Abortion comments prompt denunciation
By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian Catholic News
OTTAWA (CCN) — A popular Quebec columnist said he hopes Cardinal
Marc Ouellet will die after a long, painful illness because he called
abortion a moral crime even in cases of rape.
“Why should we push
a woman who has been the victim of a crime to commit one of her own,”
Ouellet told a pro-life conference in Quebec City May 15, prompting
a province-wide backlash.
Afterward he told journalists:
“I understand very well that a woman who’s been raped is
dealing with trauma and that she needs to be helped. But she needs to
do so with respect for the being that is in her womb,” he said.
“It is not responsible for what happened. It’s the rapist
who is responsible. But there’s already a victim. Do we need to
have another one?”
Those remarks prompted La
Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé to not only wish death on
the cardinal, but also to call him an extremist and compare him to the
Iranian imam who recently blamed natural disasters on women who dressed
indecently.
“We’re all going
to die,” Lagacé wrote in Montreal’s La Presse.
“Cardinal Ouellet will die someday. I hope he dies from a long
and painful illness. . . Yes, the paragraph I’ve just written
is vicious. But Marc Ouellet is an extremist. And in the debate against
religious extremists, every shot is fair game.”
“The statement of Patrick
Lagacé is below any standard of journalistic fairness or respect,
and is frankly hateful,” said Joanne McGarry, executive director
of the Catholic Civil Rights League. “If La Presse has
any regard for its reputation, it will apologize and distance itself
from its columnist’s remarks.”
Ouellet was merely doing
his job as a bishop, teaching the views of the Catholic Church, said
Catholic Organization for Life and Family director Michele Boulva. She
noted Ouellet was only proposing Catholic teaching, not imposing it
when he made the remarks during a 40-minute address to the pro-life
conference organized by Campagne Quebec-Vie.
“It’s very clear
he is not condemning any woman who has had an abortion,” Boulva
stressed. “He is simply trying to protect the dignity of human
life from conception to natural death.”
Lagacé crested a wave
of vitriol that swept the Quebec media and political establishment and
spread to Ottawa. Federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Josée
Verner distanced the Harper government from the cardinal and called
his remarks “unacceptable.” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff
used the occasion to attack the pro-choice Verner for not supporting
the funding of overseas abortions.
The Assembly of Quebec Bishops
issued a May 17 statement that called abortion one of the most difficult
and painful questions society confronts. It is urgent to recreate a
climate of serenity and respect for rational public dialogue, it said.
The bishops said all could agree, whether pro-life or pro-choice, to
create measures to support, love, help and surround every pregnant woman
in distress so misery and hopelessness do not drive her to consider
abortion.
Quebec archdiocese communications
director Jasmin Lemieux-Lefebvre said Ouellet knew his remarks would
provoke debate. He acknowledged Ouellet was taking a tough stand that
many would not want the church to take.
“We just want to contribute
to the debate,” he said. “Here’s the contribution
of the church. Is the full legal vacuum the answer? In the opinion of
the cardinal, it is not.”
Campagne Quebec-Vie president
Georges Buscemi, who organized the May 15 conference, said abortion
always triggers an irrational response in Quebec.
“There’s a kind
of visceral or allergic reaction,” he said. “It is pre-rational
and it is almost always vicious and it aims at destroying dissenting
opinion.
“The more prominent
the figure, the more vicious the attack,” he said, describing
Lagacé’s as the worst. “It just seemed kind of sick;
there was something deeply unhealthy about it and disturbing.”
Buscemi said the media is playing up a schism, a view that there are two Catholic churches in Quebec: an inclusive gay-rights and abortion-friendly church and the church of Ouellet that is medieval and passé.
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