When politicians make sense

I have come to the realization that most politicians say things that will either make me roll my eyes or cause me to yell at the computer/tv/radio when I hear them speak. This is especially true of one politician who shall remain nameless.

Of course there are some exceptions to this general principle I will call the trustworthy index of politicians, but the exception I am talking about today is MP Leslyn Lewis. 

I receive her emails every day. Even though I don't read them all (I've already decided I am voting for her), my husband does read them. He is forever telling me how thoughtful these emails are. That they make a whole lot of sense. They do. As far as I can make out, Dr. Lewis is very unlike other politicians. 

You can read yesterday's email here: It is about Faith and science. I've included Dr. Lewis's whole statement below. If you don't read the whole thing, please read the highlighted parts. 

This statement does not make me roll my eyes. It does not make me yell at my computer. It speaks the truth. From a politician. What a concept.

"Are you a person of faith?

Or are you a person of science?

Or maybe like me, you feel like those words don’t mean what they used to anymore.

Faith has been popularly defined as “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.” This definition which is based on faith and a belief in God, has now been adopted by governments to get people to buy into policies.

In some cases when we are confronted with catastrophes, plagues or even a pandemic, we have to put our trust in a solution that may not have been fully tested or explained  — that’s faith.

Faith has often been confused with science. I am a social scientist, and stay away from making pronouncements in the area of natural science. But it isn’t hard to recognize that natural science has turned to beliefs that are also based on faith.

Claims like “trust the science” are actually displays of faith rather than confidence in the scientific method. The scientific method requires a hypothesis and rigorous testing. Science is not trusted, it is tested.

The past two years have been frustrating for those among us who like to ask questions in order to have a better understanding about what is going on around them. Questions were mocked, ridiculed, demonized and people were out-right silenced for asking simple questions about COVID or even vaccines. In my training as a lawyer whenever I encountered an aggressive, bullying person my instincts told me they were hiding something. Coercion always put me on alert that something wasn’t right.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we were all happy to “get vaccinated” in order to protect our neighbours, grandparents, and the vulnerable in society. Any scientist who spoke the truth that the COVID vaccine is a tool to reduce hospital burden by minimizing the symptoms - but it would not completely prevent contracting or spreading COVID - was vilified, de-platformed and ostracized as a dangerous  conspiracy theorist.

Canadians turned against their family members refusing to see them by falsely believing that vaccinated people were immune from getting COVID. Friends and coworkers yelled at colleagues to “GET VACCINATED”.  People threw down one of the major tenets of our medical system – privacy, and started divulging their vaccination status, even peer pressured into posting pictures of themselves getting vaccinated on social media. When you met someone for the first time, they often told you their vaccination status before they told you their name. And people like me were punished for insisting that we can be safe without violating the foundations of our democracy including the right to medical privacy and free and informed consent.

I accepted my punishment by not receiving a critic/shadow cabinet position even though all I had to do was simply disclose my vaccination status. I refused because I believe that my principles were worth more to me than any position. And as I watched the illogical madness around me, I refused to be dragged into a system headed for segregation and erosion of our fundamental values. I said “I will stand for my convictions — cost it what it may!"

The past few years have been based on faith, not in any deity, but in government. So many people never questioning information presented by both elected and unelected officials.

Government has seen how well this blind allegiance to faith works with policy. Now we must ask ourselves whether we will remain silent while our government:

• implements environmental policies that have little or no connection with reducing emissions;
• enters into international agreements that diminish our sovereignty, reduce farming capacity, and curtail the development of our natural resources; or
• implements health and vaccine passes that could easily be programmed to integrate with other aspects of our lives and encroach on things that we once thought personal. 

We need to end this style of government where politicians demand absolute trust and blind faith to their policies - while they demonize those who ask questions. We need to wake up and recognize that every time a politician labels something a conspiracy theory it’s often to avoid answering your question; and unfortunately, it’s often to hide the fact that they are outright lying to you!

It’s time we had politicians who showed a little faith in the people they are supposed to serve, and that requires that we end this era of intellectual darkness and blind faith and allegiance to the politicians and bureaucrats who underestimate our intelligence."

CPCs are there for the woman - before, during, and after pregnancy

By Rebecca Peters

Pregnancy care centres have been accused of being anti-choice with hidden, secret agendas. Let’s take a look at the situation.

Most local pregnancy care centres are faith-based. But what does that mean? Quite simply, it means that everything they do is based on their love for God and the truth of the Bible – that all life has value. That’s it. Everyone that works at a centre, whether staff or volunteer, shares these beliefs. They don’t preach them. They simply live them, by loving and honouring all life and every person that walks through the door, regardless of that person’s age, race, gender, or religion.

Pregnancy care centres offer medically accurate information on all three options available to a woman when she is pregnant – abortion, adoption, and parenting. The information is presented in a straightforward and unbiased way, because centres believe that when given accurate information, women are smart enough and fully capable of making the best decision for themselves. The only suggestion made to a woman facing a pregnancy decision is – take the time needed to make this important life decision.

Pregnancy care centres are not political. In fact, they are very careful in their words and their actions to stay away from controversy and politics. What they care about is meeting a woman where she is at and walking alongside her. No politics, no agendas. Centres provide a non-judgemental and confidential, safe place to be real and be heard. They offer resources, referrals, material supports, and programs. All for free, all regardless of the woman’s decision.

Pregnancy care centres are actually very much pro-woman. They are there for the woman – before, during, and after pregnancy … even if that pregnancy ends in abortion. Pre-pregnancy: education is provided on healthy relationships. During pregnancy: information is offered and support is given in the form of prenatal education and free maternity clothes and baby supplies. Post-pregnancy: centres provide a safe and supportive community, either in the form of parenting classes or post-abortion groups and support.

Yes, the staff and volunteers at pregnancy care centres love babies. But they love the woman too. Because they know it’s not easy, some of them have worn the exact same shoes … the shoes that walk into a doctor’s office with dread and walk out of an abortion clinic with a broken heart.

Pregnancy care centres believe every woman has the right to make a well-informed choice, with all of the facts and unconditional love and support.

This article originally appeared at Faith Today. Reprinted with permission by the author.

Rebecca Peters is Communications Liaison for the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services (www.capss.com), an affiliate organization of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, publisher of Faith Today (Canada’s Christian magazine).

Living my life for God

Father Yves talked on Sunday about faith and quotes Sister Ann Shields who hosts a radio program Food For the Journey.

Sr. Ann says to pray to the Holy Spirit by saying:
"Holy Spirit show me where I am putting my interests over yours."

Father Yves says:
She believes there is a major disconnect in the lives of many Catholics: a separation between God’s word and its application to our personal/daily lives. Through teaching, stories and inspirational challenges, Sister Ann is able to reach listeners from North Africa on Catholic radio stations and as far away as China and Pakistan via the internet.

An author, Sister Ruth Burrows, from England, wrote this about faith:
“Faith is not a thing of the mind, it is not an intellectual certainty or a felt conviction of the heart. It is a sustained decision to take God with utter seriousness as the God of my life. It is to live out each hour in a practical, concrete affirmation that God is Father and he is “in heaven.” It is a decision to shift the center of our lives from ourselves to him, to forego self- interest and make his interests, his will, our sole concern …”

Fr. Yves full homily is here (thanks to Maureen Ward for taping this):

The purest act of Faith

"...I had always trusted in God. I had always tried to find his will, to see his providence at work. I had always seen my life and my destiny as guided by his will. At some moments more consciously than at others, I had been aware of his promptings, his call, his promises, his grace. At times of crisis, especially, I had tried to discover his will and to follow it to the best of my ability. But this was a new vision, a totally new understanding, something more than just a matter of emphasis.

Up until now, I had always seen my role—man's role—in the divine economy as an active one. Up to this time, I had retained in my own hands the reins of all decision, actions, and endeavors; I saw it now as my task to "cooperate" with his grace, to be involved to the end in the working out of salvation. God's will was "out there" somewhere, hidden, yet clear and unmistakable. It was my role—man's role— to discover what it was and then conform my will to that, and so work at achieving the ends of his divine providence. I remained—man remained—in essence the master of my own destiny. Perfection consisted simply in learning to discover God's will in every situation and then in bending every effort to do what must be done.

Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God's will was not hidden somewhere "out there" in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking He of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking a complete gift of self, nothing held back. It demanded absolute faith: faith in God's existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God will not be there to bear you up.

It was something like that awful eternity between anxiety and belief when a child first leans back and lets go of all support whatever—only to find that the water truly holds him up and he can float motionless and totally relaxed.

Once understood, it seemed so simple. I was amazed it had taken me so long in terms of time and of suffering to learn this truth. Of course we believe that we depend on God, that his will sustains us in every moment of our life. But we are afraid to put it to the test. There remains deep down in each of us a little nagging doubt, a little knot of fear which we refuse to face or admit even to ourselves, that says, "Suppose it isn't so." We are afraid to abandon ourselves totally into God's hands for fear he will not catch us as we fall. It is the ultimate criterion, the final test of all faith and all belief, and it is present in each of us, lurking unvoiced in a closet of our mind we are afraid to open. It is not really a question of trust in God at all, for we want very much to trust him; it is really a question of our ultimate belief in his existence and his providence, and it demands the purest act of faith..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me

Humility is truth

"...God must sometimes allow us to act on our own so we can learn humility, so we can learn the truth of our total dependence on him, so we can learn that all our actions are sustained by his grace and that without him we can do nothing—not even make our own mistakes.

Learning the full truth of our dependence upon God and our relation to his will is what the virtue of humility is all about. For humility is truth, the full truth, the truth that encompasses our relation to God the Creator and through him to the world he has created and to our fellowmen. And what we call humiliations are the trials by which our more complete grasp of this truth is tested.

It is self that is humiliated; there would be no "humiliation" if we had learned to put self in its place, to see ourselves in proper perspective before God and other men. And the stronger the ingredient of self develops in our lives, the more severe must our humiliations be in order to purify us. That was the terrible insight that dawned upon me in the cell at Lubianka as I prayed, shaken and dejected, after my experience with the interrogator.

The Spirit had not abandoned me, for the whole experience had been his work. The sense of guilt and shame I felt was rooted in my failure to put grace ahead of nature, my failure to trust primarily in God rather than in my own powers..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book, He Leadeth me

Prayer

"...And I learned soon enough that prayer does not take away bodily pain or mental anguish. Nevertheless, it does provide a certain moral strength to bear the burden patiently. Certainly, it was prayer that helped me through every crisis.

Gradually, too, I learned to purify my prayer and remove from it the elements of self-seeking. I learned to pray for my interrogators, not so they would see things my way or come to the truth so that my ordeal would end, but because they, too, were children of God and human beings in need of his blessing and his daily grace. I learned to stop asking for more bread for myself, and instead to offer up my sufferings, the pains of hunger that I felt, for the many others in the world and in Russia at that time who were enduring similar agony and even greater suffering. I tried very hard not to worry about what tomorrow would bring, what I should eat, or what I should wear, but rather to seek the kingdom of God and his justice, his will for me and for all mankind.

"Thy will be done." That was the key, but only slowly did I come to experience how perfect a prayer is the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer. "Lord, teach us how to pray", the disciples had said, and in his answer the Lord had explained the whole theology of prayer in the most simple terms, exhaustive in its content and yet intended for the use of all men without distinction. The human mind could not elaborate a better pattern in prayer than the one the Lord himself gave us.

He begins by placing us in the presence of God. God the almighty, who has created all things out of nothingness and keeps them in existence lest they return to nothingness, who rules all things and governs all things in the heavens and on earth according to the designs of his own providence. And yet this same all-powerful God is our Father, who cherishes us and looks after us as his sons, who provides for us in his own loving kindness, guides us in his wisdom, who watches over us daily to shelter us from harm, to provide us food, to receive us back with open arms when we, like the prodigal, have wasted our inheritance. Even as a father guards his children, he guards us from evil--because evil does exist in the world..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book, He Leadeth me

He Leadeth me: the series

From Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me (updated September 8, 2012)

Faith in him alone June 16, 2012

Seeking and finding God June 22, 2012

In Russia June 24, 2012

What Hell must be like  June 28, 2012

Prayer June 30, 2012

Humility is truth July 12, 2012

Abandon self to the Father's will July 15, 2012

The purest act of Faith  July 22, 2012

The peace of abandonment to God's will--on a prison train to the labor camps August 6, 2012

Grace unexplainable to those who will not believe  September 8, 2012

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Painting by Akiane Kramarik Prince of Peace

In Russia

After Father Ciszek and Father Nestrov arrive in Russia with refugees from Poland, Father Ciszek says:

"...The rudest awakening of all, however, was our growing realization that we might have no apostolate at all here. Though freedom of religion is technically guaranteed by the 'Soviet Constitution, proselytization is strictly forbidden. The constitution guarantees freedom of atheist propaganda, but those who try to spread the truths of the faith or foster religion are in fact breaking the law; Nestrov and I had known this, of course, simply as a matter of pure fact; now we began to experience it as a fact of daily life.

Nobody wanted to talk about religion, let alone practice it. Though none of the workers in our barracks knew that Nestrov and I were priests, they were still reluctant to so much as discuss any matters dealing with God or religion. We were accepted among them as fellow workers, in an easy spirit of comradeship. We shared the work, the poor food, the poor housing, the daily hardships. The refugees, especially, were a simple people with a difficult lot in life that they accepted with resignation. They welcomed us in their company, conversed freely, and answered practical problems with the cliches and bromides born of common hardships or cultural heritage. But they would not speak of God or hear of God.

They were afraid. Nestrov and I, too, became cautious and even fearful; you could not help it in that atmosphere. We were afraid not only for ourselves and for what we still hoped might prove the ultimate success of our apostolate, but for the people among whom we hoped to minister as well. They had so little in this life that we did not want to be the cause of further trouble to them. We knew, and they knew, there were informers and party members who would report any religious activities. It was even necessary not to say anything to the children about God, tempting as such a thought might be, lest they in all innocence tell others about our conversation and so give us away..."

The two priests thought that they had made a mistake in coming to Russia...

"...And then one day, together, it dawned on us. God granted us the grace to see the solution to our dilemma, the answer to our temptation. It was the grace quite simply to look at our situation from his viewpoint rather than from ours. It was the grace not to judge our efforts by human standards, or by what we ourselves wanted or expected to happen, but rather according to God's design. It was the grace to understand that our dilemma, our temptation, was of our own making and existed only in our minds; it did not and could not coincide with the real world ordained by God and governed ultimately by his will..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me

Faith in him alone

In Father Walter J. Ciszek, S.J'.s book He Leadeth me, we learn one man's story that begins in October 17, 1939 in Albertyn, Poland. The Soviets had come to town.

I hope to print some excerpts here as I continue to read the book. It is a remarkable story of faith.

Father Ciszek is the parish priest in this small town. He tells us that the Jesuit mission which had flourished for ten years in Albertyn was destroyed in a matter of weeks.

"Again and again, as I watched all this happen, I had to force myself not to think of the question that kept returning unbidden to mind: "Why has God allowed this evil to happen?" Why persecutions?...

...The perplexity and pain grew within me as I saw the visible Church, once strong and organized, dissolve under the attacks of these invaders and watched the people grow estranged, pressured ceaselessly into accepting this new order.

And what of the young people who were literally torn away from their parents and forced to join the Young Pioneers or Komsomol organizations, taught to report on any "deviations" of the old people at home? How frustrating it was to hear the Church and priests and religious openly slandered in communist propaganda, and to know that the children had to learn and repeat atheist doctrines every day in school and in their class work. How could God allow all this? And why?...

...It was not a crisis of faith, any more than it is for anyone who has ever suffered a great loss or faced a family tragedy and asked himself the same questions. It was rather a crisis of understanding, and no one need be ashamed to admit he has been troubled by it. Anyone who has done much reading in the Old Testament is familiar with those questions. "How long, Lord, how long will you allow our enemies to triumph over us?"

Most especially in the days after David, in the ages of captivity, when the glories of the golden age of Solomon were but a memory by the rivers of Babylon and Israel had been broken and led away in shame, does the question recur again and again. To Israel, surely, it must have seemed the end of the world, the end of the covenant, the end of God's special care for his chosen people.

Yet, from our vantage point in history, we know it was really quite the opposite. Israel's troubles were in truth a manifestation of Yahweh's special providence, his special love for his chosen people. Like a fond and loving father, he was trying to wean them away from trust in kings or princes or in armies or the powers of this world.

He was trying to teach them, again and again, that their faith must only be in him alone. He was leading them, through every trial and in every age, to the realization that God alone is faithful in all tribulations, that he alone is constant in his love and must be clung to, even when it seems all else has been turned upside down. Yahweh is still the Lord behind the events and happenings of this world; he can be found there and he must be sought in them, so that his will may be done.

It was he who had chosen them, not they him. It was he who had first made the covenant with them, who had led them and cared for them, shepherded and fed and guarded them in every tribulation. Their part in the covenant must be to trust in him alone, to remain always faithful, to look to him and not to other gods, to rely on him and not on rulers or on chariots or bowmen.

He was ever faithful and so in turn must they be, even when he led them where they would not go, into a land they knew not, or into exile. For he had chosen them, they were his people, he would no more forget them than a mother could forget the child of her womb."