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New Life, Melbourne, Thursday, 19 December

We read on p. 12, that the Canadians have invented a marvellous thing. It appears that at their institution as a nation, at which time Britain rather ruled the waves, and England was a formally Protestant nation, some concern was felt by Romanists that their religion would be in some jeopardy, or in particular, their type of school education. Hence they were allowed in 1867 at Confederation, a guarantee of funding as schools of that type.

Now much later, Jewish and Protestant parents in Ontario have noticed the inequity, in this, that Romanist schools receive not only free funding from the State but apparently as well as health services and 'other benefits'. The Court, which is historically supposed to have a relationship to justice, and not merely to law, though the two in some cases are almost diametrically opposed, ruled that there was no need for the province to do for others, what it did for Romanist schools. Hence a provision to prevent injury to freedom - a principle in which I for one delight, knowing the truth in Jesus Christ dominates logically, spiritually and personally - at Confederation, becomes a principle to ensure inequity in 1996 in Canada's Supreme Court.

As far as peace is concerned, equity is a major player; and as far as ensuring votes is concerned, I did not notice that Jesus Christ was inordinately interested in it: crucifixion is not a particularly photogenic occupation, but there is that human passion, so widely distributed, to crucify The Truth, and not to pay for its expenses. It is well that God pays.