Category: Countries

Conscience Versus the Spirit of the Age

Address to the Thomas More Lawyer’s Guild,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada (October, 2014)

Jason Kenney*

In this text of his address to the annual Red Mass dinner hosted by the Thomas More Lawyers’ Guild of Toronto in October 2014, then federal Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney called on assembled lawyers to defend conscience rights as a bulwark against the spirit of the age running roughshod over us.

It is a great honour to be invited to speak from this distinguished podium, which has been graced by people far more worthy than I, to invoke the life, legacy and lessons of our patron saint, Sir Thomas More.

I say “our” patron although I am not a member of your honourable legal fraternities at the bar and the bench. I labour in a much less august vineyard, that of the political vocation. But in the Jubilee Year of 2000, Saint John Paul II decided to add to Saint Thomas More’s already heavy burden as the patron saint of lawyers by also giving him the impossibly difficult task of acting as the patron saint of politicians.

Earlier this evening, we heard the Gospel reading, “Woe to you, lawyers!” Lest you feel put out, please remember that the most prominent politicians in the gospels are King Herod, Pontius Pilate and Caesar, so the politicians fare much worse!

Poor Saint Thomas, shining light of the Renaissance, the greatest jurist and statesman of his era, martyred for this faith—and his eternal reward is now to keep watch over politicians and lawyers. I suspect that he envies Saint Jude, who is charged only with hopeless causes. . .  [Full text]

Spare parts child or saviour sibling?

Sunday Star Times

Michelle Duff

A woman is pregnant with New Zealand’s first “made-to-order baby,” chosen for its genetic makeup to save its sibling’s life.

The baby was selected from other IVF embryos as a genetic match for its sick older sibling and will donate stem cells at birth.

Critics say the process is a slippery slope towards treating children as commodities.

The cells will be harvested from the baby’s umbilical cord blood and used as a transplant for the older child, which might save it from life-threatening sickle cell anaemia. The parents already have several children, and the sick child is the oldest.

The creation of Baby X comes as outgoing Health Minister Tony Ryall approves the expansion of genetic testing, which will open the door for doctors to select “saviour siblings” to help save existing children sick with certain diseases. . . [Full text]

Decriminalize incest, says German gvmt’s ethics council

LifeSite News

Steve Weatherbe

A German advisory council on ethics has told the government it should decriminalize incest between consenting adults. But Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats have wasted no time in rejecting the advice.

On Wednesday the National Ethics Council voted, by a two-to-one margin, to call for the decriminalization of incest. “Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social taboo,” the council explained in a statement. “The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.” [Full text]

Elderly couple to die together by assisted suicide even though they are not ill

Daily Mail

Simon Caldwell

An elderly husband and wife have announced their plans to die in the world’s first ‘couple’ euthanasia – despite neither of them being terminally ill.

Instead the pair fear loneliness if the other one dies first from natural causes.

Identified only by their first names, Francis, 89, and Anne, 86, they have the support of their three adult children who say they would be unable to care for either parent if they became widowed

The children have even gone so far as to find a practitioner willing to carry out the double killings on the grounds that the couple’s mental anguish constituted the unbearable suffering needed to legally justify euthanasia.

The couple, from Brussels, are receiving regular medical treatment for age-related ailments.

Francis has received treatment for prostate cancer for 20 years and is unable to spend a day without morphine and Anne is partially blind and almost totally deaf.

They always go out shopping together because they are both scared that one day the other will not return home.

They decided that life in a care home was not an option because of their fear they would end up bedridden without the strength to insist on euthanasia. . [Full text]

Victorian Premier and Opposition Leader pledge to allow conscience vote on forcing doctors to participate in abortion

News Release

Australian Christian Lobby

The Victorian Premier and Opposition Leader will allow a conscience vote if a private members’ bill is introduced to restore freedom to doctors to decline to participate in abortion.

Denis Napthine and Daniel Andrews were responding to questions from Christian leaders at the Australian Christian Lobby’s Make it Count forum at Queens’ Hall, Parliament House last night.

Their commitments come following sanctions imposed on Melbourne Doctor Mark Hobart, who declined to assist a couple who wanted their baby girl aborted so they could try again for a boy.

“If a private members’ bill was introduced then we would certainly allow a conscience vote,” Dr. Napthine said.

“My position would be to afford a conscience vote,” Mr Andrews said.

ACL Victorian Director Dan Flynn welcomed the leaders’ commitments to allow a parliamentary vote on whether or not doctors should be forced to participate in abortion by making a referral for an abortion.

“No one should be forced to go against their conscience on an issue which involves the taking of a human life,” Mr Flynn said.

The leaders were asked about a range of issues including domestic violence, freedom of religion, poker machine reform and the ice epidemic.

Asked whether “your Government (would) commission independent research into whether there are features in poker machines that lead to gambling addiction”, Mr Andrews committed to examining “the best research, the best evidence”.

On family violence, Dr. Napthine said: “Men particularly need to stand up”.

Mr. Andrews said family violence was the leading cause of death or disability for women aged 45 and under and was “national disgrace”.

On religious freedom, Mr Flynn expressed disappointment about Labor’s election policy, reiterated last night by Mr Andrews, to amend Equal Opportunity laws to diminish the freedom of faith-based schools to employ staff who share their ethos.

Dr. Napthine was called away from the forum to deal with last night’s terrorism-related shooting of an Islamic extremist just moments before Mr Andrews concluded taking questions.

The pre-election Make it Count event was attended by 150 Christian leaders from a wide cross-section of denominations and churches.