Of Christian love and gentle mice

Headline in the Ottawa Citizen this morning: "Church shuns MP for backing gay marriage." It seems that Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, has been refused communion by his local priest, with the blessing of the priest's archbishop, for voting in favour of C-38. The "last straw" for the priest, apparently, was seeing Angus shake hands with gay MP Bill Siksay. ("Oooo! He touched one of them! No wine 'n' wafer for him!")

That increasingly odious oxymoron, "Christian love," needs to be named for what it really is. In the hands of people like Angus' priest, it is an active, virulent hatred, a life-denying, soul-destroying cult of exclusion. That is not to say that there are no Christians who exemplify humility, caring and an intolerance of injustice. There are many such, but they have little power and less authority. The late Pope put liberation theology under the ban, and an earlier Pope did the same for the worker priest movement.

And, lest anyone think I'm picking on the Roman Church, the fundamentalist Christianity of George Bush and his tens of millions of American supporters allows little room for compassion, fellow-feeling or turning the other cheek, as any Afghani or Iraqi civilian will tell you--the ones left alive, that is.

Did man once walk with dinosaurs? No doubt. We're still doing it. And, as a taxpayer, I'm helping to subsidize the scaly monsters. That has to stop. Charitable status for those who believe in caritas, say I.

Meanwhile, a human gene has been used in a spectacular feat of genetic engineering to make vicious mice gentle. Maybe one of these days they'll transplant the gene back into people. Perhaps it could produce kinder Christians. At least it might have helped prevent a fistfight at the Israeli Embassy.