armed forces
Canadian military members speak out after being told chaplains shouldn’t use ‘God’ in public prayers
From LifeSiteNews
‘Freedom of religion, I’m afraid, is slowly being replaced by freedom from religion,’ one CAF member told LifeSiteNews.
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) gave their exclusive reactions to LifeSiteNews this week after being told they shouldn’t call upon God during public prayers in order to prioritize inclusivity and “diversity” just weeks before the national November 11 Remembrance Day holiday. The Minister of National Defence has stated that public prayer must “reflect the spiritual and religious diversity of Canadians.”
In exclusive phone interviews with LifeSiteNews, CAF members who are known to LifeSite but have asked to remain anonymous spoke out against what they see as an increased secularization of the military.
“In a nutshell, this change is: Abolish God from the public square,” one military member said, explaining that the “ethos undergirding the document” is one emphasizing the “spiritual” rather than the “religious.”
“Freedom of religion, I’m afraid, is slowly being replaced by freedom from religion,” another CAF member told LifeSite.
Their remarks pertain to an October 11 memo signed by Chaplain General Guy Belisle and obtained by The Epoch Times that directed Canadian chaplains to “adopt a sensitive and inclusive approach when publicly addressing military members.”
“While the dimension of prayer may occupy a significant place for some of our members, we do not all pray in the same way; for some, prayer does not play a role in their lives,” the memo reads.
Any “spiritual reflection” offered by military chaplains in a public setting (not including church services or private interactions with members) must be “inclusive in nature, and respectful of the religious and spiritual diversity of Canada,” according to the directive.
Spiritual leaders are also directed to “consider the potential that some items or symbols may cause discomfort or traumatic feelings when choosing the dress they wear during public occasions.”
Minister of National Defence Bill Blair responded to news concerning the directive by emphasizing that “Canadian Forces chaplains are not – and will not be – banned from prayer on Remembrance Day, nor at any other time,” The Post Millennial reported.
However, Department of National Defence spokesman said that chaplains giving reflections in public, mandatory military ceremonies “should not use the word ‘God’ or other references to a higher power such as ‘Heavenly Father’” in order “ to ensure that all feel included and able to participate in reflection no matter their beliefs.”
Active-duty CAF members who spoke with LifeSiteNews say the new directive effectively bans theistic prayer and sets up secularism as the only acceptable religion.
One military member told LifeSite that chaplains had been allowed to call upon a theistic God in an “inclusive” manner at public events like mess dinners and the celebration of Remembrance Day under prior guidance, but under the new directive “God can’t be invoked.”
He said military chaplains are further directed to be “mindful of the Gender Based Analysis (GBA+)” in their reflections, going on to explain that GBA+ is an “analysis framework that [officials are] using to basically re-examine their policies throughout the organization” for the purposes of advancing equity within the context of gender ideology.
Under the principles, the source told LifeSite, it could even be “problematic to say ‘God’ in the masculine, like in the ‘Our Father.’”
Another CAF member told LifeSite that the new memo has made military chaplains “so afraid of saying something wrong” that “even very liberal chaplains” are “too afraid” to write their “own reflection on Remembrance Day.”
He said the authentic variety of religious beliefs – in which Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others are able to express and share their faiths – is being exchanged for secular uniformity packaged as “diversity.”
The source told LifeSite that the recent chaplaincy directive amounts to “a purging of all traditional values” and a message that “the only acceptable religion now will be secularism.”
“If we can’t even live according to our conscience, if you can’t speak truth as we see it, then we’ve lost the essence of what it means to be the military,” he said. “We’ve lost our freedom.”
The first CAF member to speak with LifeSite explained that the new directive rests on the Canadian Supreme Court’s 2015 decision Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (City), which declared that “The state must instead remain neutral” in matters “religion and beliefs.”
However, he argued that neutrality shouldn’t mean banning specific religious expressions and noted that soldiers going into battle face an entirely different set of risks than ordinary government employees, up to and including serious injury and death.
“Given the realities of soldiering and everything that comes with that, I would ask, has that not changed the equation? Does that not change things?” he said. He argued that soldiers having “spiritual tools at their disposal,” including prayers and blessings, makes the CAF “more resilient, more capable, more spiritually healthy.”
“By taking that away from people, do you have the soldier’s best interests in mind? Do you have spiritual fitness in mind? Are you playing politics? That’s my question,” he said.
armed forces
Judge dismisses Canadian military personnel’s lawsuit against COVID shot mandate
From LifeSiteNews
Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan rejected a lawsuit from more than 300 past and current members of the Canadian military who lost their jobs or were put on leave for not taking the experimental, dangerous COVID shots.
A Canadian federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed on behalf of some 330 past and current members of the nation’s military who lost their jobs or were placed on leave for refusing the experimental COVID shots, because she alleged that their lawsuit lacked “evidence” that the jabs were harmful.
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members had sought some $1.3 million in damages from the government for having their charter rights violated due to the military’s 2021 COVID mandates, according to their lawsuit.
In a November 13 ruling, Edmonton-based Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan ruled in favor of the Trudeau government, and thus military’s COVID jab mandate, to strike down the case. Coughlan remarked that the plaintiffs’ case lacked “material facts” along with “evidence” and was filled with “vexatious language.”
READ: Canadian father files $35 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s jab-related death
“The only indications of bad faith are found when the pleadings baldly assert that, among other claims, Canada failed to carry out safety and efficacy testing for the vaccines, and that the Directives were premature and ‘promoted the fraudulent use of the biologics’,” she wrote, overlooking reports of thousands of injuries due to the shots in Canada alone.
As a result of the lawsuit being tossed, all plaintiffs are now on the hook to pay some $5,040 out of pocket in legal costs.
As reported by LifeSiteNews in June, documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of jab injuries in the CAF rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the most being credited to Moderna’s experimental COVID shot.
The CAF members’ lawsuit was filed in June of 2023 and overall sought some $1 million in damages, along with an extra $350,000 in general damages. The lawsuit also had a condition that there be a declaration made that mandating the COVID shots for military members was a violation of their charter rights.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
LifeSiteNews reported in July that a member of Canada’s military who was injured after taking the experimental mRNA COVID jabs has been denied compensation from the nation’s Veterans Affairs department.
Under the CAF’s mandate, hundreds of military members were fired, or one could say, purged for not getting the COVID shots. This is in addition to the thousands of public servants fired for not agreeing to take the COVID shots.
The CAF eventually ended its COVID mandate in October 2022, which was months after the federal mandate was lifted, but members are still “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot.
The federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that its federal COVID shot workplace mandate would be dropped in June 2022, as would the mandate requiring domestic travelers have the shot to board planes and trains.
In November of 2023, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity observed that the military considers members who refuse the COVID jab “a piece of garbage.”
READ: COVID shots have 200-times higher risk of brain clots than other jabs: new report
In March, LifeSiteNews reported on large personnel losses causing the CAF to consider dropping its remaining requirements altogether.
Although Canada has a Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) program, active members of the CAF, as well as veterans, are not eligible for the civilian program. According to Christensen, this leaves many COVID jab-injured CAF members and veterans with no recourse other than Veterans Affairs Canada.
COVID shot mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of Trudeau’s federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots themselves have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as heart diseases, stroke, and death, including in children.
The shots also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result, many Catholics and other Christians refused to take them.
armed forces
From Batoche to Kandahar: Canada’s Sacrifices for Peace
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Gerry Bowler
There is a grave on a riverbank near Batoche, Saskatchewan. It contains the remains of a soldier from Ontario who died in 1885 under General Middleton during the last battle of the Northwest Rebellion. It has been tended for almost 150 years by the Métis families whose ancestors had fought against him. His name was Gunner William Phillips and he was 19 years old.
Up a dirt road in the Boshof District of Free State, South Africa is a memorial garden in which are buried the 34 bodies of Canadians killed at the Battle of Paardeberg in 1900. They fell driving a Boer kommando off the heights where they had been dug in and inflicting severe casualties on the British forces below. Private Zachary Richard Edmond Lewis of the Royal Canadian Regiment lies there. He was the son of Millicent Lewis and was 27 years old.
On April 22, 1915 the German army launched its first poison gas attack on Allied trenches near Ypres, Belgium during the First World War. When French troops on their flanks broke and ran, the 1st Canadian Division stood fast amid the chlorine cloud and repelled their attackers, suffering 2,000 casualties in the process. On the grave of Private Arthur Ernest Williams of the 8th Battalion are the words “Remember, He Who Yields His Life is a Soldier and a Man.” Private Williams was 16 years old.
When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941, Canadian troops from the Winnipeg Grenadiers were there to resist them. Among them was Sergeant-Major J.R. Osborn whose men were surrounded and subject to grenade attacks. Osborn caught several of these and flung them back but when one could not be retrieved in time he threw himself on the grenade as it exploded trying to save his men. His body was never found after the battle but his name is inscribed on a monument in Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery.
In the hills south of Algiers is Dely Ibrahim Cemetery. This is where they buried the body of RCAF Pilot Officer John Michael Quinlan after the crash of his Wellington bomber in March, 1944. He was a movie-star handsome student from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and my father’s best friend in the squadron. I carry his family name as my middle name as does my little grand-daughter.
The Kandahar Cenotaph in the Afghanistan Memorial Hall at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa honours those Canadians who died fighting Islamic terrorists. 158 stones are bearing the faces of the soldiers who were repatriated from where they fell and now are buried in graves in their home communities across the country. One of those stones commemorates Warrant Officer Gaétan Joseph Francis Maxime Roberge of the Royal 22nd Regiment who is buried in a cemetery in Sudbury. He was 45 when he was killed by a bomb. He left behind a wife, an 11-year-old daughter and twin 6-year-old girls.
On November 11, we pause to remember the 118,000 Canadian men and women who died fighting, among others, Fenian invaders, Islamic jihadis in Sudan, the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm, Benito Mussolini, and Imperial Japan, Nazi SS Panzer regiments, Chinese and North Korean forces, ethnic warlords in the Balkans, and the Taliban. They died in North Atlantic convoys, in French trenches, in primitive field hospitals, on beaches in Normandy, in the air over England, on frozen hills in Korea, in jungle POW camps, on peace-keeping duty in Cyprus, in the Medak Pocket in Croatia, and in the mountain passes of Afghanistan. We also remember the hundreds of thousands more who returned home alive, but mutilated, shattered in body and mind, the families deprived of sons, fathers, and brothers, and the communities who lost teachers, hockey players, volunteers, pastors, nurses, and neighbours.
We remember them because in honouring their memory we honour the values on which Canada was built. They did not die to create a Canadian empire, acquire foreign territory or satisfy some ruler’s grandiosity; they fought and suffered to protect parliamentary democracy, freedom of expression and religion, a tolerant society, and the right to live in peace.
On November 11, let us be clear that the prosperity and tranquility enjoyed today by North Americans, Europeans, South Koreans, Japanese, Indians, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Filipinos, etc., etc., were purchased with the blood of heavily-armed men in military uniform, many of them with maple leaf patches on their shoulders. A country which is contemptuous towards its duty to maintain its armed forces, where schools forbid personnel in service dress from attending remembrance assemblies lest their presence makes children and parents “feel unsafe,” or where Forces chaplains are instructed to avoid religious language or symbols in services commemorating our dead, is a nation lost to its memories and unlikely to have much of a future.
KILLED IN ACTION. BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ANGUS & MARY MAUD MACDONALD,
Nursing Sister Katherine MacDonald, Canadian Army Nursing Service, May 19th 1918
HE WOULD GIVE HIS DINNER TO A HUNGRY DOG AND GO WITHOUT HIMSELF.
Gunner Charles Douglas Moore, Canadian Anti-Aircraft Battery, September 19th 1917
BREAK, DAY OF GOD, SWEET DAY OF PEACE, AND BID THE SHOUT OF WARRIORS CEASE.
Sergeant Wellesley Seymour Taylor, 14th Battalion, May 1st 1916
Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
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