By Don Hutchinson
“People who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves.” Thinking about some of the headline news stories of the past few days, I found myself reflecting on this translation of these words penned by Paul of Tarsus in a letter he wrote to friends in Rome nearly two thousand years ago. (Romans 8:5, CEV)
Increasingly, a Canadian society that at one time regarded benefits that accrued to citizen self as inextricably joined with the common good – beginning with a Constitution in 1867 that promoted the new “union” for the better “welfare” of the provinces concerned – has drifted from a national desire for “peace, order and good government” to the assertion of individual rights in sacrifice of the common good. Was the Constitutional amendment of 1982, with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a turning point or simply recognition that this cultural change was taking place? Before the Charter, Canada was already following our elite – academics, media, politicos – away from the perceived encumbrances of religion as the freedoms fenced by “the common good” were seen as limitations on the individual, narcissistic self-indulgent pursuit of Mick Jagger’s elusive “satisfaction.” Divorce laws were liberalized. Abortion was legalized. Our restaurants transitioned from special sit-down-and-visit meals (even when served to your car door) to “fast food” (and the invention of the drive thru window). Even the content on grocery store shelves transformed to meet the desire for instant self-gratification.
As Canada becomes less religious and Canadians less interested in the common good, the shared interdictions of our society – those limits that defined what we would not do – are in danger of being jettisoned like the baby with the bathwater. And we can increasingly expect to see headlines like those of recent days.
In Quebec, the junior health minister announced that a handpicked panel of legal experts had found a way around the Criminal Code prohibitions against assisted suicide and euthanasia. The simple fix recommended by the panel? Putting a “patient” to death is now a “medical” treatment and thus under provincial jurisdiction for health care. In what approximates a new height in doublespeak the junior minister stated, “This is a painful and divisive issue that has been thoroughly debated in Parliament. We respect Parliament’s decision.”
With those words, the Government of Quebec proposes to turn its back on three Parliamentary debates and the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Rodriguez v. British Columbia, all upholding the current law, in order to set out on a legislative journey to permit and theoretically restrict physician assisted suicide and euthanasia that no other jurisdiction in the world has managed to contain once opening the pandora’s box of eliminating the existing societal protection of human life. What will be the condition of citizens’ respect for the medical profession once these lines are removed completely from the Hippocratic Oath:
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.
Medical ethicist Margaret Somerville asks this simple question of the Quebec proposal, “If it’s not killing, what is it?” And a family weeps in Belgium, a country already sliding down the slope Quebec’s government proposes for its citizens, because they could not convince their loved ones to live in the human dignity inherently theirs and to stop the search for death by physician.
Another set of headlines contrasts Canadian law deans objecting to one of Canada’s most highly regarded universities establishing a law school that will instruct in the law from a Christian perspective with one of Canada’s historic and prestigious universities participating in sponsorship of an official student orgy!
Although many Canadian law schools now have Christian Legal Fellowship chapters and there are countless lawyers who are also deeply committed to their religious beliefs, the deans of our 21 law schools have seen fit to close ranks and draw the line at Christian professors teaching law to Christian students. Of course, to hold this position the law deans have chosen to ignore the 2001 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Trinity Western University v. British Columbia College of Teachers.
Meanwhile, the University of Toronto’s efforts to keep pace with Yale University in training Canada’s leaders of the future means that Sex Awareness Week includes a field trip sponsored by the university’s Sexual Education Centre to Club Oasis, described as four storeys of easy to clean surfaces where sex is permitted but clothing is not; sex is not allowed in the hot tub.
Casting off and setting adrift from the common good, “people who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves.” And the configuration of the common good degenerates.