Thursday, February 14, 2008

Removing prayer cheap political points for McGuinty

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is a man with no conviction.
During the last election, he made it a one-issue campaign by seizing the opportunity to pounce on PC leader John Tory's pledge to fund faith-based schools. Tory felt by funding other religious schools, it was not only fair, but it brought those schools, presently private, into the Ontario-wide curriculumn. In other words, it would standardize the education.
But McGuinty, like so many Liberals, feels he knows what's best for Ontarians. McGuinty, a Catholic whose children went to Catholic schools and whose wife teaches in one, campaigned vigorously against funding other religions, with the claim that it polarizes our children. Conspicuously and conveniently absent from his message was that Ontario already funds Catholic and Protestant schools. I mean, if he were a man of conviction, then he would fund just one school system in the province, wouldn't he?
Now he wants to remove prayer from the Ontario legislature. McGuinty said it was time to "move beyond" the Lord's Prayer to a more inclusive custom that better reflects Ontario's multiculturalism.
First off, I haven't read any reports that anyone actually complained about the Lord's prayer being recited. No, this is McGuinty's way of trying to get cheap votes from the non-Christian population.
But even so, the Lord's prayer is not overtly Christian-specific per se. It of course is a Christian prayer and is cited in the Bible. But other than mentioning "our father", its message is universal. I don't think any other religion would find that prayer non-inclusive or offensive.
Furthermore, many of these other religions -- the same ones McGuinty campaigned against funding their own schools -- actually send their kids to Catholic schools because of its moral base. And as far as I know, none of them complain about the Lord's Prayer!
Liberals have no sense of tradition (unless it's renaming a mountain after Trudeau!). McGuinty has no backbone and no conviction. Just a penchant for cheap political points.
He makes me angry.

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