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“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Roman Catholic Church?

“Yes.”

“No summer jobs for you!”

Under the latest Trudeau encyclical, the priest, minister, imam, shaman or rabbi would have to publicly repudiate his faith

We return to the Bishop of 24 Sussex for explication. Suppose some parish council wants to do a cleanup of the town stream, and figures with a grant it could help half a dozen debt-hounded students by giving them summer jobs. Under the latest Trudeau encyclical, the town’s priest, minister, imam, shaman or rabbi would have to publicly repudiate his faith on an official document and maul his conscience with a lie (thus playing roulette with their immortal souls; religious people actually believe they have them) if the poor students are to be helped by said grants.

Does anyone think Mr. Trudeau, more a stumbler than a specialist on the ethics front, is overreaching here? Just a jot or a tittle? Has he really not read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a document on most occasions he treats as believers of old reverenced the Sinai tablets?

It has as central prime rights those of religion and conscience. Religion and conscience — rights that are as ancient as the concept of rights itself, the pivot on which all ancillary rights depend. They are not rights that depend on a calendar date, nor are they mere manifestations of a particular, transient political climate. In so far as any rights are eternal, these are.

The Liberal platform of the day is not a synonym writ large for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

What shallow hubris engenders the sense that Mr. Trudeau, as through this both petty and profound intrusion he has, has the authority to undo the balance of citizens’ religious and moral beliefs and the political dispensations of a particular government? The Liberal platform of the day is not, as this government wildly seems to think, a synonym writ large for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.