Who died and made Rob Wells pope?

Rob Wells is an anti-Christian bigot. That's fine -- Canada is a free country, and people are free to be bigots, just as long as they don't get violent about it. Hate isn't against the law. (Well, actually it is, under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. But no-one has ever been charged under that law for saying anything anti-Christian. It has only been used against Christians. And, while we're on the subject, not a single Muslim has been charged under that law, either.)

Wells has filed a series of complaints with Canada's human rights commissions, trying to bully Christians into silence. He's sued the Christian Heritage Party. He's sued Catholic Insight, a magazine. As usual, Wells doesn't have to pay a penny for this persecution -- the government happily provides the investigators and lawyers to do so. The CHP and Catholic Insight have to pay their own bills, and they won't be compensated even if they win.

All of this is old news, as are the other petty abuses rained down upon those unlucky enough to be trapped in Canada's grotesque HRC system. But what struck me in this interesting story in the Sun, was Wells's hubristic view that he is the arbiter of what is Catholic doctrine or not. Forget that Benedict XVI fellow over in Rome, and forget Catholic Insight's own editor, Alphonse de Valk, a man who also happens to be a priest. Look at this excerpt from the story:

[Wells] argues the material on [Catholic Insight's] website "does not represent Catholic teaching" and wants the human rights commission to proceed with his complaint expeditiously.

"It's hateful, discriminatory and it has to be challenged," argues Wells, who adds the controversy is not about religious freedom.

"I don't care what they say from their pulpit," he says. "But when they put hate messages or messages that are likely to expose minority groups to hatred or contempt, it's against the human rights legislation."

There are more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and there are countless denominations and orders that "represent" a spectrum of interpretations of Catholic teaching. Fr. de Valk represents one way, a way that is surely more in synch with that of the Vatican than Wells's views, which are overtly heretical.

Freedom of religion -- as well as freedom of speech -- means that Fr. de Valk can believe whatever he wants to, even mere Christianity, the bedrock of Western civilization. But Wells would have the government of Canada, through its agency, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, order Fr. de Valk to censor himself, on the basis that his views were not "representative" of true Catholicism, or were otherwise illegal.

It's one thing for Wells to harbour the delusion that he's the pope, and that he knows better what being Catholic means than a Catholic priest. But it's quite another for the Canadian government to humour Wells's conceit, and grind Fr. de Valk through months of procedure and tens of thuosands of legal fees while they consider Wells's absurd anti-Christian gambit.

The second comment by Wells is equally revolting. He says that he doesn't care what Catholics say in church, only what they say in public, such as on the Internet. That's logically inconsistent, of course -- if he's truly worried about "hate", it makes no sense to approve of it in a building but not in a newspaper. That's not important; Wells has the right to be an illogical twit. Again, what's troubling here is that he would have the government of Canada, through the Canadian Human Rights Commission, sweep Christians out of the public square, and into the silence and seclusion of their churches. And anyone who knows the history of ghettoes knows that's probably just the first step.

Again, Wells is allowed to have his bigoted views that Christians can be quietly Christian, but ought not to be able to share their views publicly. That's just "hatred and contempt", and as long as Wells doesn't get violent about it, that ought to be his right. But for him to petition the government to enforce his bigotry -- and for the government to consider it for the better part of a year -- is the scandal.

Every society has its haters, like Wells. But only when those haters have access to the power of the state are the rest of us truly in danger.

That's what's happening now. It doesn't feel like Canada, does it?