Calgary's Roman Catholic Bishop has cannonballed into the election campaign by suggesting Catholic politicians imitate Sir Thomas More and consider martyrdom before opposing church teaching on issues such as same-sex marriage...The article notes that even More, writing nearly five hundred years ago, spoke out against some of the same archaic practices that Henry seeks to defend. But Henry manages to gloss over both that fact and the likelihood that most Catholic politicians properly consider faith as only one aspect of their decision-making processes, not as the sole ultimate arbiter of right and wrong even where opposed to reason as Henry seems to advocate.
He told Zenit that Canadian Catholic politicians in their public lives cannot be what he called spiritual schizophrenics.
"In undertaking any public initiative, it is morally incoherent to leave out completely one's own fundamental convictions, whether for noble or pragmatic reasons. . . .
"All Catholic politicians would do well to imitate the example of St. Thomas More, who by his life and death taught that man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality," he told Zenit.
The content of Henry's quote aside, Henry's entry into the campaign evidently means serious trouble for the Cons. While Harper may be able to control his own MPs so far during the campaign, Henry poses a different problem: he's apparently not willing to be muzzled, which leaves the Cons with a choice between either dissociating themselves from him, or risking having his words taken as their own. Taking a quick look at some of the MPs who have taken up common cause with Henry, it'll be interesting to find out whether Maurice Vellacott, Jason Kenney, Art Hanger, Harper himself and others still want to share that association.
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