March for Life Ottawa 2019

Received these links from my friend Maryke for the March for Life 2019. EWTN televised the whole event, which I hadn't been aware of. The taping includes Stephanie Gray, the producers from Gosnell and Abby Johnson.

https://www.thepostmillennial.com/thousands-attend-ottawa-pro-life-march-others-held-across-country/

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/march-for-life-protest-expected-to-disrupt-downtown-traffic-thursday-afternoon

https://www.ottawamatters.com/local-news/abortion-debate-continues-as-thousands-attend-22nd-national-march-for-life-1437699

https://www.flare.com/news/march-for-life-2019-gen-z-pro-life-anti-abortion/

Below is the EWTN coverage of the March.

Stephanie Gray speaks around 17 minutes

The producers of Gosnell can be found around 1:29
"When people hear the truth about abortion they don't like it"

Abby Johnson is around 1:45

National March For Life in Ottawa, Canada -- 2019
Live and complete coverage of the annual National March For Life in Ottawa, Canada.

Positive news on Freedom of Speech Charter Challenge

The Catholic Civil Rights League has joined Fr. Tony Van Hee in his constitutional challenge to Ontario's bubble zone law, Bill 163, Safe Access to Abortion Service Act.

As well, Dr. Jordan Peterson mentioned Fr. Tony's case in his June 10th newsletter when he referenced the recent article in the Ottawa Citizen on Fr. Tony's case:

OTTAWA CITIZEN - KELLY EGAN

Charged priest uses charter freedoms in strike at abortion bubble-zone law

"He is 83, tiny and, in the eyes of the law, a threat."

JBP: "Bubble Zone." Where the laws of the Dominion no longer apply?

It does seem to be the case as sad as that seems--that Canadians are forced to go to court to protect their freedom of speech rights.

As we already know, Fr. Tony's text for his signs were inspired from Jordan Peterson's talk at the Ottawa Public Library on March 11 or 12, 2017.

Here is something Fr. Tony wrote about his work for the Interim back in 1996. It is still applicable today:

"Randall Terry, founder and leader of Operation Rescue, prisoner for Christ and the child in the womb, along with Joan Andrews Bell, Linda Gibbons and all pro-life prisoners of a conscience, are such powerful witnesses.

A small but essential key to such outstanding service, however, is simply showing up “for work” each day.

If I’m not in my place when the right moment [comes] along, God has to wait for another right moment. 

As Mother Teresa said, I’m not asked to be successful, but to be faithful. “Paul plants, Apollo waters, but God gives the increase.” Faith, fidelity, courage, perseverance, are my part.”

"O my Jesus, You do not give a reward for the successful performance of a work, but for the good will and the labor undertaken. Therefore, I am completely at peace, even if all my undertakings and efforts should be thwarted or should come to naught. If I do all that is in my power, the rest is not my business. And therefore the greatest storms do not disturb the depths of my peace; the will of God dwells in my conscience." [Divine Mercy In My Soul, the Diary of St Faustina Kowalska, Marian Press, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, #952.]"

All posts on Fr. Tony's case here.
Donations are still being accepted for Fr. Tony's case here.  

Dear Justin Trudeau you don't speak for us and never will

Dear Justin Trudeau,

When you met with Vice President Mike Pence this week you continued your compulsive habit of embarrassing Canadians. From my friend Jonathon Van Maren:

"His [Trudeau's] arrogance was on full display this week when he attempted to shoehorn a discussion on abortion into a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on NAFTA and issues related to China. Trudeau was concerned about American “backsliding” on the issue and claimed that “Canadians” are also very concerned about it, even though this projection is primarily a figment of his imagination, where everyone constantly agrees with him. 

Trudeau is simply hoping to make abortion an election issue, and thus he pretended that the Vice President is able to address concerns about laws passed by state legislators, when in reality he was virtue-signalling to his base. Their exchange at a post-meeting press conference on Thursday, where Trudeau expressed his opposition to “anti-choice laws” and Pence reaffirmed his commitment to “the right to life,” was cringe-worthy on both a diplomatic and a human level."

And you continued to embarrass us when you said:

"There was a significant amount of concern amongst Canadians on the new anti-choice laws being passed in the American states and highlights the fact that Canadians and the government will always be a strong defender of women's rights and a woman's right to choose."

I am a Canadian. Stop saying you speak for me on abortion. You don't.

And the American pro-life people to whom you refer to, and their pro-life laws, are just that: pro-life. As are all Canadian pro-life people. If you insist on telling us that you speak for us when you do not, at least have the common courtesy and respect to call us what we are: pro-life. Your pro-abortion bias is catching up with you when you follow the dictates of leading Canadian pro-abortion advocate Joyce Arthur in calling us "anti-choice". 

This is rude behaviour and it is tiring. Stop it. 

For the record? Mike Pence is a hero for his and President Trump's support for the right to life. You could learn something from him.

I know you won't be our Prime Minister much longer, but in the meantime start showing some respect for pro-life Canadians. As the Prime Minister of Canada, you owe us at least that.

Sincerely,

Patricia Maloney

CHP Canada "Free Speech Matters" Campaign

CHP Canada – Hamilton Mountain Declares May as

‘Free Speech Matters’ Month in Hamilton

In October of 2018 3 judges unanimously ruled against the City of Hamilton’s decision to remove bus shelter images sponsored by CHP Hamilton Mountain which posed a question about a live public policy.

                       

     

Within their ruling they wrote:

[39]     The right to free speech has been recognized as a fundamental ingredient to the proper functioning of democracy for hundreds of years.  As a consequence, it has been protected by constitutions, laws, and courts across numerous jurisdictions.  Conversely, a lack of free speech is a common attribute of dictatorships and tyrannical regimes.

and

[53]      The decision being made in this instance is not one that is trifling, ephemeral or marginal in importance.  Instead, it is a decision of profound significance in so far as it balances rights of a registered political party to engage in political speech as against the rights of a group of people to be free from purported discriminatory speech.

We at CHP Canada give all the glory to God for delivering such a powerful victory.

Now our ‘Free Speech Matters’ campaign is underway for May on Hamilton Mountain.

The bus shelter ads are up:

And the flyers are being delivered!

Please join us by writing a letter to your editor about the importance of free speech.

Dr. Jordan Peterson and the primacy of free speech

Below are partial transcripts from Dr. Jordan Peterson's talk at the Public Library in Ottawa, March 11, 2017.

The signs Fr. Tony's wears to protest the attack on our free speech rights, uses these words from Dr. Peterson's talk:

"The primacy of free speech - cornerstone of western civilization - without free speech the state is a corpse"

Jordan Peterson is a professor and clinical psychologist at Toronto University. He stressed the primacy of free speech for a society to survive, in his talk. Below are the links to his talk and some excerpts from his talk. Emphasis are Fr. Tony's.

I love the way Dr. Peterson posits how free speech goes back to Genesis and God's Word.

https://youtu.be/WqFo32lwY_g (Talk 1:13:40)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s9a9jtQpYs (Q&A Part I, 37:55)

https://youtu.be/W9NP4XlveGs (Q&A Part II, 23:05)

https://youtu.be/dKwWkAwlVps (Q&A Part II: final, 2738)

“So here’s the idea that lurks at the beginning of Genesis. So, there’s three elements that are involved in the creation of habitable order, from chaos, at the beginning of time. One of them is, whatever is represented by God the Father, and one of them is whatever is represented by the chaos that exists at the same time, and the other is whatever is represented by the idea of God’s Word. That’s the Logos from a Christian perspective which is a very, very strange idea. So there’s this idea that developed over the course of thousands of years, that the redeeming Saviour was also the thing that God used to extract habitable order out of chaos at the beginning of time. It’s a very strange idea and to assimilate an idea of that preposterousness and magnitude to mere pre-rational superstition is foolish. First of all because we don’t even understand what it means. But it means something utterly profound and it means something that we cannot forget. We forget it at our peril. The story at the beginning of Genesis means that structure, that’s the Father, that’s the patriarchy, if you will, structure extracts habitable order from chaos through speech, and that’s what we do. …

“[W]e partake in the capacity to extract habitable order from chaos with our consciousness, with our speech and with our capacity to communicate. …You understand that in that communication between people something of inestimable value emerges that you have to pursue, and you live for that.… It’s the core of meaning in life, and it’s not an illusion. In fact it’s a manifestation of the highest functions of your nervous system … your nervous system which has evolved over billions of years has learned to tell you when you’re standing on the border between chaos and order and keeping them in balance, and that’s what manifests itself as meaningful and that’s the same phenomena that’s referred to in the creation stories in Genesis and it’s the same idea that’s reflected in this strange Christian insistence that the thing that saves mankind is the same thing that draws order from chaos at the beginning of time. It’s unbelievably brilliant and we’ve been trying to figure it out for, who knows how long, forever, and have never been able fully to articulate it because it’s so complicated. It’s such a complicated idea, but there’s nothing in the least illusory about it” (40:28-44:53).

2

“[R]espect for the Logos and respect for free speech are the same thing, and that without that respect our societies cannot maintain their structure, differentiate and progress. They cannot do it. We use our free speech to face the chaotic potential of the world and its horrors, to structure it, to understand it, to communicate about it and to reach consensus. It’s the mechanism by which we adapt. There can be no restrictions put upon that unless you want to sacrifice adaptation, and I wouldn’t recommend that. Things get stale, old, decayed, dead and dangerous, with extraordinary rapidity...if living people don’t maintain their responsibility to update the state...It’s an ancient, ancient idea, and the reason that we haven’t forgotten it was because everyone who forgot it, died, so unless that’s where we want to go we better stop forgetting about it. … (47:50-49:02).

“And because we are constantly being presented with new things we need to keep that individual variability paramount because it’s upon that variability that the very state depends and that’s actually what the West discovered. That’s why we have always subordinated the state to the divinity of the individual, and that’s expressed, as I already said, in the primacy of free speech in our civilization. It’s the cornerstone, the primacy of free speech, and it’s because the individual has something to offer the state, and so state identity is something that can only, it can structure, and it can reassure, but it also constrains to too great a degree, and so societies that become only state, immediately become old, and blind, malevolent, and collapse, and that’s an ancient story... But that’s the relationship that has to obtain between the individual and the state. The state is a corpse. The state is dead, but it’s a gift that the dead have given to you, and you have to provide it with vision, and with speech, because otherwise it can only blunder around like a zombie. You go to university, you become educated, so that you can serve as the eye, and the mouth of the rejuvenated state. … But that’s the purpose of that education, to turn you into the thing that ensures that the entire ship doesn’t founder and sink, and that’s your responsibility. And if you’re looking for a meaning in your life, that’s the meaning. Keep the state afloat. Why? Well, because it’s better for us all to be in a ship than drowning in the icy water, and that’s the alternative” (54:21-57:36).

“So I would say, you support free speech because it’s the mechanism that maintains the sanity of the individual and society, and you live in relationship with the spoken truth to the best of your ability because the alternative is Hell, and if Hell is what you want, then you can remain arrogant, and resentful, and deceitful, but if you want to work to better the world, to bring it up to what it might be, then you speak forthrightly, you clarify yourself, and you act properly in the world and then you see what happens (1:09:37-1:10:21)”.