When do we get to Stop Clapping?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells in the Gulag Archipelago of a conference in the Soviet Union during the days of Stalin in which a tribute was given to the tyrant and the standing ovation went on for over three hours because the NKVD were watching to see who would be the first to stop. Eventually, the director of the paper mill sat down, thus relieving everybody else, but later that night he was arrested. At the end of the interrogation, before he disappeared into the Gulag for ten years, he was reminded “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.” The same held true for all the speeches of the Soviet dictator himself. Eventually a system was devised whereby a bell would ring letting people know when they could stop clapping.

Stalin’s Soviet Union was what is known as a hard tyranny – a state where the absolute rule of the tyrant is enforced by naked force such as making people disappear into hard labour camps or just outright shooting them. Today, in a Canada whose government is once more led by a Trudeau, the son of the Communist traitor who did everything he could to replace our beloved Royal Dominion with a People’s Republic, we have what is known as a soft tyranny. The enforcers wear smiles on their faces, speak softly, and use sweet sounding words like “compassion”, “tolerance”, “understanding” and the like. Rather than forced labour camps and bullets we have sensitivity classes, the loss of jobs and careers, and Human Rights Tribunals, the last mentioned of which should perhaps be classified as medium-soft, or medium-hard tyranny. The effect, however, is remarkably similar. People are afraid to be the first to stop clapping – not for the goofy, sappy, superficial, empty-headed, shallow little twit who is a disgrace to the office of Her Majesty’s First Minister – but for the causes he champions, foremost among them being that of the alphabet soup gang.

Twenty years ago the average Canadian, if asked, would say that what people did behind closed doors was their own business, that if it was two men or two women rather than a man and a woman it wasn’t hurting anyone else, and as long as they weren’t shoving it down everyone else’s throats, we shouldn’t care. In the Canada of the Current Year, it is no longer safe to take that attitude. Today, we are all expected to agree – in the name of diversity, no less – that if a man likes men, or a woman likes women, or a man thinks he’s a woman, or whatever, that it is wonderful, superb, marvelous, and of course, absolutely fabulous, that they are that way, and if your enthusiasm is detectably less than that of the next person, you might be suspected of being a horrible, homophobic bigot with criminal thoughts from which the public must be protected.

If you think this to be an exaggeration contemplate the words of Justin Trudeau during his recent visit to Auschwitz “Tolerance is never sufficient. Humanity must learn to love our differences.” Those differences which we must learn to love do not include, of course, differing in opinion with Trudeau and other progressives. Observe also the amount of pressure that is now being placed on public officials and politicians of all parties, to attend the ostentatious displays of depravity and bad taste that are now known merely as Pride parades, “gay” being too limited a designation to please the crowd that calls itself something like LGBTTQAEIOUANDSOMETIMESY.

As bad as it is that progressives like the Trudeau Liberals insist on bullying everyone into professing conformity with their “enlightened” way of thinking, it is even worse when this sort of thing goes on in the church. Which is exactly what has been going on in the Anglican Church of Canada. At the General Synod of the ACC, which convened this month in Toronto, a motion was heard proposing that the marriage canon be changed to allow for same-sex marriages. When the motion, which to pass required two thirds support from the bishops, clergy, and lay delegates each, was initially defeated by a small margin, the activists who have been agitating for this change despite its clear and obvious violation of the teachings of both Scripture and Church tradition and the fact that it threatens the ACC’s standing with the See of Canterbury and the larger Anglican Communion worldwide which, in contrast with the ACC and the Episcopal Church (USA) in North America, is overwhelmingly orthodox, demanded a recount, and several of the bishops declared that they would allow same-sex marriages within their dioceses with or without the canon change, on the grounds that it is not explicitly prohibited. One wonders how these bishops would react if one of their parishes were to justify holding a Black Mass, complete with human sacrifice, with the same reasoning (assuming this is not explicitly prohibited by canon law – I have not bothered to check). At any rate, the next day the vote was examined, it was determined that someone’s vote had been misclassified, and Archbishop Fred Hiltz declared the motion to have passed. It requires a second vote at the next General Synod before the change can take place, although the same bishops, with the same specious reasoning, have said that they will be going ahead and authorizing the ceremonies anyway.

I am not going to spend a whole lot of time explaining why the Synod had no business hearing such a proposal in the first place. The arguments I put forward in my essay “Why the Church Should Not Perform Same Sex Blessings” when my own Diocese (Rupert’s Land) approved the blessing of same-sex couples four years ago are as applicable to the fiction of same-sex marriage. It can be added that the Founder of the Christian Church, when asked about the lawfulness of divorce, pointed out that in the beginning God made mankind “male and female” and said that “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh”, concluding that “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matt. 19:4-6) If man ought not to break up the union of marriage because God is its Author, how much less ought he to mutate it beyond recognition. The Anglican Church has considered itself since the Reformation to be both Catholic – a Church in organic and organization descent from the Apostolic Church in possession of magisterial authority to teach the Word and administer the Sacraments – and Reformed – acknowledging the revealed Word of God as the highest authority. The Church’s authority, therefore, does not extend to changing the truth of God, which is not subject to democratic vote, and to make this change makes complete mockery of the admirable canon of St. Vincent of Lérins, supposedly revered by Anglicans, in which Catholic orthodoxy is defined as holding to that which “has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

My point, rather, at least for the sake of this essay, is that the same kind of smiley-faced Stalinism that is the essence of the Liberalism of Justin “Sunny Ways” Trudeau, has been the tactic used by the Gaystapo to effect this transformation in the Canadian arm of the Church of Richard Hooker, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson and C. S. Lewis. As Dr. David W. Virtue reports:

VIRTUEONLINE has received word that intimidation and bullying took place behind the scenes at the recent Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada over the push for same sex marriage…Here is what VOL learned. When the Synod members broke up into small discussion groups, some members complained about being “intimidated” and “harassed.” Archbishop Fred Hiltz spoke against harassment tactics, but the victims weren't identified. It wasn't until later that the identity of the "harassed" was made public. Those bishops and their delegates from the orthodox dioceses of Caledonia, Yukon, and the Arctic, because of their opposition to same-sex marriage, were identified as the victims.

The same harassed and intimidated bishops have issued an excellent dissenting statement, which I recommend that you read in its entirety, drawing your attention in particular to the following:

The Resolution as carried does not provide adequate protection for the consciences of dioceses, clergy and congregations. We are concerned for all those of a traditional conscience on marriage within the Anglican Church of Canada.

There is plenty of reason for such concern. Intimidation, harassment, and bullying have been the tactics of the pro-homosexual activists within the Church all along, as anyone who has followed the sad story of how they have gotten their way over “same-sex blessings”, by hook or by crook, in diocese after diocese, beginning with New Westminster in 2002, is well aware. Now that they have a sympathizer in the Prime Minister’s Office, these bullying wolves-in-sheep-and-shepherd’s clothing, are even more emboldened and brazen about it.

It is somewhat ironic that these Social Justice Warriors claim to be motivated by the desire to protect the alphabet soupers from something called “homophobia”, when this term would seem to more accurately describe the fear and hatred that are sure to be generated by their tactics than that to which it is more usually applied, namely the orthodox doctrine that male and female were designed to be attracted to each other, that homosexual erotic relations are sinful, and that forgiveness and freedom from such can be found in Jesus Christ through faith and repentance. Stalin, was not exactly highly esteemed after his passing, except among idiotic liberal academics, and eventually, when the progressive regime falls, as all regimes that govern by fear do, Justin Trudeau and those marching under the banner of the Pride that precedes their inevitable fall, will be remembered in the same way.

In the meantime, kudos to the orthodox bishops who dared to sign their name to the dissent. One wonders when all other Canadians will get to stop clapping.