In response to Bob Ferguson's radio commentary I sent the following to the CBC yesterday:
The Roman emperors were supremely tolerant of the various religions practised within their realm, as long as their adherents added the emperor himself to their pantheon of gods. While polytheists could easily comply, this imperial command met its match in the two monotheistic faiths of Judaism and its close relative Christianity. Believers in one God could not acknowledge the claimed divinity of their political ruler and maintain fidelity to the precepts of their own faith. As a consequence, the emperors unleashed wave after wave of persecution, hoping in vain to extinguish a religion which would eventually conquer Rome itself.
Something of this same Roman spirit is alive and well in the draconian proposal of Bob Ferguson to regulate religious practice in Canada. How shall we ensure that the boundary between church and state remain intact? How shall we "help the general cause of religious freedom"? Incredibly, by prohibiting Jews, Christians, Muslims and others from believing what their respective religions actually teach. Ferguson apparently welcomes the prospect of a country known for harbouring persecuted religious minorities from its earliest days turning on them and subjecting them to the very treatment their forebears fled elsewhere. And all in the name of "human rights"!
One is reminded of Václav Havel's description of his native Czechoslovakia under communist rule, where slavery passed for liberty, censorship for free expression, bureaucracy for democracy, and arbitrary power for legal authority. Let us hope and pray that this will not one day describe Canada.
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