using the courts to impose our vision of Canadian life.
I approached this essay by reading Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair" (2002) in conjunction with its polar opposite, Eugenio Zolli's "Why I Became a Catholic" (1953).
On Oct. 21, an event of enormous importance, certainly symbolically, occurred at the White House. The president, I am thrilled to report, signed the Sudan Peace Act into law.
The story of Romanian persecution and martyrdom is virtually without equal in the 20th or any other century. As LOsservatore Romano wrote in 1948, when the persecution was only starting: No similar story of moral violence, of persecution, of the Via Crucis of liberty, of personality, and of human dignity can be read in all the pages of history.
This article was written in response to an outrageous anti-religious rant "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" that was published in Canada's Globe and Mail on May 6, 2002.
How can any father look his four-year-old son in the eye and tell him that he cannot be both a practicing vegetarian and a hot dog lover? Why should a working mom, who is deeply committed to the principles of vegetarianism, feel guilty simply for snacking on an occasional beef jerky?
By looking at the past - our own past and the common history we share with Islam and other religious traditions - and by judging it honestly and rigorously, but without fear or rancor, we serve the truth that makes us free. We "contribute to the path of reconciliation," however difficult that might be.
Some Muslim scholars, such as Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, have interpreted the concept of a Holy War, or Jihad, as a personal striving for righteousness. Nonetheless, the incident of violent Islamic Jihads throughout history, especially against Christians, is cause for deep concern.
Christians who refused to convert to Islam were killed; those who did convert were then separated from their families, given Muslim names, and forcibly circumcised without anaesthetic, and with dirty instruments. Why, I wondered, weren't journalists reporting on this tragedy?
