By Steve Weatherbe

IN A MIXTURE of  socializing and moral analysis, 260 pro-lifers met at a Victoria church hall last month for an overview of post-Christian and Canadian society from Adam Exner, retired archbishop of Vancouver.

The crowd was entertained before Archbishop Exner’s talk by a singing group, and then a soloist from Cobble Hill’s Christian home schooling community.

The surprise came afterwards, when the 80 year old prelate strapped on his accordion and belted out a string of barn-raising numbers that prompted a dozen couples to dance.

Exner, who was Vancouver’s archbishop from 1991 to 1994, lived up to his reputation as a teacher by casting his analysis in the form of a memorable simile. Taking Pope John Paul II’s characterization of  the developed world’s ‘Death Culture,’ he likened it to a fish pond whose water was badly polluted.

“How do you keep the fish alive? You can feed them medicine . . . But the real solution is to dump out the water and replace it.” Among the aspects of our culture that need replacement, he itemized: “A lost sense of the sacredness of human life.”

Human life is a “fact,” he said, but it is not considered sacred. He cited Princeton ethicist Peter Singer, “who says all life is sacred, plant life, animal life and human life. And what we can do to animal life we can do to human life.” Singer has recommended that parents and doctors be allowed 28 days after birth to decide whether a newborn is free enough of defects to preserve.

There are already signs that Singer’s attitudes are prevailing, he said. He related how a Toronto chaplain recently told him that patients on life support “die on schedule. The doctors advise me to see such and such a patient, because they are scheduled to die that afternoon.”

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Exner also recounted how a Dutch-born friend, who fell very sick while visiting his homeland (the first nation to legalize euthanasia), was advised by a doctor upon being let out of hospital: “You are lucky you are a Canadian. If you had been one of us, you wouldn’t have made it.” He would have been euthanized by medical staff.

Society, the archbishop said, had also lost its sense of the sacredness of the family – and of truth, and right versus wrong.

 Replacing the latter, society now kowtows to “political correctness,” a value shifting with popular moods – but dangerous to contradict, nonetheless.

Exner cited several polls indicating a majority of Canadians believe morality to be relative and personal.

In light of the culture’s rapid loss of so many traditional values, said Exner, the task of John Paul II’s ‘new evangelism’ went far beyond the mere attraction of individual converts – to the conversion of the whole culture.

“It’s humanly impossible,” he said. But what is impossible for us, he added, is possible for the Holy Spirit – who “has the power to turn things around.”

Exner cited “glimmers of hope”: recent polls show a steady rise in the number of Canadians who believe unborn children should have “some protection” (from 56 percent in 2000 to 68 percent in 2004); and a decrease in the U.S., in the number of abortions, and medical personnel training for abortions.

A pro-life conference will be held April 24 – 26 in Comox, featuring Victoria Bishop Richard Gagnon and Fr. Ted Pacholcyzk of the U.S. National Catholic Bioethics Center.

April 2008