15 January 2018

Apparenty, we're as bad as Nazis

One of the ideas bandied about by my merry band of Knights was to hold an inter parish skating party this winter and an inter parish barbecue at one of the city's parks this summer. The city allows private people and groups to book parks and rinks for such events for a nominal fee (it really isn't much)- all you have to do is fill out this form.  our problems began when we encountered this line on the form:  "Your Organization has signed and submitted a copy of the City of Toronto's Human Rights and Anti-Harassment/ Discrimination Declaration of Compliance? A copy of the Declaration is attached or is available online at:" etc .  The declaration can be found here.  Go and read it if you will.  I'll wait.

If I am reading this correctly, in order to rent a park for a few hours, we have to say agree in principle to abortion, as well as a host of other things.  I am not sure why we have to support abortion to barbecue hamburgers, but that's how it goes.

These things simply don't happen in a vacuum. There almost always has to be some reason, some excuse, to introduce a new policy such as this: As near as we can tell, the excuse came from a library allowing neo Nazis to use one of their spaces.  I could be wrong, of course.  I can't tell for sure when this policy came into effect, but on the whole, the city rather understandably does not wish for Nazis to make use of the public spaces.  Rather unfortunately, Catholics who actually believe what the church teaches are, in the eyes of the city, as bad as Nazis.

Ironically, I am still in the process of researching a period in our past where the city council also debated on what rights should be allowed to Catholics, and sought to restrict their ability to express their faith within the city.  I'd like to say that back then, the Catholics united and rose to the occasion and fought back, and that we will do so again now.  But that does not seem to be the case.  back then, a sleeping giant was aroused.  Now, it is far more likely the giant will mumble a little in its sleep, roll over, and continue snoring.

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