Make Up Your Minds, Guys

It seems that some Catholic agencies in Canada did not get the memo, which reads in part, "The government has handed us a perfect opportunity for a persecution shit-fit. No Catholic group is to interfere with this martyrgasm."*

That opportunity is, of course, the new attestation required for applicants to the Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ) program.

The CSJ program will ‎not fund organizations whose primary activities:
• involve partisan political activities; or 
• do not respect – seek to remove or actively undermine – established individual human rights in Canada.

Pretty simple, eh?

The link above leads to the "Supplementary Information" the government issued when it was made clear that some groups were deliberately misunderstanding the original wording.

But it seems that many religious agencies understood perfectly well what was intended. They applied, presumably ticking the attestation box, and were approved for CSJ grants. The successful applicants, listed by province and riding, were released recently.

I have been going through this list to find obviously "churchy" sounding names. I have found a lot, including some with "Catholic" in the title.

Well. The Catholic Church has been doing some research too. Yesterday, Canada's bishops demanded that successful Catholic groups give back the dough. Other bishops weighed in too.

Make up your minds, guys. Are you being persecuted by the government or by your own agencies? Do you want the money or not?

Here are the groups that defied the Church. (I used the keyword "Catholic" so some without that word may have been missed.)



Note that the MP for this riding ML is Scott Simms, the Liberal who voted with the Conservatives to scrap the attestation. Hmm.













The Church seems to be in a bit of a pickle.

Or as Kayle Clark put it,

So a bunch of catholic groups got summer job funding and bishops are freaking out because it really counters their “persecution” narrative. #cndpoli https://t.co/ZgEXdcLV3U

— Kayle Clark (@kaclk) May 9, 2018

What a message. They're saying: "The Catholic Church does not respect established human rights in Canada and seeks to remove or actively undermine them."

Well, we in the pro-choice and LGBTQ2S communities knew that.

* I made this up.