Canadian MP asks Parliament to instruct Pope Benedict

I was alerted to this on Vox Cantor … (vox… cantoris maybe?) by a reader.

A Canadian Parliament member, Charles Joseph Angus (Timmins-James Bay) used his time speaking to promote himself from back-bencher to Pope-basher.

His qualifications as a member of Canadian parliament include having been in a the punk rock band, appropriately named L’Étranger and later in the more folk-oriented band Grievous Angels.

Angus stated in Parliament that "Canadian parliamentarians must speak out against Rome’s decision," to lift the excommunication of SSPX Bp. Williamson, saying that "the Church has showed a surprising indifference to the international fight against holocaust denial".

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQfYJYbBIl4]

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53 Comments

  1. Thomas says:

    “the international fight against Holocaust denial”
    Sounds like a sort of thought police. People have believed and spoken of stupid and incorrect things for all of history, but forcing people to change what they believe is problematic. The most we can do is persuade…

  2. cato_the_younger says:

    I believe he is using the Williamson affair as a tool to hurt the Church and the Pope that excommunicated him. I will pray for him.

  3. irishgirl says:

    This guy’s got a lot of gall to say that!

  4. Maureen says:

    Paging St. Edith Stein. Apparently, you haven’t been sainted _enough_ for your faithful devotee, Mr. Angus….

  5. Willebrord says:

    This is really ridiculous.

  6. Liam says:

    Oh. my. dear. What twaddle.

    Now, I have been as hard as anyone on the Williamson fracas, but this Parliamentarian could use a mirror to see how he really appears. Which is not pretty.

    Now, if it had been a bishop of the Church of England, and this were the Mother of Parliaments, a parliamentary intervention would not be untoward given the C of E is the state church there.

  7. JoyfulMom7 says:

    cheeky fellow!

  8. John Enright says:

    So much for the separation of church and state in democratic republics.

  9. Credo says:

    And surely most would have already guessed this – he’s Catholic. Nice.

  10. Loren Z says:

    And surely most would have already guessed this – he’s Catholic. Nice.

    Not quite. He was excommunicated for supporting and voting for same-sex marriage.

    Also his wikipedia entry says:

    The exclusion of Angus from the church provoked widespread public reaction both from those who supported the church’s stance, and those who supported Angus’

    Looks like he is continuing his circus act and is smarting over his excommunication. I also suspect in his recent actions he is running errands for the liberal Catholic beast which he appears to have a history with.

  11. Father Bartoloma says:

    LOL! What a yutz! Someone should tell him he’s a week too late and the bandwagon has already left the station.

    P.S. I hope that this does not give punk rock a bad name…

  12. Robert A says:

    How long until this clown and his fellow-travelers in Canada try to invoke the infamous anti-Catholic-leaning Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) into this situation? Wanna see what the Thought Police look like in the 21st Century??? Just look north of the border…

    How long until our creeping dry martyrdom turns wet?

  13. must be the cold. Slowness of blood and oxygen to the brain.

    “Father Forgive them they know not what they do”

    Jesus Christ

  14. Glen says:

    Charlie Angus represents a small riding for the far-left New Democratic Party. He is looking for his fifteen minutes of fame to compensate for his political insignificance. If he did get excommunicated for supporting gay marriage then that could only further his anti-Church agenda. The NDP are notorious for not properly researching issues before they profess offence on other’s behalf from self-appointed morally superior soap boxes.

  15. Bruce says:

    “must be the cold. Slowness of blood and oxygen to the brain.”
    Speaking as a Canadian it is not the cold, “Slowness of blood and oxygen to the brain” was probably caused by belonging to the NDP which is a socialist, pro choice party in Canada.

    Bruce, Halifax.

  16. Thomas says:

    What’s the Canadian for “Blow it out your ass”?

    Fr. Z, can you translate and send it along to Mr. Angus? :D

  17. Pseudomodo says:

    Hey, cut the poor guy some slack! He’s from Timmins, Ontario for heavens sake. They only get a quarterly newspaper that far north.

    It’s very cold in Canada now and he might be suffering from hypothermia or maybe he has had a bad batch of screech passed onto him by one of the locals. Who knows!

  18. Aelric says:

    Charlie Angus: The MP full of BS.

    (pun alert)

  19. jaykay says:

    There was a smalltown newspaper (and by small I mean population c. 3,000) in Ireland in the early part of the last century which pompously trumpeted on its front page in relation to some state outrage in Russia: “The Skibbereen Eagle is keeping its eye on the Tsar”. Looks like this chap is very much in the same tradition.

  20. Tyler says:

    Excuse me Mr. Angus, but it was not Rome who made Bishop Williamson the “most famous anti-semite”, rather, it was news stations and politicians like you who chose to attack such a non-point to death that have made him such. His views would have stayed where they should have, private matter, had it not been blown out of proportion.

    Secondly, it isn’t like Rome has exactly been supportive of the good bishop’s views. Badly handled maybe, but surely not supported.

  21. Andrew, UK and sometimes Canada says:

    As mentioned above, Mr Angus MP, belongs to the New Democratic Party. It is a virulently pro-abortion, pro-gay everything, pro-union throwback. It has never held government at the national level and, most likely, never will. The party is the preserve of lefty-students and aging ’60s hippies (sound like a familiar crowd?). Polite society normally regards the NDP with something like benign amusement and contempt.

    This is just an attempt by an ignored party to capture the limelight. Looks like he proposed this during Member’s statements which has no ratings and no coverage in print. Mr Angus is one threat to the Church that can be safely laughed off. Giving him any sort of credence only plays to his game.

  22. Al says:

    Where can I email this twit and get others to email him. I’m tired of the piling on. We must meet the efforts of others who want to stop the church from getting back to orthodoxy after the long and damaging 40+ year drought of liberal experimentation. They are just using this incident to slow the progress. They must be confronted in the public square and exposed for their agenda.

  23. ED says:

    Read your Bible folks especially the quote “For fear of the Jews” That is what this silly hysteria is all about. They are showing how powerful the Jews are as a political force and how silly Gentiles will run to say anything to get their approval.

  24. tecumseh says:

    Yeah….My wife\’s sister lives in Ontario, she called her son….some name that isn\’t in the Calendar of Saints. I\’ve decided to call the little fellow Mohamed, when asked why, I reply because that is what he will become, he will rebel against all this liberal tyranny, and turn to religion. Unfortunately for him the liberals will have driven Real True religion out and all the poor mite will be left with is Islam. Poor little mite. Imagine the clowns that get elected now a days.

  25. Irish says:

    I had this little flash while I was taking a walk. Perhaps the Vatican’s communication system is not as inept as some think! I remember when the rumors of the MP were circulating. At the first inkling about MP, the left went crazy–oh, we’re going to back to the Middle Ages, we’re undoing all the good ecumenical progress of VCII, etc. This columnist and that liberal theologian had to put their two cents in. Then a few months went by and there was no official announcement it died down. Then the formal announcement was made, but by that time the left had shot up all their ammo. All of the dire warnings from the left were considered old news, the media had moved on and actually produced some fairly positive reports.

    Fast forward to the lifting of the excommunication and the Williamson affair. Oh no, the sky is falling again for the left. Let them whine and write their blogs and letters and columns. Then in a few months, after they’ve spent all their ammo, the reunification will be announced and all will be well and all their tired arguments will be old news.

    Oh ye of little faith–Pray for our Pope. He knows what he’s doing.

  26. Romanrevert says:

    *yawn*

  27. Mike E says:

    z-chat anytime soon?

  28. Jim says:

    Dear jaykay

    It was the Cork Weekly Examiner
    And they were keeping their eye on Russia.

  29. RBrown says:

    Oh boy, yet another example who confuses the faith with social justice.

  30. RBrown says:

    should be: another example of someone who . . .

  31. mpm says:

    I had to LOL at this one,
    “The Skibbereen Eagle is keeping its eye on the Tsar”.

    Googling, the town’s going strong: From the web page you can

    Find out How to Get to Skibbereen!

    And a glorious banner proclaims: “Skibbereen is Open for Business!”

    In the top 10 Facts section there is this gem:

    5. The Temperance Hall (now the Fire Station in Townshend Street) was the site of the foundation of the first Temperance Society (abstaining from alcohol) in Europe. Built in 1833 it has been succeeded by Skibbereen’s 26, well patronised pubs.

    God bless ’em!

  32. Edward Martin says:

    “GOD keep our land, glorious and free, oh Canada we stand on guard for thee”

    Somehow this part of our national anthem has been relegated to the dustbin.

    He’s from Timmins, birthplace of Shania Twain, go figure. I wonder how come he was excommunicated and not our then Prime Minister as well? Paul Martin (no relation!), a “Catholic”, allowed the legislation, and voted for same-sex “marriage”. As I recall only one Bishop in the country, in Calgary I believe, had the courage to stand up and speak of the PM’s excommunication.

    This story doesn’t appear to anywhere I read Canadian news perhaps we are just making his soapbox a little bigger.

    I should also add that we do not have separation of church and state. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and our titular head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who is also the titular head of the Church of England.

  33. Never even heard of this guy or if I did, it did not make a lasting impression on me. That tells me he is a small fry.

    “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!”

    The great OZ has spoken.

  34. Tiny says:

    What’s the Canadian for “Blow it out your ass”?

    After consulting with certain erudite and sagacious men I am able to provide the translation as follows:

    “Take off you hoser”

  35. jaykay says:

    Jim: nope, it was the Skibbereen Eagle alright. Risk of a rabbit hole here.

    http://www.skibbereen.ie/top-ten.html

  36. CDN Canonist says:

    This statement was made during the daily “member’s statements.” MPs are given a short time to draw attention to various issues, often events or people from their ridings. I’d be suprised if this becomes news worthy.

    I’d like to point out that Charlie Angus, a Catholic, has published a book on Fr. Les Costello, of “Flying Father” fame: http://www.amazon.ca/Costello-Canadas-Flying-Father/dp/2895076316

  37. RichR says:

    These people are clueless………and they don’t read the news. I think the Vatican has more than explained things. They should just ignore this. When the next big story hits the airwaves, this will just fade off into the sunset.

    I echo the above “yawn”.

  38. Michael says:

    Phhh…New Democrats. What do you expect?

  39. Jordanes says:

    Ah, there’s ED riding his anti-semitic hobby horse again . . . .

  40. Somerset '76 says:

    I should not have been surprised to see the SSPX, and Bishop Williamson in particular, being used as the pivot-point for what portends to be the forthcoming war-to-the-death confrontation between the Church and the postmodern world that any orthodox Catholic had to know needed to come someday. During my score of years in that milieu, I heard repeated exhortations, including from said Bishop, to be prepared for those days.

    But in all that time, neither I nor anyone I knew could have ever guessed it playing out in such a scenario as we see presently. For endless years, we in that milieu were as suspicious of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s theology as of anyone else’s. And if +W’s long-held views regarding the Holocaust were to cause problems someday (and not a few of us feared for that), we figured it would take the form of reprisal persecutions of the Society in isolation. Who could have ever thought that it would come in suchwise as to engulf the entire Church, and triggered by a goodwill gesture by none other than the “suspect” Ratzinger-turned-Pope Benedict XVI at that?

    But look more closely at the aspect of all this that’s raised the world’s ire: the fact that one of the un-excommunicated bishops expressly contradicted world consensus on the historicity of a specific issue. [A historicity with which I do concur.] The man denied that events happened in that instance as commonly understood … for which there are calls to burn not just him, but the Society, Pope Benedict, and the whole Church for that matter, at the stake. We have here a denial of history as heresy, as unpardonable and unatonable heresy at that, such that from certain quarters there will be no forgiveness no matter what is said or done in reflection, disassociation, or retraction.

    Why, then, all the vehemence against one man’s contradiction of an accepted historical fact? Because of those who have been using that fact – as one of their arsenal’s several weapons – for over two generations to discredit and then obliterate the theology the man represents, a theology that was built by nineteen centuries of Fathers, Doctors, and Acts of the Magisterium with lines of continuity that were easily discernible … that is, until the last General Council.

    These agitators gloated in triumph as the “hermeneutic of rupture” had held sway in the four decades since then. But like demons at an exorcism, they now behold with horror the prospect that a Pope who once undisputedly was “a man of the Council” (according to their reckoning) now has taken decisive action to put meaning behind his stated intention to now assert the “hermeneutic of continuity” instead. They know that the restoration of that continuity – and therefore of the condemnation of the world which does not love God, as St. John the Apostle observed – is their death knell.

    And there is no more striking a flashpoint on the questions of the hermeneutics of both rupture and continuity than on the third-rail issue that the man’s denial of historical fact indirectly represents … which seems to me why, of all the facts of world history, it is given an importance akin to a religious dogma. And I will tell you this: the man’s awareness of the motivations behind the “dogmatization” of that item of history is what, more than anything else, likely influenced him to deny its historicity!

  41. Somerset '76 says:

    To clarify the preceding:

    By “these agitators,” I mean the entire collection of neo-Modernists within the institutional Church, in collaboration with their liberal, secularistic non-Catholic friends of all backgrounds. The enormity of the Holocaust is but one of the several means these have used to bludgeon the theological and Magisterial tradition of the Church into nonexistence.

    I refer to the affirmation of the hermeneutic of continuity as their “death knell” in the sense that it signals the forthcoming end of their usurpation of the name “Catholic” in justification of their worldly doctrines and lifestyles.

  42. Thomas says:

    Thank you, Tiny. You’re a regular St. Jerome.

  43. Elizabeth says:

    Welcome to Canada. We keep telling our American friends how bad it is up here, and most of the time they assume we are just making it up…just for effect. You want to talk about “thought police”? Here’s just a very small taste of what goes on here… http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081119.wlanguage19/BNStory/National/home

  44. James says:

    The Canadian parliament has no right to question nor “demand” (as the German Chancellor did) ANYTHING of our Holy Father. He is Peter’s successor, not a plaything in liberal politics.

  45. John 6:54 says:

    The video appears to have been removed from YouTube.

  46. I suppose they still think Henry VIII’s process rules the Church in Canada. It does illustrate how the state wants to be god, and control everything. I would recommend reading (or re-reading) the book “1984” and see how close we are to that.

  47. Joseph says:

    I am a bit confused.

    We are incessantly told how it is important to meet and to understand some Holocaust deniers, who actually funnel money and resources to those who kill Jews (e.g. Ahmandinajad), but we are also told to isolate and condemn other Holocaust deniers, who have never supported any violence against anyone ever (Williamson)?

    Hmm. You wise folks must explain to me why there is this discrepancy in the “international fight against holocaust denial.”

  48. Jim says:

    jaykay

    You are correct. I was confused by the song my father taught me to sing with him when I was a boy. He was from West Cork and took the Examiner.

    Oh father dear, I often hear you speak of Erin\’s isle
    Her lofty hills, her valleys green, her mountains rude and wild
    You say she is a lovely land wherein a saint might dwell
    So why did you abandon her, the reason to me tell.

    Oh son, I loved my native land with energy and pride
    Until a blight came on the land, my sheep, my cattle died
    My rent and taxes went unpaid, I could not them redeem
    And that\’s the cruel reason why I left old Skibbereen.

    Rabbit hole? What rabbit hole…..it was the rent and taxes

  49. AM says:

    “Somehow this part of our national anthem has been relegated to the dustbin”

    I always sing it in French since becoming a Catholic, because it says:

    Car ton bras sait porter l’épée,
    Il sait porter la croix!
    Ton histoire est une épopée
    Des plus brillants exploits.
    Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
    Protégera nos foyers et nos droits

    In other words, as we hold and have held the sword and the Cross, we have defended and will defend our homes and our rights with them.

  50. Nathan says:

    Ask your Member of Parliment to add this* line to the National Anthem (the English version). As stated above, the French version is good as it is.

    God keep our Land Glorious and free
    (Especially from the NDP)*
    O Canada we stand on guard for thee.
    O Canada we stand on guard for thee.

    Sure it’s not very poetic but think of the impact it would have.

  51. Matthew in Fairfax says:

    Charlie Angus has undeniably taken positions contrary to the Church, and I write not so much to be critical of him, I don’t have much to add on that front, but rather to express the hope of eventual reconciliation. His speeches and books convey to me a deep respect for history, especially the history of those who sacrificed so much for the benefit of his family and his community. From the introduction of his book, Mirrors of Stone, about the life and death of the miners and their families who settled small towns in Northern Ontario:

    “As an adult I have struggled to recover the contours of this landscape. The old ones, being long dead and buried, are unable to guide me. The historic record is sparse or bare. The adult, caught up in a busy and increasingly fragmented world, has often wondered if this landscape was ever real or tangible. Was it, perhaps, just the fruits of a colorful childhood imagination?

    “But then there are the faces in the ovals. I find myself coming back again and again to stare into these mirrors of stone. But unlike the child, I come looking for a passageway, a key, an explanation.”

    And whatever my disagreements with his politics, Charlie Angus has a pretty good sense of humor that comes across even in transcripts.

    On Canada’s recent economic troubles:
    “Just two months ago, we heard the finance minister say that we were not in a recession, that we would not be in a recession and that we would not be in debt. Now we are $30 billion in deficit, and the Conservatives are trying to manipulate public opinion in saying that this $30 billion is economic stimulus, when really half of it is paying for last year’s mistakes.”

    On a proposed budget:
    “Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my honorable colleague. I have found that whenever a government brings forth a budget, it always says that it is bigger and brighter than ever, with more razzle-dazzle-pizazzle. Now, this one is more hopeful than ever. One peers through the black curtain and sees the Minister of Finance with his big, old, tattered top hat, pulling sedated bunnies out and saying ‘Here is another tax cut for you. Isn’t this marvellous?’”

    On his family history (during a debate on a trade agreement) :
    “The MacNeils left the beautiful region of Iona to come to northern Ontario because working in the dangerous gold mines in northern Ontario was safer than working in the collieries in New Waterford and Glace Bay. John Lindsay worked underground on the drills and decided that he should get himself an education. It was not easy then. Actually it was a Russian immigrant who taught my uncle Latin on the night shift. This is a true story. I can see that I have the House’s complete attention on this.”

    After being asked by colleague what his uncle would think about the bill they were discussing that day:
    “Madam Speaker, I would never deign to put words in the mouth of a MacNeil because they certainly were never afraid to speak loudly and, being somewhat superstitious, my good old Uncle Lindsay might actually pay a visit.”

    Again on his family history (during a debate on a transportation bill) :
    “I have already regaled the House with the rich history of my family in that I come from a long line of railway magnates. My great-great-grandfather was John P. McNeil. The ‘P’ did not stand for anything. It was just that every man in the village of Iona was named John so they had to distinguish him from his eight brothers whose first names were all John as well. There were John Roderick, John Francis, John Albert, John Alec and John P. They ran out of names because the Scottish only name people after dead people and there just were not that many dead people in the family.”

    There is more, I am sure. While I am often tempted to think “better off without them” with regard to these obstinate politicians, I really do hope that this one finds his way back.

  52. Manrique Zabala de Arízona says:

    Forgive them, Lord, for Punk Music has deafened them and sucked their brains out ;)

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