When I first read Father Raymond J. de Souza’s opinion piece in Canada’s National Post, entitled “New report recommends turning the Armed Forces into a secular theocracy,” I thought was reading a clever satire about the reductio ad absurdum of woke thinking when applied to the military. It was an effort for me to wrap my mind around the fact that he was describing the Canadian “Minister of National Defence Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination—Final Report—January 2022.” The Panel concluded that all traditional Abrahamic religions that haven’t embraced the LGBTQ+++ pantheon, radical feminism, or polytheism have no place in Canada’s armed forces.

Upon perusing the Final Report, you know how the wind is blowing for traditional religion in the Canadian Armed Forces (“CAF”) when read that each Advisory Panel meeting begins with a prayer. One might expect a nice ecumenical prayer giving thanks for all the blessings in our world but that’s too bland for the Ministry of Defence’s panel:

[F]ollowing a valued tradition from many First Nations, Inuit and Métis, we use a short form of the Haudenosaunee Ohenten Kariwatekwen, the “words spoken before all others.” It helps us clear our minds, honour creation, and remember our responsibilities towards the land, its peoples, and our mission. Most importantly, it brings our minds together from the various individual journeys we are all on so that we can walk together for a short time. Our Advisory Panel colleague, Aronhia:nens Derek Montour has kindly guided us through this practice of gratitude, turning our minds "towards Mother Earth and her beautiful dress, towards the oceans, seas and rivers and all the creatures who live within them, towards vegetation and land-loving creatures as well as those who fly in the sky, and towards the Four Winds, our Elder Brother the Sun, our Grandfathers the thunder beings, our Grandmother Moon, and our Creator, however imagined.

If you’re detecting a purely pagan hostility to the Judeo-Christian tradition, you’re correct. That bias is consistent with the Advisory Panel’s mandate, which is to root out anything hostile to the people and values of the left:  “All forms of systemic racism and discrimination, including anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, LGBTQ2+ prejudice, gender bias, right-wing extremism and white supremacy are exhibited within the CAF”—and they must go. One senses that Black Nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism aren’t on the new list of no-nos in the CAF.

Image: The Four Chaplains—Methodist, Jewish, Catholic, and Reformed Church in America—who served on the S.S. Dorchester (a troopship) and died together after rescuing as many as they could and then giving up their life jackets.

Father De Souza writes,

The panel concedes that many CAF members find in religion “a source of solace, optimism and compassion,” and can turn to their “unit chaplain … for effective support in ethical guidance or spirituality through the new Total Health and Wellness Strategic Framework.” Bureaucratese like that makes it clear that this won’t end well.

His foreboding is accurate:

[T]he report notes that “some churches’ exclusion of women from their priesthoods violates principles of equality and social justice, as do sexist notions embedded in their religious dogmas. In addition, certain faiths have strict tenets requiring conversion of those they deem to be ‘pagan,’ or who belong to polytheistic religions. These faiths’ dogmas and practices conflict with the commitment of the Defence Team to value equality and inclusivity at every level of the workplace.”

Thus all those chaplains must go, for the CAF “cannot justify hiring representatives of organizations who marginalize certain people or categorically refuse them a position of leadership.”

In other words, a friend of mine was right all along: He said that the left’s obsession with every type of sexuality other than biological normal and religiously moral heterosexuality isn’t just about destroying nuclear families and shifting children’s allegiance to the state. It is, instead, intended to destroy the Judeo-Christian faiths in the West.

He’s right and I can figure out the “why” of that one: The Judeo-Christian faiths create an absolute morality that transcends humans and that is not predicated on the capricious demands of animist or polytheist gods. It also makes it impossible for states to impose moral principles that run counter to the core moral principles stated in the Bible, principles that include the worth of the individual, the binary nature of human sex, the prohibition against stealing (whether the state takes your money via excessive taxes or the slavery take your liberty), the requirement to honor one’s parents (again decreasing the state’s power), the rejection of human sacrifice.... You get my drift.

Everything Canada is doing is something that the American left wants to do. You can be assured that, in the bowels of the Pentagon, a commission is shaping up to issue an American version of this report.