Vézelay

This is for our young travellers who were soliciting advice for places to visit in Europe. Between Paris and Geneva lies the village of Vézelay, which is definitely worth seeing. I myself was there 30 years ago with Gordon College's European Seminar. It's a lovely little town whose principal attraction is the Basilique de Marie Madeleine, a largely romanesque church bearing the remains of Mary Magdalene.


Bryn Mawr

The Basilica of Mary Magdalene

This is from the journal I was keeping at the time, dated 8 July 1975:

The atmosphere is somewhat similar to the Cathedral at Noyon at which Calvin grew up. It is very colourless and sombre. It is also lacking the tourists which throng Notre Dame [Paris] or St. Paul's [London]. The style of most of the church is romanesque. The quire is gothic, however, with typical pointed arches and airy architecture, the emphasis being on light. By contrast, the nave has smaller windows and a darker, heavier character. The façade of the basilica is similar to Notre Dame (smaller of course) except that there is but one tower on one side which seems to destroy the symmetry of the structure. To this church flocked pilgrims bent on seeing and venerating the presumed remains of Mary of Magdala which are stored in the crypt below the quire. It is much easier to pray and to maintain a worshipful attitude here than in the cathedrals of the large cities.

On a sloping hillside outside the town St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached the sermon which launched the Second Crusade to recover the Holy Land. We stayed at a youth hostel operated by the Catholic peace organization, Pax Christi. A year later I turned one of the photographs I took of a Vézelay street scene into an oil painting which now hangs in the dining room of our home.

Back in 1975 Vézelay was off the beaten path, having become somewhat obscure after centuries of being a bustling centre for pilgrims. I hear rumours that the town has once again become heavily touristed. Yet even if it has, it's still worth a visit.

You never can recall

As I was ambling through the hallway outside the Redeemer auditorium, I saw the gallery of photographs of the various stageplays put on by our theatre arts department over the years. One of these was, in fact, Shaw's You Never Can Tell, performed in November 1990. I had thought we had staged it at some point, but the plot didn't seem all that familiar when we were sitting in front of it last week. A senior moment perhaps.

Euroconstitution put on hold

This news is no surprise: "European Union leaders decided Thursday to put on hold plans to unite their 25 countries under a single constitution, saying they need to reconnect with their people." I hate to disappoint them, but no amount of reconnecting with the people will produce the needed unanimity for such a document. Why not allow the constitution to go into effect for those countries approving it and permit the others to negotiate separate arrangements on an individual basis? It may offend some people's sense of symmetry, but it may be the most that can be expected.

Catholic-Orthodox relations, again

This Guardian article, "Kiev Patriarch Urges Church Cooperation," raises some interesting questions: What if one or more Orthodox jurisdictions were to make a separate peace with Rome, entering into full communion while not intending to break with their brethren in the other jurisdictions? Or is that an impossibility?

Degree undeserved

Incredibly, the University of Western Ontario has conferred an honorary degree on the notorious Henry Morgentaler, whose singular achievement has been to make abortion legal in this country as well as to provide the procedure himself. According to Morgentaler:

"By fighting for reproductive freedom, and making it possible, I have made a contribution to a safer and more caring society where people have a greater opportunity to realize their full potential. . . . Well-loved children grow into adults who do not build concentration camps, do not rape and do not murder," said Morgentaler, 82, who himself survived a Nazi death camp.

From this I think we can safely conclude that the degree was not awarded for his impeccable command of logic.

Bad weather

Hamilton was spared this: "Tornadoes touch down in southwestern Ontario; no major damage reported." We had some rain, but that was it.

Close votes in the Commons

Paul Martin's government has survived a series of confidence votes over the budget. The Conservatives are no longer quite as keen as last month on contesting an election, because they are down in the polls.

'Sh-h-h-h-h'

My mother grew up in the small Michigan town of Milan, located on state road 23 south of Ann Arbor, straddling Washtenaw and Monroe Counties. Because my grandmother still lived in the community when I was growing up, we spent a lot of time there during my childhood, generally visiting two or three times a year and, especially during the summers, spending as many as 6 or 7 weeks at a stretch. The place came to seem a second home to us.


Milan Chamber of Commerce

Whenever we would drive past this building on East Main and County Streets, my mother told us that, when she was growing up, the public library was located in the second storey of what was then a fire hall. Only much later was I struck by the oddness of these shared accommodations, given that libraries are supposed to crave silence — which would hardly be forthcoming in the event of a fire alarm.

BC's referendum

Last month British Columbians voted in favour of the single transferable vote by a margin of 57 percent -- 3 percentage points short of the 60 percent required to implement this reform to the province's electoral system. However, Russ Kuykendall asks two sensible questions:

If STV is so great, why was there not a plurality of options for reform of B.C.'s electoral system? Why was there one, and only one, option put before British Columbians?

Admittedly, it is somewhat ironic that, although proportional representation is an electoral system well suited to a democracy with more than two partisan groupings, BC's voters were asked to approve only one form of PR as the alternative to the current first-past-the-post system. Might it have been better if several alternative forms were put before voters to be ranked on a preferential ballot? Perhaps.

Greek archbishop optimistic

Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States believes that Pope Benedict XVI could do much to heal the millennium-old schism between Rome and the Orthodox Church.

“If Benedict, so characterized as a conservative, decides to do something so daring, no one will question him because he has the credentials,” Demetrios says. “There is something that he (Ratzinger) said that is an indication of what I mean. He said, ‘For me, our real sister is the Orthodox Church.’ He didn’t say the Protestant Church. He said the Orthodox Church.”

That said, however, even if the papacy and the several Orthodox jurisdictions agreed on terms of a reunion, the Orthodox faithful could decide not to accept them — something which seems to lie within their power and for which there is precedent. I seem to recall from somewhere a saying about élites taking the led for granted.

Taylor's passing

Kenneth Taylor, originator and publisher of the best-selling Living Bible, has died at age 88.

EU in crisis

The rejection of the new constitution by French and Dutch voters has put the European Union in a damage-control mode, as leaders meet to decide what to do next. Further expansion now appears to be on hold. Might the prospect of Turkey's future membership have had something to do with the current impass? According to Constant Brand, writing in Macleans:

European politicians have started to raise doubts in public over the December decision on Turkey, raising fears in Ankara that their European ambitions might be shelved by the EU in the wake of the growing opposition at home and the crisis around the constitution.

Polls in France and the Netherlands showed that opposition to Turkey's membership was one of the key reasons voters gave for opposing the EU constitution.

Whatever the reasons for the negative votes, the results have forced European heads of government to reassess the half-century-old project for continental integration. The lesson? Élites cannot afford to take for granted the people they purport to lead.

Blog silence

It's time for Gideon Strauss to switch servers.

St. Barnabas' Day


St. Barnabas Church, Ottawa

Today is the feast day of St. Barnabas, native and patron of the island of Cyprus.

Debt relief forthcoming?

Here is encouraging news for those desiring to help the poorest of the world's poor countries: "G8 moves close to Africa debt deal."

Concerns raised

Iain Benson raises concerns and asks hard questions about the federal government's Bill C-38.

'Fr. Jape' and the neocalvinists

When the pseudonymous Fr. Gassalasca Jape, SJ, began writing in the New Pantagruel last year, I had appreciative words for his critique of liberalism, which appeared to recognize its religious roots in a way that the liberal critics of late liberalism were unable to see. Here, I thought, was a potential ally in the common struggle of believing Christians against liberal hegemony in the public square. His observations inspired me to write something of a follow-up article, which appeared in the summer 2004 issue of tNP. Since then, sad to say, "Fr. Jape" appears to have turned on his potential allies, or at least on those of us within the ranks of neocalvinism. For this I am truly sorry, as I believe that members of the body of Christ desperately need to form coalitions rather than foment further internal schisms.

Now "Fr. Jape" has taken on my respected friend Ray Pennings, long connected with the Christian Labour Association of Canada, for the unspeakable offence of counselling civility as we undertake to debate the controversies which inevitably arise within the political arena. By contrast, "Fr. Jape" argues:

It is a severe fact that one cannot take clear stands on many critical issues without expressing contempt for "the deeply held convictions of others with whom [one] disagree[s]." The proper attitude toward a person or position one regards as contemptuous of, say, human life, is contempt — which need not preclude pity, fear, and even compassion. Anything less indicates one does not really take the matter seriously. It is always the fitting implication and sign of honesty in even the most "civil" disputes that the disputants are clearly antagonists whose differences cannot be reconciled or infinitely deferred without there being a winner and a loser.

Three observations are in order here.

First, whoever is behind the "Fr. Jape" persona does the curmudgeonly Jesuit priest rather well, although I'm beginning to harbour suspicions that he (or she) is guilty at least of severely overplaying this role. If one is urging others on to expressing contempt for those opinions with which they disagree, then the decent thing would seem to be to stop hiding behind the mask, come out into the open and take responsibility for one's own viewpoints.

Second, "Fr. Jape" is entirely too confident that the sort of incivility he proposes to unleash in the public square will not lead to a shooting war in the streets. Many abolitionists probably thought the same thing in the run-up to the American Civil War. Moreover, those who would too quickly resort to the language of warfare within the political realm are unlikely to manifest due respect for our political institutions as political institutions, with a God-given mandate to do justice on an on-going basis. At most they will be considered mere means to the achievement of specific desired goals, which are then, quite by themselves, identified with justice in its entirety. I am reminded here of Thomas More's zealous son-in-law, William Roper, in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, who would "cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil," to which the more seasoned More replies, "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat?" Those who would spurn the sorts of procedures and compromises necessitated by ordinary politics because the results do not perfectly match up to their expectations should not be surprised if they one day end up exiled from their homes and means of livelihood, which was the fate of my father's compatriots in Cyprus, the more passionate of whom eschewed civil discourse and could not bring themselves to accept half measures when they were offered.

Third, I think James Brink may be onto something in his aside on Jape's critique of liberalism. If one indiscriminately identifies liberalism with societal differentiation in general, then the tendency will be, not simply to reject liberalism at its spiritual roots, but to try to stop history in its tracks and perhaps even to reverse it. If so, then, like the marxist utopians of yore (recent "yore," to be sure), one will be trying to bend the world in a way in which it simply, structurally cannot go. However, if Jape is not, after all, attempting to taint every societal development since the 16th century with the liberal label, then I'm sure we would all like to hear it — and preferably from the person behind the mask.

US to close detention centre?

Might the United States government be preparing to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? According to this report, perhaps so.

Supreme Court decision

What will be the implications of this ruling? Top court strikes down Quebec private health-care ban.

Pope Benedict and the evangelicals

Although Benedict XVI has made ecumenical overtures in more than one direction, going so far as to propose a joint synod of Greek (i.e., Orthodox) and Latin bishops during his visit to Bari, Italy, journalist Paolo Pontoniere believes that the new Pope may be preparing a strategy to combat the growing worldwide influence of evangelicals. Pontoniere cites some startling statistics:

According to some researchers, evangelical Christianity is expanding three times faster than the world population and is the only existing religious group showing a significant growth through conversion. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church is expanding at a slower pace than the population, which will mean an overall decrease in the number of Catholics worldwide.

In addition, the dissolution of the Berlin Wall not only reinvigorated the Orthodox church, but also saw huge numbers of believers from the former Socialist bloc — where the church had been persecuted — move into evangelical groups.

There are currently more evangelicals in Asia than in North America. Singapore's churches are among the most active in the world, sending one missionary abroad per every 1,000 members. Seven of the world's 10 largest evangelical churches can be found in Seoul alone, a city where 110 years ago there was none.

In Latin America, a mostly Catholic region for the past 500 years, the number of evangelicals has grown from under 250,000 in 1900 to over 60 million in 2000. Critics of the Vatican say the vacuum left by Pope John Paul II's disavowal of the "basic Christian communities" movement has been filled by the evangelicals.

In 1960, the number of evangelicals living in the developing countries were one-half of those in the West; in the year 2000, they were four times more, and in 2010 they will be seven times as numerous.

In America, where even Protestant groups have lost 5.4 million members over the last decade, evangelicals have enjoyed a growth rate of 40 percent. They have become the largest religious force in the United States, with 26 percent of all — and they wield undeniable political clout.

Of course, the validity of such statistics depends on how one defines an evangelical, some definitions of which are so broad as to encompass devout Roman Catholics and Orthodox, in addition to those believers populating the various pentecostal, baptistic and free churches often thought to constitute the nucleus of the movement.

What about the so-called protestant mainline, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Canada, and similar historic denominations? For the most part they are declining in numbers, with small, ageing congregations worshipping in large and increasingly difficult to maintain buildings. However, there are pockets of vitality, especially amongst the more confessional or evangelical congregations, but not exclusively, as indicated in this US News & World Report article: "Religion in America: Pumping life into mainline Protestantism." Still, given that such bodies as a whole are losing numbers, the Vatican will decreasingly perceive them to be a threat to the Catholic faithful. If Pontoniere is correct, the future of global Christianity would seem to lie with these ill-defined evangelicals — whoever they are.

Shaw's amusing freethinkers

Yesterday Nancy and I spent the day in lovely Niagara-on-the-Lake, an historic community not quite an hour away which served as the first capital of Upper Canada at the end of the 18th century. Now it is a scenic and heavily touristed town boasting beautiful parks and gardens, quaint horse-drawn carriages, 19th-century architecture and, most notably, the Shaw Festival. The Shaw Festival consists of a series of theatres presenting stage plays written either by George Bernard Shaw himself (1856-1950) or by other playwrights during the nearly century-long course of his life. The Festival has run from April through October every year since 1962.


Today in Literature

George Bernard Shaw

Yesterday we saw Shaw's You Never Can Tell, which was first performed in 1898. Although I've not made a study of Shaw and his writings, I find him a fascinating figure because he is in many ways the paradigmatic 19th-century freethinker who retained much of the charm and naïveté of his type well into a very different age. He was, of course, one of the leading figures in Britain's socialistic Fabian Society, along with the likes of H. G. Wells and Sydney and Beatrice Webb. Out of all Shaw's works, I have personally seen, in addition to this play, Major Barbara (at the Shaw and on the screen) and the cinematic version of Pygmalion. And of course everyone has seen the latter's musical version, My Fair Lady. I may have seen one or two others as well over the decades.

You Never Can Tell is a comedy populated by amusing and eccentric characters, its plot revolving around a search for a lost father, a dentist unable to make a living on his own devices, an unlikely romance between a cad and a woman with "modern" ideas and, last but not least, changing mores at the end of a bourgeois century. Despite being well acted, yesterday's performance got off to a somewhat slow start, but Shaw's witty dialogue successfully carried the second half.

One of the characters is Finch M'Comas, a one-time bohemian in his youth who, by the time he has reached middle age, has cut his hair and donned a suit to become the Clandon family's solicitor. Here is M'Comas responding to Mrs. Clandon on their first meeting in many years:

You reproached me just now for having become respectable. You were wrong: I hold to our old opinions as strongly as ever. I don't go to church; and I don't pretend I do. I call myself what I am: a Philosophic Radical, standing for liberty and the rights of the individual, as I learnt to do from my master Herbert Spencer. Am I howled at? No: I'm indulged as an old fogey. I'm out of everything, because I've refused to bow the knee to Socialism.

With my interest in political ideologies, I like this line because it illustrates the way one philosophical school, considered trendy by one generation, is so quickly supplanted by another in the next. Spencer's social darwinism may have seemed the cutting edge of progressive opinion when it was first articulated, but socialists had by the end of the century effectively sidelined it as retrogressive. One wonders from this line whether Shaw might have had an intimation that his own socialist commitments might one day be deemed old-fashioned and superseded by something new.

It is also worth noting that this play's freethinkers all appear to have independent means. Most seem not to have to work for a living, and those who do are in the employ of those who don't. The lesson? If you are wealthy enough, you can indulge in all the freethinking and lifestyle eccentricities you wish, simply because you have the material resources to support them and are freed from the poverty to which such quirks will inevitably lead those of ordinary means. How many colourful eccentrics would Shaw have found amongst the Welsh coalminers of his day or the striking Pullman workers a few years earlier in far off Chicago? Not many, I venture to say. In a society characterized by widespread affluence, might such eccentrics multiply endlessly, with freethinking becoming the norm rather than the exception? Perhaps. It certainly seems to be the case that our society is more tolerant than were previous generations of social experimentation because the latter appears — at least in the short term — to have few if any deleterious consequences for that society as a whole.

All the same, if extensive affluence makes everyone a potential eccentric, it cannot make everyone a George Bernard Shaw. Shaw's plays are worth reading and, if you have the opportunity, viewing on stage. If you're ever in southern Ontario, the Shaw Festival is the place to see them.

Poll on religion

An Associated Press/Ipsos poll on religious attitudes in 10 countries indicates that the United States and Mexico are the most devout. But Americans are least averse to mixing religion and politics, the poll reveals. Two observations and one question are in order here.

First, poll results are influenced by the way questions are asked. If respondents were asked whether their faith should have an influence on political life, they might have given more favourable replies than they did. But the question asked about clergy influence on politics, which would elicit a different response from many, especially in European countries with traditions of state-established churches.

Second, this report in The Seattle Times carries a revealing comment by John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron: "The United States is a much more religious country than other similar countries, looks a lot like what you call developing countries, like Mexico, Iran and Indonesia." Ah yes. We've heard this one before: economic modernization is associated with loss of faith in a transcendent God. If the US doesn't conform to the supposed trend, it has to be the exception to the rule. By contrast, others have observed that, in the larger global context, secularizing western Europe is the exceptional region. (By the way, Brent Nelson, who is quoted in The Globe and Mail article, is a graduate of Wheaton College.)

Third and finally, one wonders what sorts of responses would be elicited if the pollsters' questions manifested an understanding that secularization represents, not a loss of faith, but a shift in the object of faith. The media might have a different story to report.

European Switzerland?

Ever since they rebelled against the Holy Roman Emperor centuries ago, the Swiss have held themselves aloof from the rest of Europe. In fact, with non-EU Switzerland a fiercely independent enclave surrounded by EU members, the map of Europe looks rather like, well, Swiss cheese. Now the voters of Switzerland have opted in a referendum to become part of Europe's passport-free zone, established by the Schengen Agreement and Dublin Accords. It is interesting to note that the nay-saying cantons are within or near the nucleus of the original German-speaking Swiss Confederation, while those western cantons favouring the measure are relative newcomers. If the Swiss should ever bring themselves to join the EU outright, will they in effect be rejoining the Holy Roman Empire? It would certainly be one of history's great ironies.

Koran abuse

Although Cal Thomas is undoubtedly right about Islam's double standard, perhaps we will have to admit that Newsweek was right after all: "Pentagon Admits Koran Desecration At Guantanamo Bay."

Sojourn in Tanzania

Bethany Givens is an undergraduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, who is spending her summer on an academically-related project in Tanzania. She is a Christian who grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, as the fourth of six sisters. She has been overseas before and comes from quite the travelling family. During her time in east Africa, she is keeping a weblog of her experiences, and she's already had some interesting ones, even after only a week. I will be following her adventures closely.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Bethany Givens is my niece.

Spell check not comprehensive

Here are some of the commonly used words in my own writing which WordPerfect's spell check does not recognize: conservatisms, cosmonomic, creational, cultic, Dooyeweerd, dualist, emancipatory, eschaton, integralist, jurally, Kuyper, monisms, neocalvinism, neothomism, nonfalsifiable, nonidolatrous, normativity, normed, omnicompetent, ontologize, pistical, positivize, principial, pluriform, pluriformity, pluralisms, reductionisms, reductively, restorationism, soteriology, stewardly, Thomistic, totalizing, transformative, worldview.

What next?

The number of appeals I am receiving from deposed African leaders or their relatives has increased dramatically in recent weeks. In fact, judging from the quantity, there seem to be many more such leaders than there are independent states in the entire world, much less Africa. Any day now I expect to receive a post such as this:

Sir:

You may be surprised to receive this communication, as we have not met before. I am Michel Chrétien, son of deposed Canadian leader Jean Chrétien, and I would like to request your assistance in transferring $50,000,000 out of my country . . . .

Neocalvinism versus libertarianism

Our Burkean Canuck (Russ Kuykendall) argues, against a very young libertarian, that the "Amsterdam School" holds more promise than the "Austrian School" in articulating a foundation for just government in this country, and particularly within the Conservative Party of Canada. I would phrase it thus: a recognition of societal pluriformity will be more fruitful than a simple libertarian deprecation of government. Whether Kuykendall will get his wish within his favoured party remains to be seen. But, for those with libertarian leanings, his four points are worth reading and taking to heart.

A balanced conference?

A conference in New York devoted to Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right met in April, under the joint sponsorship of People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the National Council of Churches, and the well-known opinion journals, The Nation and The Village Voice. Did the conference participants successfully achieve a balanced assessment of the subject under scrutiny? If this article is any indication, they may well have missed the mark.

Another grad photo



Here I am with the future prime minister of Canada, who has promised me a Senate appointment once she attains office.

The EU constitution

The media are proclaiming Europe in crisis over the back-to-back Franco-Dutch rejection of the new European constitution. However, no matter what sort of constitution EU leaders come up with, the unanimity requirement will prove to be a virtually insurmountable obstacle. They may have to content themselves with, not a traditional constitutional federation in Europe, but an asymmetrical treaty federation, with each member negotiating its own relationship with Brussels. In short, the new Europe will be less like the United States or Canada and more like the Holy Roman Empire.

Did the constitution's failure to mention Europe's christian heritage contribute to its defeat? Giorgio Salina, vice president of the Convention of Christians for Europe, thinks so. Would the inclusion of such a recognition have secured its approval? I doubt it.

A Red Tory

While looking for an explanation of the Hartz-Horowitz thesis the other day, I came across a series of webpages belonging to one Ron Dart, who teaches politics and religion at the University College of the Fraser Valley in BC and is a self-described Red Tory. In fact, he even publishes a journal called The Friend: The Red Tory Review. Among other things, he is an aficionado of the late George Grant and looks to be a high-church Anglican to boot. Interesting fellow.

When I saw his name, I thought it looked familiar. Then I recalled he had written a severely critical review of Paul Marshall's Their Blood Cries Out in Sojourners, to which Marshall himself responded a few months later. Something of Dart's approach can be seen in this article, "Clark Pinnock: Canadian Theologian of the Empire." Pinnock is, of course, the controversial theologian now retired from McMaster Divinity College, just down the hill from Redeemer here in Hamilton. Dart argues that, although Pinnock's Wesleyanism is poles apart theologically from J. I. Packer's Calvinism, both are apologists for the American empire and have effectively betrayed "the Canadian High Tory and Conservative way." As such they are "theological compradors."

Of course, the defence of one's own is certainly a hallmark of virtually any conservatism worth its salt. On the other hand, simply to argue that Pinnock and Packer are flirting with American "republican" ideas ostensibly foreign to Canada does nothing in itself to tell us whether they are right or wrong in so doing. Yet if Dart were to attempt to address this issue, he would have to reach beyond his vaunted high tory conservatism and embrace some sort of general normative framework in which questions of right and wrong could more easily find a context. Perhaps it's time for him to investigate neothomism or neocalvinism, both of which claim to offer such a framework.

Mystery solved

So Mark Felt was the anonymous "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame. Now if only we could find out what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.

US abortion figures incorrect

Did the abortion rate in the United States increase during George W. Bush's presidency? So argued Glenn (or is it "Harold"?) Stassen, an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. Now a new report just out from Planned Parenthood's research arm says it ain't so. I'm sure Stassen is pleased to know that he is wrong and that the record has been set straight.

Graduation: another retrospective

At last saturday's commencement exercises we were pleased to have Dr. Jonathan Chaplin, of Toronto's Institute for Christian Studies, as keynote speaker, and I was privileged to introduce him. Sam Martin was the speaker for the graduating class and delivered a most eloquent address which I think many of us would love to see published somewhere — perhaps in Redeemer's Images magazine.



Political science graduates
Rob Joustra and Jared Wilms,
with yours truly

In 1994 my esteemed colleague, Dr. Al Wolters, in his capacity as master of ceremonies at the annual luncheon for faculty and graduands, commissioned me to compose a song for the occasion a few weeks in advance of the event. Given that I have long been an amateur musician, I was happy to oblige. I wrote a text and tune which I sang then and have done so on and off since then. Last saturday I sang it once more. Here are the lyrics, along with the music, which can be accessed by clicking on the title immediately below:

May the Father's Might Uphold You

May the Father's might uphold you every hour of every day.
May the peace of Christ enfold you as you follow in his way.
May the Spirit's love direct you all his precepts to obey.
May the Triune God protect you till we meet again one day.

Although from here our paths may part,
be sure that each believing heart
is bound together by his grace
until we see him face to face.

May the Father's might uphold you . . .

The way ahead may not be clear,
but with God's help we shall not fear,
for he will keep us in his sight
and guide us by his radiant light.

May the Father's might uphold you . . .

Text and Music Copyright © 1994 by David T. Koyzis.
All rights reserved.

Nederland heeft 'nee' gezegd

Now it's the turn of the Dutch to vote down the new European constitution. Where to go from here? Given our own recent history, we Canadians might be forgiven for wondering why the constitution's architects didn't see it coming.

A neocalvinist dilemma: to fight or not to fight?

This three-way dialogue on pacifism and just war among Byron Borger, Col. Keith Pavlischek and G. van den Bosch posted on Gideon Strauss' blog is worth taking a look at. Reading this exchange prompts two observations:

First, I am pleased that being on active duty in Iraq affords sufficient time for reading and commenting on blogs. We would all be worse off without Keith to keep us on our collective toes.

Second, I wonder whether the use of the term violence in such discussions might not prejudice them already in a certain direction. According to Dictionary.com, violence means, among other things, "Physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or abusing: crimes of violence," and "Abusive or unjust exercise of power." If we are speaking of the exercise of force by a duly constituted government led by the norm of justice, then it would appear that violence is not the appropriate label to use in this context, even if that force is potentially lethal. Is the use of force to restrain the extralegal exercise of violence itself violence? If so, then we might have to conclude that two wrongs cannot make a right and the discussion is over before it has begun.

Looking back

A couple of weeks ago I was going through the files in my home office, attempting to reorganize them and to weed out items no longer of interest to me. As I was doing this, I discovered a typed essay I wrote some 25 years ago, titled "A Brief Evaluation of American Conservatism." I can no longer say for certain the circumstances of my writing this, but I imagine it was written either when I was still in Toronto at the Institute for Christian Studies, or perhaps a little later when I had begun my PhD studies at Notre Dame. The outer limits would be from 1979 to 1981, so I am placing it in the middle: 1980, the year I moved from Toronto to South Bend. In any event, I was in my mid-20s. What struck me about this essay, reading it a generation later, is that I still agree with most of what I wrote then. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it anticipates much of the analysis in chapter 3 of my book, even if the latter is more nuanced and careful than the former.

To begin with, I noted that "there is no such thing as a single 'conservatism'; there are, in fact, many 'conservatisms.'" The American variety is an uneasy coalition between libertarian conservatism, or classical liberalism, and traditional or organic conservatism. The former is concerned with the size of government and the maintenance of free markets, while the latter is preoccupied with the erosion of the traditional values undergirding society and with such issues as abortion, "experimental social relationships and any change that would contribute to the breakdown of society." At the time I judged that in North America "the dominant form of conservatism is classical liberalism tempered by traditional conservatism. The former cannot strictly be called conservative at all, because genuine hierarchical or authoritarian traditions were largely left behind by those who settled this continent." This second sentence would seem to be evidence that I had already come into contact, via George Parkin Grant, with the Hartz-Horowitz thesis, the truth of which I am not altogether persuaded of now, even if I still find it intriguing.

Of course, the notion that North American conservatism consists of two or more quarrelsome factions is generally recognized today. In 1980 Robert Nisbet wrote a now classic essay in Modern Age titled "Conservatives and Libertarians: Uneasy Cousins." I do not know whether or not my own essay preceded Nisbet's. I am fairly certain I did not read the latter until a few years after its publication. In any event, the analysis of conservative factionalism has become something of a cottage industry since then. In fact, the new issue of First Things carries an article by Joseph Bottum on the subject, "The New Fusionism." And of course there is that article by Andrew Sullivan, on which I recently commented. I suppose what I was coming to see at the time is that liberalism and conservatism are not the polar opposites they are popularly thought to be and that it is possible to adhere to liberal contractarianism while respecting historical continuity and remaining sceptical of all but incremental change.

Here are a few paragraphs from my conclusion:

First of all, conservation does not necessarily exclude progression. We cannot ignore the movement of history when we analyze society and the political realm. Any conservatism which attempts to return to an earlier period of history is naive and irresponsible. Nor can one halt the flow of history at a certain moment of time. In other words, a Christian political option must be at once conservative and progressive.

Secondly, as Christians we urgently need to examine in a radical way the spiritual direction and foundation of our government and its activities. In other words, we need a new criterion by which to judge that which should be conserved and that to which we must progress. We cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of absolutizing conservation or progression. We must not put an idolatrous faith in conservatism or progressivism. Neither of these “-isms” is a complete world-view in itself. Both agree on the same liberal principles which have had almost universal acceptance throughout the history of the American republic. Conservatism and progressivism are merely two different emphases within the same ideology, which has its roots in the secular Enlightenment.

What sort of criterion is need for a radically Christian political option? It is, I would contend, nothing less than the biblical norm of “justice.” A true sense of justice will provide a norm for the two-fold task of conservation and progression within a radically Christian world-view. Certainly, “freedom” and “stability” are important concepts and should not be lost sight of. But they fall far short of providing a normative insight into the structure of the state. . . . Since the state is, by definition, a juridical institution (in distinction from other institutions with a differing structure), the norm for this institution must be some conception of justice.

While I would express all this somewhat differently a quarter of a century later, and while my understanding at the time lacked a certain philosophical sophistication, I am pleased to recognize that I still agree with the substance of what I wrote then. Of course, someone less charitable could argue that I haven't had a fresh insight in 25 years, at least not on this subject. Perhaps there is something to be said for such a charge. On the other hand, there is some comfort in knowing that I have been following the same direction for some time. I like to think that my trust in an utterly faithful God has had something to do with it.

'Well, nobody's perfect.'

If the federal government has its way with Bill C-38, might the humour in this dialogue between Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder's classic Some Like It Hot be lost on a future generation of Canadians?

An odd provision

The drama over Patriarch Irineos' inconclusive ouster from the patriarchal see of Jerusalem continues, as the church's Holy Synod names an interim replacement. The AP report states something that would strike most westerners as bizarre:

Legally, though, church leaders cannot dismiss [Irineos]: Only the governments in areas where his congregation lives -- Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority -- have the power to do that, by withdrawing recognition of him.

Is this really provided for in the Orthodox Church's canon law? Does political authority really trump ecclesiastical authority on such a matter? If so, one wonders whether this is a holdover from Ottoman and Byzantine practice.

Categorical imperiousness

The following conversation may or may not have been overheard in an ethics class in East Prussia near the end of the 18th century:

Exasperated professor: "You have a duty to be morally autonomous."
Inquisitive student: "Why?"
"Because it’s a mark of mature adulthood."
"Why?"
"Because it just is."
"Why?"
"Because I say so."

Hey, where'd it go?

Perhaps this is the equivalent of our waking up one morning and finding Lake Ontario gone: "Lake disappears, baffling villagers."

Constitutional change and mass democracy

In the wake of yesterday's definitive repudiation of the new European constitution by French voters, the fate of the document is now in doubt. According to this report, "French voters stunned President Jacques Chirac and the continent's political elite." Really? Stunned? In fact, this was a fairly predictable result, as I have been saying for some time.

Dead in the water?

Is the new European Constitution finished? Might the European Union itself be put in crisis by France's rejection of the document? We shall see.

An anniversary

I wonder whether I am the only Reformed Christian to remember this tragic anniversary every year. Certainly the Orthodox can never forget it.

A graduation reflection

Today we witnessed the graduation of the class of 2005 at Redeemer. This was the 20th graduation and the 18th graduation of which I have been part. I am sure I am not the only one of my colleagues to find such occasions rather poignant, as they are times of saying farewell to young people in whom we have invested so much of our energies over four or five years. I myself tend to become (perhaps excessively) fond of my own students, and I still do not find it emotionally easy to let them go, even if the time is right for them to move on. Over the years God has seen fit to grant me the privilege of shaping some extraordinary young people. At the end of the day I cannot say whether they or I have benefitted more from these relationships. Perhaps both.

One of these remarkable young persons, Rob Joustra, has written yet another testimony as to how his experience at Redeemer shaped him over the course of four years. Rather than content myself merely to link to his thoughts, I here reproduce them in their entirety:

Redeemer University's annual commencement ceremony is set for this Saturday, May 28. Commencement has always had a peculiar flavour, in its mixture and tension of emotion. It is, absolutely, a time of celebration. But for those of us for whom our time at Redeemer has been a seminal, life-altering experience, it is also a justifiable time of lamentation. This time will not come again, and it's right at the close of it all to spend some time in meditation on what it has meant.

One of the things that Redeemer and its community has taught me is a radical redefinition of education and truth. Entering Redeemer I was no academic, or even budding intellectual, but all the same I possessed all the pride of one who could have been. I craved long CV's, complex arguments, and impressive displays of academic prowess. Intellect was power: the ability to manipulate in conversation, in definition and imposition. Education was elite. It drew me apart from the person on the street, and made me feel better than my other when I was reduced to conversing with my fellow man. Education was my ticket away from mediocrity. The truth of Christ already embettered me, gave me enlightenment over my secular compatriot, and Christian education could only further that gap. Education even gave me an edge over my brothers and sisters in other traditions. While it was true I would admit to their influence, and incredible gifts, only I could be in a position to truly suture and discern their tradition. I expected to graduate Redeemer with a shiny new gavel firmly in hand.

I was deep in prayer with a wonderful Pentecostal friend of mine this past week when we were struck with a new radical vision. To our collective surprise, we prayed that Christ would grant us towels in our Commencement, not gavels. Suddenly the journey of understanding of education burst open. We had this picture of being handed our diplomas, and of our diplomas being towels that we must wrap around our waists and use to wash feet. How many pieces of paper like that are just gavels, pieces of judgement, of elitism and pride? Contra the world, we graduate to service, not comfort. We graduate to compassion, love, and mercy, not judgement, condemnation and elitism. Jean Vanier writes of this truth we have pressed for in his Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John:

Even though truth makes us free, we never possess it.
We are called humbly to contemplate the truth that is given to us,
to search unceasingly in order to be drawn into truth,
to let ourselves be led, in the company of others,
into the unfolding mystery of truth,
to be possessed by truth and to serve truth.

To live truth is to live a relationship of love
with the Word of God made flesh,
who is truth, compassion and forgiveness.
To be true is to let oneself be challenged by others
and to accept all the brokeness in us.
The truth, then, is not something to make us feel superior.
On the contrary, it calls us into humility, to littleness
and to the light of love.
All the light in us comes from light of the Word of God.
The light of truth, then, is a gentle marriage
of what we see and experience,
with what we have received from above and the Word of God,
each one enlightening the other, each one calling us to live in God
and to see things through the loving eyes and loving heart of God.

May the towels we have prepared to receive this Saturday be worthy for such a task...

Incidentally, Mr. Joustra managed to win the coveted Faculty Award, thus making him the second of my protégés to do so in as many years. Congratulations! It seems our department is on a roll. Just wait until next year.

Coming to a riding association near you

The Globe and Mail is sitting up and taking notice: "Christian activists capturing Tory races." One hopes that The Globe's motive for publishing this report and Gloria Galloway's reason for writing it is not to advocate the imposition of a religious test on candidates for public office.

Doctorate conferred

In February one of my esteemed protégés, Paul A. Brink, successfully defended his dissertation, "The Idea of a Pluralist Politics: Pluralism and Consensus in John Rawls's Political Liberalism," at the University of Notre Dame, thereby earning the degree of doctor of philosophy. This past weekend Dr. Brink received the diploma recognizing this achievement at Notre Dame's annual commencement exercises.



Dr. Brink, with son Jesse

Paul graduated from Redeemer in 1993 with a degree in political science. From there he attended Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he received a master's degree in the subject. And then on to Notre Dame, where he focussed on the subfield of political theory. (Funny, but his academic garb looks vaguely familiar.) Congratulations, Paul! We're all very proud of you, and certainly no one is more so than I myself.

The decline and persistence of faith

Sociologist Steve Bruce of the University of Aberdeen asks of his own Scotland, "Is Christianity facing a slow, inevitable death?" Here he charts the decline of adherence to the national Church of Scotland, and even to the Catholic Church and the smaller free churches, over the course of 150 years. Concludes Bruce:

People do not accidentally become religious. Being a Christian is not "natural"; it is an acquired characteristic. Like a language, it must be learned and, if it is not used in the home, in everyday conversation and in public life, it dies out. As the population that speaks a minority tongue shrinks, decline does not slow; it becomes faster. There is no natural obstacle to the death of a language. I do not see why the fate of a religion should be different.

The analogy to language can be taken further than Bruce himself recognizes. Individual languages may indeed die out, as he correctly notes. Think of the fate of Cornish or old Prussian. But the human capacity for language itself does not. Even if, say, Occitan dies out, the descendants of its speakers simply take on French as their primary means of communication. Similarly the decline of Christianity does not mean the decline of faith; rather it means the taking on of another faith -- perhaps a secular one based on a closed view of the cosmos and bereft of a personal deity. But it is a faith all the same.

Site redesigned

Belinda Stronach's website has finally been refurbished. No Tory blue in the background. Just a waving flag with the parliament buildings behind. Stronach's photograph looks the same — taken, of course, before her defection.

Meanwhile in Newfoundland. . .

. . . the Liberals have held on to Labrador, thereby increasing their slender hold on the reins of power in Ottawa. No more confidence votes in the Commons for now, it seems.

The US President: kingly and prime-ministerial duties

Several years ago I received a phone call from the office of a member of parliament representing the old Reform Party. His assistant let me know that he would be at Redeemer on such and such a date, and would I like him to speak to my class. I immediately declined the offer, indicating that we were behind in the material to be covered and couldn't spare the hour. What I did not tell her was that I was reluctant to see my class turned into a partisan political platform by someone who would shortly be seeking re-election. One of my colleagues did indeed take up the offer, so I sat in on his class to see what happened. Sure enough, as I had feared, the MP had little of substance to say and he did indeed manage to turn his "lecture" into a campaign speech. My colleague later told me he had regretted turning valuable class time over to him.

I had this episode in the back of my mind when I heard the news that President Bush was to speak at Calvin College's commencement ceremony. I was not surprised to hear that many faculty and students objected to his presence, given that a partisan political leader inevitably carries with him the lingering scent of the controversies he and his policies may have stirred up in the course of his time in office. By hosting such a leader, the institution could be perceived to be approving such policies as well as the person behind them. I will not here comment on the substance of Bush's agenda or on the concerns of the faculty who took out the newspaper advertisement in advance of the President's visit. However, I think it worth noting that the American constitution prescribes a presidency which must inevitably unite in a single office what might be called kingly and prime-ministerial duties.

Here in Canada last week we saw a good deal of excitement in the House of Commons as a sitting government was very nearly defeated on a motion of nonconfidence. Two days earlier we saw a dramatic defection to the government front benches, and the animosities that this stirred up on the opposition side of the chamber. Meanwhile, the Queen touched down out west for her tour of Saskatchewan and Alberta, to celebrate one-hundred years since these provinces entered confederation. As head of state, the Queen stays above partisan politics, as (ostensibly) do her representatives, the governor general and the ten lieutenant governors. Thus she could remain blithely undisturbed by the events going on thousands of miles away in Ottawa, continuing to carry out her responsibilities as the chief symbol of the unity of the nation. Any university would be honoured to have the Queen at its commencement. Paul Martin, on the other hand, would be a different matter.

South of the border, however, head of state and head of government are combined in the single office of president. This means that, whenever a president undertakes a duty appropriate for a supra-partisan head of state, he inevitably runs the risk of being perceived as a mere prime minister, caught up in all the divisiveness of the day-to-day partisan political process. This is undoubtedly how many of the Calvin faculty perceived Bush's participation in last saturday's graduation exercises. Now I feel comfortable in the judgement that Bush gave a quite good speech -- a "kingly" speech really -- appealing to the students' youthful ideals and urging them on to service of God and their fellow human beings. Nothing was said about stem cell research, judicial nominations or Iraq. Moreover, his mention of Abraham Kuyper was a good example of knowing an audience and appealing to something to which they can easily relate. Bush, in my estimation, successfully left his prime-ministerial role behind and spoke in his kingly role.

Yet because a president must be both king and prime minister, sorting out the responsibilities of each and trying to maintain an effective separation between the two are not easy things to do. Presidents rarely make good kings and good prime ministers at the same time. They usually excel at one or the other, and they frequently excel at neither. They hardly ever do well at both. Did the Calvin faculty fail to honour duly constituted authority, as Chuck Colson charges in today's Breakpoint commentary? Given that I am currently writing a monograph on authority, this question is of particular interest to me. In response, I will only say that I would not go that far, as the protest against the actions of someone holding a particular authoritative office need hardly be understood as a denial of the authority of the office itself. However, it seems to me that the events last weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan, illustrate at the very least the inevitable conflict of roles that comes with an office combining the functions of head of state and head of government in the same person.

Europe's constitution: back to square one?

If Ipsos is correct that French Voters Would Reject European Constitution, then a lot of effort will have been wasted on a document that will join Canada's Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords in the dustbin of constitutional histories.

Goals in tension?

"Catholic church launches recruitment drive for priesthood." Given priestly celibacy, one wonders whether this campaign might not conflict with the church's efforts to stem Europe's demographic decline and to bring the birthrate back up above replacement level. Or is that too protestant a question?

Unfair discrimination?

This is from an article in The Scotsman: "Atheist teacher at Catholic school was 'second-class citizen'." One wonders why Mr. MacNab finds it so outrageous that a Catholic school should prefer a Catholic to an atheist for the position of principal teacher of pastoral care. Would he think it amiss that an atheists' society would pass over a professing Catholic in filling one of its own leadership posts?

Two years of freer travel

The final sentence in Carol Pucci's "Postcard from Europe: Nicosia, Cyprus" is misleading. Travel between the two sides of the divided island was eased just over two years ago, in April 2003 — slightly more than a year before entry into the European Union, and a day or two after I began this blog.

Just a question


Thamesweb

Have Canadians lost sight of the true meaning of Victoria Day?

Europe's future: Ukrainians to the rescue?

Could the beginnings of Pope Benedict's spiritual renewal of Europe be seen in Viktor Yushchenko's Ukraine? Here is some intriguing evidence of this possibility: "Ukraine President Transforming Country into a Nation of God."

Trinity Sunday


Holy Trinity Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox on abortion, RACU

Russian Orthodox Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov has spoken out against abortion, which is contributing to the demographic collapse of his country. As the major form of "birth control", abortion ends the lives of some 4 to 6 million unborn children annually in Russia.

In the meantime not all Russians are happy with the presence in Moscow of the Russian-American Christian University (RACU). Although it was the Russian Minister of Education who suggested the building of a christian liberal arts university back in 1990, and although its faculty includes Christians of several traditions, including Russian Orthodox, some Orthodox fear "an encroachment of foreign faiths and branches of Christianity into the area." Last tuesday saw protests against the construction of the new RACU campus. The president of RACU, John Bernbaum, was formerly the head of the CCCU's American Studies Program and spoke at Redeemer's graduation exercises back in 1991. If Bernbaum and company can manage to allay the fears of local Orthodox Christians, RACU could become a significant force for the revitalization of Christianity within Russia. It might even help to stem the country's demographic collapse. Definitely something to pray for.

The budget vote: two days later

Paul Martin's government may have survived a crucial confidence vote in the Commons, but his composite Liberal-NDP budget is not yet home free and clear. Thursday's vote simply gave it second reading, after which it now goes to committee. Given that we have a minority government, the committee could alter the budget in any number of ways before reporting back to the Commons for third reading. If the Conservatives manage to win a by-election in Labrador this week, this could embolden them to pursue another motion of no confidence. On the other hand, many Conservatives are expressing relief that there will be no election in the near future, because the public opinion polls have put them behind the Liberals in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

A 'fanatical moderate'? Maybe not

Several years ago I began calling myself — somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to be sure — a fanatical moderate. Not knowing whether my use of this term was unique, I did a quick Google search and found something written last year by Andrew Coyne (we're hearing a lot from him these days) about the Right Honorable Charles Joseph Clark, Canada's most eminent unsuccessful statesman (and founding leader of the stillborn Bloc clarkois), and Senator Lowell Murray, both stalwarts of the old Progressive Conservative Party and sometimes known as Red Tories. Writes Coyne:

Messrs Clark and Murray are examples of that uniquely Canadian type, the fanatical moderate (Robert Fulford's term, I believe), for whom the answer to every question is to take the middle path, regardless of whether a) there is a middle path, b) there is anything to recommend the middle path as policy, or c) today's middle path is likely to remain in the middle for long. In their vanity and illusions, their bitterness and vivid self-importance, they are the direct descendants of the Bourbons, who famously had "learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

The Liberals at least make no bones about the opportunism that underlies their lack of principle. But only the Red Tories could make lack of principle into a principle.

Hmmm. Given that this is a less than wholly flattering portrait, perhaps I should consider finding another, more appropriate political label to wear. Maybe I'll just have to go with christian democrat or neocalvinist.

The aftermath

The day after last evening's historic cliff-hanger budget vote, the Prime Minister is urging "co-operation over conflict." It looks like we're in for our first winter election in 26 years.

New Cyprus talks?

In some ways this is old news: "UN aide to assess prospects for new Cyprus talks." Or at least we've read the same headline time and again in the past. Is it perhaps time for the European Union, and not the United Nations, to be spearheading such talks? Previous UN efforts have gone nowhere, primarily, I am inclined to think, because the world body has no real power to extend incentives for both sides to co-operate. The EU, which is a more exclusive body placing conditions on membership, does have this. It might thus be in a better position to push for a lasting settlement and reunification of the island state.

Calvin contra Bush

It seems that not everyone at Calvin College is happy with President Bush as commencement speaker. According to Julia Duin's report in The Washington Times:

In a 2001 poll, 25 percent of Calvin's faculty described themselves as politically liberal, according to the college. Forty-five percent considered themselves centrist, and 28 percent said they were political conservatives.

What? No fanatical moderates?

A near death experience . . .

. . . but the government survives, with House Speaker Peter Milliken following parliamentary convention and casting a rare tie-breaking vote. The drama is over — for now, at least.

Drumroll please . . .

. . . as we await this evening's budget vote.

Did you know . . .

. . . that 41 percent of the world's monarchies recognize Queen Elizabeth II as head of state? Let's hope she enjoys her visit to the Prairie Provinces during a time of heightened political instability in her chief North American realm.

Coyne's conundrum

So how many of these 1,014 comments on his blog does Andrew Coyne actually read?

BC referendum

Will electoral reform be coming to British Columbia? Yesterday, in addition to returning Premier Gordon Campbell's government to power, BC residents voted in a referendum on adopting the single-transferable-vote, a form of proportional representation recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. At last count, the voters favoured this reform by slightly more than 57 percent. However, the rules adopted in advance indicate that the measure must pass by at least 60 percent of voters and by a simple majority in at least 60 percent of the ridings to be considered to have won the day. STV exceeded the latter stipulation but fell short of the former. However, Fair Vote Canada and Fair Voting BC are arguing that, because 60 percent is an unrealistic hurdle, the BC government should consider adopting electoral reform anyway. Premier Campbell has expressed openness to this.

The reverberations continue

Stronach's website now has a new link to her statement made at yesterday's press conference. Are some of her critics guilty of sexism? So says the Liberal Women's Caucus. Nonsense, says Christie Blatchford. Of course, we all know what poor Peter MacKay thinks. Thanks to Eric Hogeterp for locating a cached copy of Stronach's critique of Martin's budget not too many months ago. We are clearly dealing with a woman of unbending principle.

And here's a view from across the pond: "Exciting Canada." The Telegraph is predicting a Conservative win, if not this year, then next. Now who was it that said that Canada is a boring country?

The fallout

Belinda Stronach's website still shows a Tory blue background, but there are no links of substance. One assumes this will be changing shortly. In the meantime, the Conservatives have altered their strategy: they will vote for Martin's budget, but against the NDP's amendments.

As for this story, I have no comment: "Queen Defects to Liberals."

A high profile defection

Well, this is a bizarre development: "Conservative Stronach joins Liberals." And so soon before the Queen's arrival in Saskatchewan. Perhaps we won't be going to the polls after all.


CBC

The happy couple

Blogshares?

What on earth is this all about?

Orthodoxy, the Palestinians and Rome

Does the recent deposition of Patriarch Irineos represent the 'Palestinianization' of the Orthodox Church in Israel and the Occupied Territories? So argues Moshe Elad of Haaretz. In the meantime envoys of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches are planning to renew efforts to heal the nearly 1,000-year-old schism between the two communions. What would a reunited Catholic-Orthodox Church look like? What would happen to papal primacy, the filioque, purgatory, the immaculate conception, and other divisive issues?

Irresponsible journalism

BBC reports: "Koran abuse report 'may be wrong'." What, I wonder, is the proper penalty for a popular magazine whose careless reporting leads to the deaths of at least 15 people and the injury of more than 100? A mere apology hardly seems enough.

Pentecost


St. Peter and St. Paul
Coptic Orthodox Church

Deal-making in Parliament

David Warren writes for the Ottawa Citizen on the current antics in the House of Commons and the shamelessness of a government clinging to power in the face of more than one obvious defeat in the Commons. Warren points out the danger of the Governor General "appearing a Liberal Party stooge if she does not herself order a dissolution of Parliament." He thus appears to agree with my assessment two days ago of the drawbacks of having a homegrown representative of the Queen insufficiently removed from domestic partisanship.

However, I cannot follow Warren's analysis in its entirety. I agree with Warren that Paul Martin is defying the constitution by delaying a confidence vote until one of the opposition members is in surgery and thus away from the Hill. But when I come to the following statement, I stop short:

The opposition NDP has already been bought off, publicly; and shamefully, but again, they do not know shame.

The expression bought off is tendentious in the extreme. If this country, following the recommendation of the Law Commission of Canada, were to adopt some form of proportional representation, all parties would likely become minority parties, with multiparty coalition governments becoming necessary. The sorts of political trade-offs called for by such governments might appear to some observers to entail the parties "buying each other off." Yet they would simply be engaging in the ordinary give-and-take of political life which currently occurs within the parties. The only difference is that such trade-offs would now be taking place among the party leaders within the context of a multiparty government. Call it what you like, but I do not see this as such a bad thing. In fact, I believe it might actually be a step in the right direction, as the parties themselves under such an arrangement would be more likely to stand on principle than to be pragmatic bodies attempting to be all things to all people.

An anniversary

As of today, the love of my life and I have been married for nine years. According to convention, the 9th anniversary is the china anniversary. Are we the only couple to look back at our wedding photographs and notice how ridiculously young we looked? Undoubtedly not. But nine years is not a long time.

By the way, remind me sometime and I'll tell you about our two wedding ceremonies. And how US Immigration nearly didn't let me into the country for the second. It's a long story. . . .

The Governor General's reserve powers

Andrew Coyne points his readers to a discussion of the Governor General's reserve powers at ThePolitic.com. The powers most relevant to the current crisis are as follows:

“power to dismiss a prime minister who attempts to govern without the confidence of the House of Commons.” This power prevents a PM from clinging to office when under the rules of responsible government he must resign or ask for elections.

and:

power to dissolve parliament and call elections. “This is another case where Governors General normally follow whatever advice is given them by their prime minister. Yet there have been occasions when the GG has refused such advice. In 1926, PM Mackenzie King, realizing that his minority government was about ot be defeated on a motion censuring the government for corruption [does anything change? -ed.], asked the Governor General, Lord Byng, to dissolve parliament and call new elections. Byng refused, and instead called upon Arthur Meighen, the Conservative leader, to form a new ministry” [Patrick Malcomson and Richard Myers, The Canadian Regime, pp. 113-114].

Clearly the Governor General could act, if she deemed it constitutionally necessary to do so. But my admittedly fallible prediction is that she will not.

Why Clarkson will not intervene

Russ Kuykendall outlines the delaying measures Paul Martin's government has taken to avoid a formal confidence vote. On two occasions in the past the Governor General, as the Monarch's representative, intervened — or simply declined to follow instructions — to guarantee the constitutional principle of responsible government. These were in 1896 and 1926. Much more recently, in 1975, the Australian Governor General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Prime Minister Edward Gough Whitlam's Labour government over a budget deadlock.

My guess is that we will not be seeing Canada's Governor General, Mme Adrienne Clarkson, intervene in the current crisis. Why? At one time our governors general were appointed by London and were usually British nobles or even members of the royal family. They were, in short, neutral outsiders who could convincingly claim to be above the partisan politics of the country to which they were assigned.

Since 1952, however, our governors general have been Canadian born or, in Clarkson's case, longtime residents. They are effectively appointed by a sitting Canadian prime minister, even if the appointment is officially extended by the Queen. This means they usually have ties to the governing party. Clarkson was appointed by Martin's predecessor, Jean Chrétien. One could argue that the governor general's office has evolved over the years into a less-than-effective constitutional check on the government of the day. Thus we are unlikely to see Her Excellency take action in the present crisis.



Madame Adrienne Clarkson

Later: Alexander Panetta reports that Mme Clarkson is indeed paying close attention to the current political chaos in Ottawa. From Panetta's report:

A senior government official said the prime minister won't be taking any direction from Clarkson. "The Governor General receives advice from her first minister. She doesn't tender it," the official said.

Not so, says Andrew Coyne:

Both [Panetta's] story and the "senior government official" are wrong. The Governor General most certainly has the right to advise her first minister. As [Walter] Bagehot famously put it, under the British constitution (of which we are the inheritors) the sovereign has three rights: "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn." Ordinarily, it is true, the prime minister is not bound to follow her advice, but that is a different statement.

And while it is also ordinarily true that she is bound to take his, that is not true of one matter in particular: who should be her first minister. If the Governor General is of the opinion that the current prime minister does not command the confidence of the House of Commons, she has the absolute right to dismiss him and to call upon someone else, or to dissolve Parliament and call new elections. It is not the prime minister, acting on the Governor General's advice, who dissolves Parliament: it is the Governor General, usually on the prime minister's advice but not always. Byng's refusal of King's request for dissolution was entirely correct in law, even if it later provided King with a campaign issue.

The Governor General will naturally be inclined to give the prime minister every benefit of the doubt. So long as she is assured he will do the constitutional thing and seek the confidence of the House at the first opportunity — as he is obliged to do, if not to resign outright, after a defeat such as the government suffered on Tuesday — she need not immediately dismiss him. But he is already in dereliction of that duty, as the Opposition have been reminding us, and every day he delays only makes matters worse. At present we have no government, at least not one whose right to govern is broadly recognized, and yet the prime minister proposes we should remain in this state of constitutional limbo for another week, with no guarantees that the situtation will be resolved even then. That must be of concern to Her Excellency, and if the prime minister does not relent — Harper has lately proposed Monday as a compromise date — will demand her intervention.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago

Having lived in Canada for two decades, I can testify that Americans rather easily assimilate into this country, due to the considerable cultural similarities between the two countries, including (for the most part) a common language. If there were such a thing as an ex-pat American club in Toronto, I would not join, as I do not see myself having much in common with people from, say, New York, California or Texas.

However, if there were a Chicago club in our vicinity, I would seriously think of joining. After all, I was born just outside the "Windy City" in Oak Park, Illinois, home of such luminaries as Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway, and grew up in Wheaton, 25 miles west of the Loop, as the downtown core is popularly known. Like General Robert E. Lee of Virginia or Québécois nationalists (with whom I otherwise disagree politically), I can identify more easily with the local homeland of my birth than with the United States as a whole, which to me feels somewhat abstract.

For those of us with roots in Chicagoland, the University of Chicago Press has published a massive one-volume Encyclopedia of Chicago, which I just received as a gift from my exceedingly thoughtful sister-in-law and her husband, residents of one of the western suburbs of the great metropolis. It is the product of a co-operative effort between the Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library, and is edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating and Janice L. Reiff.



It contains more than a thousand pages of entries covering everything from the city's individual neighbourhoods to virtually every one of the hundreds of suburbs in the ten-county region comprising the Chicago metropolitan area. There is an index of prominent persons in Chicago's history, as well as one listing the major economic enterprises operating in the vicinity, from the long gone Elgin National Watch Company to Marshall Field and Company, until recently the region's major department store chain. Favourite television programmes, such as Garfield Goose and Friends and Bozo's Circus, have entries. The area's colleges and universities also have their own entries, including Wheaton College and, of course, the University of Chicago. Then there are the maps, which are a treat for the cartophile. And of course no book about Chicago would be complete without material devoted to its colourful political and criminal history as well as to its rail transportation.

I have located only a few errors of fact thus far, e.g., Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum was published in 1891, not 1893. (This is in the entry on Roman Catholics.) My principal criticism is that some items are classified under titles that wouldn't immediately come to mind. For example, in looking for an article on Chicago neighbourhoods, I found them classified under community areas. All the same, the book is a pleasure to peruse — at least for those of us with origins there.

As of today the Encyclopedia of Chicago has gone on-line. Its website is a little clunky and appears still to be under construction. The search function in particular seems not to have been enabled. Once it is fully operational, however, it will likely prove to be an invaluable resource for those interested in the past and present of America's second city. We owe a debt of gratitude to the many people who devoted such loving attention to this volume and its associated website.

Now what?

"House passes motion calling on Liberals to resign." So is this or is this not a motion of nonconfidence? Is the government's intention to stay on constitutionally defensible? Or are we now in a full-fledged constitutional crisis? Might Governor General Adrienne Clarkson step in, take the initiative and dismiss the government? Stay tuned.

Le Pape Benoit et l'Église réformée

Pope Benedict sent a conciliatory message to the Reformed Church of France meeting in synod at Aix-en-Provence at the weekend. He thus continues his predecessor's efforts to reach out to those Christians not in communion with Rome. The publication five years ago of Dominus Iesus, which Cardinal Ratzinger authored, disappointed many protestants for its assertion that their churches were deficient and "not Churches in the proper sense." Yet Benedict saw fit to address the Reformed Church as a church and not merely as an ecclesial community.

Although this may mark a change in tone from his former position as doctrinal watchdog to the papal office, I myself doubt that Dominus Iesus was ever intended to cut off ecumenical dialogue. It was simply stating what Ratzinger believed in good faith to be the Catholic position. Ecumenical conversations between those softening their respective churches' confessional positions in the interest of institutional compromise will likely bear no lasting fruit if not rooted in a common search for truth. I suspect Benedict understands this and may thus be in a better position than his critics to pursue a genuine ecumenism.

Later: For a Reformed assessment of Benedict, based on his writings, see Michael S. Horton, "What Can Protestants Expect From The New Pope?"