I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
.
That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
Reader Mail: Your post on Morgentaler’s Order of Canada, etc…
October 16, 2008
Warren Schmidt writes, in reference to this article:
Hi Ken and Grace,
How are you both? It’s been a long time since I’ve visited your site, although I really admire what you’ve done with it. I see you changed up the design a bit. I created a new blog at www.catholiccanada.wordpress.com
I will keep you in my prayers as your due date and your first anniversary approach. Congratulations!
I’m settled in here in Windsor. The novitiate is going well. I find it hard to believe that I’ve been in Windsor for 2 months already!
More to the point of your post, yesterday was a sad day in Canada as Morgentaler received his Order of Canada. This is horrible and disgusting, and it was all done in secret — the ceremony was moved to Quebec City to lessen the inevitable scrutiny of having it at Rideau Hall, I’m sure. I don’t care what excuses the Governor General wishes to offer. There is no defense for awarding the country’s highest honour to a self-serving moral deviant like Morgentaler. He’s not out to help women; Morgentaler has earned more than $11 million from his macabre clinics, according to a Le Devoir study in 2002. I call that sickening!
A recipient of the Order of Canada here in Windsor (unfortunately I don’t remember his name) has begun a legal challenge of Morgentaler’s award. He’ll also return his medal, whether the award succeeds — that’s unlikely — or not. I commend him for making a statement. Anyway, there’s still a lot to be thankful for in this still-great country. Happy Thanksgiving if I don’t write to you again before then.
God Bless,
Warren
It is good to hear from you, Warren, and it’s great to hear that you’ve both begun your novitiate (that’s the first step on the road to becoming a priest, good Reader) in earnest and settled into Windsor. The new blog looks great, as do the pictures! Hopefully yours was a happy Thanksgiving.
Grace and I are doing well, for the most part. We’re counting down the days now: as can be seen above, the due date is nearly here, and we’re expecting that the little one will arrive a bit short of projections. One friend even suggested, in jest, that the situation had become a race between the wedding anniversary and the baby’s birthday, and that does indeed seem to be the case here. But the most important part, I think, is that Grace is doing very well, as she has been throughout this pregnancy. And it has been a great learning experience for me as well, and an opportunity to be a caregiver and a person of compassion. The baby also seems to be in good health, and we are waiting on its decision to get things moving, so to speak.
As to Henry Morgentaler, yes: it is both sickening and disgusting that he was awarded the Order of Canada, and then in secret. An argument could be made that the violation of several “norms” concerning the award says volumes about how unworthy the man is of the honour bestowed upon him: it is almost unheard of for an Order to be awarded with a less-than-unanimous vote by the award committee, and it is almost unheard of for an Order to be awarded outside of Rideau Hall. Both things happened in the case of Morgentaler’s award, however.
Still, even such things — though they are strikes against the overall process and against the award itself — do not erase the shame that Canada has brought upon itself by awarding this butcher anything more than a swift kick in the ass. That abortion hurts women and relationships has been amply demonstrated (see here, here, here, here, and here), and Morgentaler only helps to perpetuate a system that, when it does not inflict catastrophic physical or psychological damage on women, reduces them to little more that masturbatory objects for men to exploit, whose inadvertent fertility can be easily cast aside if appropriate emotional pressure is applied.
To say nothing of the fact that much of society — possibly even a majority in Canada, and definitely a majority in the United States — favours placing very tight restrictions on abortion service provision. Modern feminists, and pro-abortion adovocates (Morgentaler is certainly in the latter category, and may consider himself a member of the former for all I know), seem more and more out of touch with the opinions of the women they purport to represent and/or defend the rights of. This award, then, ultimately not only communicates the contempt of the Canadian state for those citizens of Canada who just happen to be women, but also communicates how very out of touch the Canadian state is with the opinions of women in Canada.
In addition to being a grave moral travesty, of course.
Good on your friend for taking a stand against this, and hopefully his legal challenge will amount to something. If not, it will serve only to de-legitimize the Order of Canada even further. But then, that might not be such a bad thing — some things deserve to wither and fade.
