tinyurl.com/po9eme4
Today was filled with a series of coincidences. First, the Canadian Secular Alliance, an organization advancing church-state separation sent out a reminder about the meeting tonight. Soon after, CFI Toronto sent out an email about CSA’s upcoming exclusive event “God in the Preamble: An Evening with Constitutional Lawyer Deborah Coyne” Then, a good friend and secularist forwarded an amusing epistle he wrote entitled “Divine Right of Babies”:
Fellow Bipeds,
The present hysteria over when the Royal Fetus will become the Royal Newborn should not distract us from the essential rot behind this so-called blessed event.
Barring an unfortunate cascade of untimely deaths the much-anticipated Royal Brat will not become our Monarch any time soon. The precise occupant of the Throne is not the point however. All are blighted by the same stain. To wit, the Queen (or King) of Canada holds office by the Grace of God!
I jest not, that is the official propaganda, er, position of our Sovereign. If you don’t believe me you need look no further than your pocket or purse, retrieve a Canadian coin and inspect the Latin inscription around the Queen’s head: “D.G.Regina”. The shy abbreviation stands for Dei Gratia. So the full phrase is ‘By God’s Grace Queen’. What an offensive proposition to our secular sentiments.
As ever this dreadful state of affairs is sourced in the sordid history inherited from our dubious European antecedents. That model of family values, Henry the Eighth to be exact. The lustful Tudor defied the Pope (give him a bonus point there) and decreed himself head of both state and the English church. (He had the modest title Defender of the Faith too, a moniker that was, embarrassingly, also on our coins until recently – abbreviated in Latin to Fid. Def.) The truly vile corollary of all this is that He (or now She) rules by Divine Right. On the advice of her Ministers in parliament of course, as the constitutional convention now has it. Mercifully, God seems not to intervene at this stage of governance, except perhaps when we have a fundie prime minster. (Remind you of anyone?)
In any event our present and future Monarchs command our loyalty by virtue of the Anglican God. Query whether that is a limiting condition somehow? Could have turned out worse I suppose. Had the Danes succeeded in holding Britain our fates might be in the hands of Thor. But I digress…………..
No tweets here,
Primate of Carp
So it’s tempting to say God is everywhere, or more accurately, God is mentioned everywhere: on Canadian coins, in the National Anthem: “O Canada” and in the Preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is one of the documents comprising the Constitution of Canada. If you feel that God, should not be a presence on our money, in our songs or our Constitution, Join CSA members and friends as they discuss with Deborah Coyne what can be done about removing God from at least one of these three places: the Preamble to the Canadian Constitution.
Buy a ticket now for an evening with Deborah Coyne on July 29th