Regarding Canada's recent move to legalize same-sex marriage:
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The Vatican is raising the stakes in Canada's plans to legalize same-sex marriage by issuing a directive for Catholic politicians around the globe to make their politics consistent with their faith.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops predicted yesterday the appeal may give pause to Parliament, where Catholicism is the dominant religion.
"What it may do is that it will cause some conscience problems for several MPs," said general secretary Msgr. Peter Schonenbach.
But a spokesman for Justice Minister Martin Cauchon, one of many Catholic MPs, said the minister will base his vote on equality rights, not religion.
"His personal religious beliefs are not the issue here," said Tim Murphy. "As minister of justice, he is the justice minister for all Canadians. The key thing we have pointed out is that this is a fundamental issue of equality and there will be protection for religious freedom."
Rest of the article here
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The part that irks me the most is obviously the church hoping to lay a guilt trip down on the government which is predominantly Catholic.
I am neither Catholic or in a same-sex relationship, but the fact that the church is planning on utilizing guilt-trip tactics on it's members in high places sounds more like something the RIAA or PETA would do. The church enjoys a fairly free hand in it's operations, with the government meddling very little. They run their own school system free of government monitoring. Should they not return the favour?
What I find even more distasteful is while the Canadian governemt has seen fit to allow any religious organisation the right to deny performing same-sex marriages, the churches has decided to fight to deny them totally.
I applaud the Justice Minister in ignoring his own personal religious beliefs while recognizing the fact that Canada is made up of much more than Catholics.
This is, in my opinion, gross exploitation of the power of the church and belittles the religion.