No Exorcisms for Toronto

From the website of Toronto's Archdiocese:

"The Archdiocese of Toronto does not have an exorcist nor does it perform the rite of exorcism."

How's that go again? Oh yes, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he does not exist, viz this extract from an interview with Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the chief exorcist of the Vatican:

Question: You fight against the demon every day. What is Satan's greatest success?

Fr. Amorth: To succeed in making people believe that he doesn't exist. And in this he has almost succeeded. Even within the Church. We have a clergy and an episcopate who no longer believe in the devil, in exorcisms, in the extraordinary evil that the devil can cause, nor in the power that Jesus has given us to drive out demons.

For three centuries, the Latin Church - in contrast with the Orthodox Church and various Protestant confessions - has almost entirely abandoned the ministry of exorcism. As the clergy no longer practice exorcisms, as they no longer study them and have never seen them, they no longer believe in them. And nor do they believe in the devil either. We have entire episcopates who are hostile to exorcisms. There are countries in which there is not a single exorcist.... A terrifying deficiency.

Judges Too Stupid For Charter: Crown Attorney

Anyone seeking out the biggest understatement of the week need look no further than here:

When guilty people go free because their constitutional rights have been violated, there's a danger the public will begin to see the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as little more than "a game of snakes and ladders," a judge of the Ontario Court of Appeal says. …"It seems to me if you get to the point where there's a perception the Charter has, in fact, become a game of snakes and ladders, where criminal trial results depend on things that have nothing to do with the merits of the case, the public perception will be these rights are not really rights that are important to us," he said.

Despite an astonishing array of legal rights, its citizens are reaching the point where few genuinely believe in those rights and don't expect them to be enforced, he contended.

My personal favourite quote is this one from a Crown Attorney:

"The Charter gave Constitutional jurisdiction to every mutt in the country,' he said, with each of those judges aquiring power to strike down laws or toss out charges for individual rights violations.

"The first thing that had to be recognized was there was going to be a huge spectrum of intellectual ability that was going to be addressing these very important questions, and that was going to lead to results that were all over the place."

For those not fully initiated into legal-speak, let me translate for you:

“huge spectrum of intellectual ability” = “lot of really stupid judges out there who are going to screw this thing up but good.”

Baby Names: A Precocious Feminist War on Children

I think it’s time we stop this nonsense of married women hyphenating their names and inflicting same on their unfortunate offspring. Too many hyphenated progeny are populating today’s grammar schools and will shortly be unleashed on society at large. What an unfortunate example of the precocious me-generation, which insists on labelling their children as personal possessions without any thought of the later burden they will have to carry.

What happens, exactly, when Nathaniel Buford-Somerville weds Mary McNaughton-Hutchings and they produce children? Do they become Christopher Daniel Buford-Somerville-McNaughton-Hutchings? Shall we start producing drivers licenses on legal sized photo cards? Will Tamils end up having the shortest names?

Please. Society has had this one nailed for generations. Lineage flows through only one surname, traditionally the male’s. Bury this feminist canard now.

Traditional Anglicans Defect, Seek Union with Rome

The College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) met in Plenary Session in Portsmouth, England, in the first week of October 2007. The Bishops and Vicars-General unanimously agreed to the text of a letter to the See of Rome seeking full, corporate, sacramental union. The letter was signed solemnly by all the College and entrusted to the Primate and two bishops chosen by the College to be presented to the Holy See. The letter was cordially received at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Primate of the TAC has agreed that no member of the College will give interviews until the Holy See has considered the letter and responded.

More here. Discussion here.

This is what happens when you muddle your "brand" with what you think people want to hear - gay sex and marriage is as normal as straight sex and traditional marriage, abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor, etc.

Roman Catholics stand for something. Many things actually. And we don't change them every time somebody starts writing editorials of a different flavour.

Welcome home Anglicans. Peace.

Causation 101: Those Wacky Europeans

Abortion is becoming commonplace and people are insufficiently troubled about terminating pregnancies, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Sunday. There were nearly 200,000 abortions in England and Wales in 2005, according to the Department of Health, and a recent survey by the medical journal Lancet reported that one-third of pregnancies in Europe ends in abortion.

The archbishop said that when the Abortion Act was passed in 1967, it was never meant to usher in a period of "easy abortion", but to provide an option for women in extreme cases.

Gee, never saw that coming.

Conservatives Elected, Red Tories Defeated - TAKE THE HINT

I'm just sayin.

Leadership sometimes means falling on your sword.

Bye John.

Sorry, no vote here for Tory

For the first time ever I will not be casting a vote my local conservative candidate in an election. The reasons are many:

1) I want the party led by an actual, you know, conservative and a really poor showing will bring the knives out. By “actual conservative” I mean pretty much anyone who doesn’t cry during meetings with the Toronto Star’s editorial board.

2) Tory has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and the people of Ontario will be saddled with Premier Pinnochio for four more years because he screwed up. I wish to punish him for that by, at the very least, not rewarding him with my vote.

3) Remember Roger’s attempt at reverse-billing with cable fees. Tory ran the company. I’m still pi**ed about that.

Family Coalition Party – you got my vote.

As you were: No dead baby here, no sir

People have a sense of right and wrong, no matter how much they try to suppress it. That’s why everybody, from the police to news commentators to politicians, spoke of the stabbing murders of Aysun Sesen and her seven month unborn child as two murders with two victims. Everyone spoke of the doctors who tried to save the “child” but couldn’t. There will be two caskets at the funeral. As soon as I saw the news reports on TV and read them in the paper I said to my wife “just wait, there will be big climb down tomorrow as the word foetus crops up everywhere.”

Now, today, they are no longer speaking of two victims. There is no mention of a dead “Mother and child.” As the Star explains today, correctly, under Canadian law even a full term baby is just a clump of cells until such time as it has the temerity to draw a breath on its own, whereupon society is immediately inconvenienced by having to afford it protection under the criminal law.

Now everyone knows this is nonsense. That’s why we all understood that two murders had taken place. But the pro-choice chill has made us once again shutter what is right and true up into the deep recesses of our consciences.

Let me make another prediction: At this scumbag’s trial, no one will be able to even mention that the victim was pregnant.

That might inflame the ordinary folks on the jury. And we can’t let a little thing like dead babies get us all hot and bothered after all, now can we?

(Hint: Maybe we should stop and ask ourselves why the fact that the victim was pregnant is so inflammatory? I mean, if the child really just was a clump of cells, no more deserving of legal protection than a cyst, then no one would be inflamed, would they? Think about it....)

Fat Lady Clears Throat in Ontario

My Prediction:

Liberals 71
Tories 27
NDP 9

Tory Train Wreck in Ontario

I only seem to disagree with Warren Kinsella when he’s shilling for someone. When Warren’s just speaking for Warren, he’s usually right. Like last month, when he wrote this:

September 24, 2007 – …This thing is getting worse every day. Why doesn’t John Tory simply admit he made a mistake, and drop his private religious schools plan?

Naturally, on this - the day of the big climb down - he now writes this:

October 1, 2007 - Here's a memorable way to start October: blow what is left of your credibility to bits. Amazing. As John Tory and his desperate gang gather for a conference call at 10 a.m., they can reflect on their putative leader's own words: "I will not be backing off." That's a quote. That's what he said in the St. Catharines Standard on September 27, 2007. Now, he's getting ready to "back off." Now he's getting ready to do - to use his own phraseology - the biggest flip-flop in the history of the world. Now, I know that I should be sort-of happy, because I posted something about it at 3:30 yesterday. A promising career in fortune-telling awaits, etc. But, seriously, I am angry. Tory rips the province's social cohesion to shreds - he runs around screaming about people breaking promises for months - and now he says: "Oh, never mind." That's leadership?That's not leadership. That's the beginning of the leadership campaigns of Tim Hudak and Jim Flaherty. But it isn't leadership.

Warren was right before and wrong now. Here’s why:

Leadership means admitting you made a mistake before the election, not after like McGuinty did. The voters will have the opportunity to cast their ballots on the basis of the "new" platform, which is a heck of a lot more honest than what McGuinty did when he imposed the largest tax hike in Ontario history after getting elected by promising – in writing- that he wouldn’t.

Now the Tory campaign’s still a train wreck, of course. But I’m just sayin.