As we approach the Octave of Easter

David Warren, not just a national (Canadian) treasure, but a treasure of the Church:

Take for instance that "separation of church and state." It is hardly an article of the Canadian constitution, yet it is often invoked as if it were. It is taken for granted that no church has the right to intervene in state affairs, not only by the agnostic types, but by almost every Christian I know (and I have met a fair number).

But what of the contrary? It is now also taken for granted that the state has the right to intervene in church affairs, in comprehensive detail. The paperwork alone hamstrings all religious charitable activities, and increasingly the state, out of its bottomless arrogance, acts to legislate which religious doctrines may be taught, which must be ignored, and which must be openly contradicted in, for instance, religious schools.

[...]

All my life I have been haunted by that memory, and my child's knowledge of that plum as "a gift," as if given before all worlds. But to what can I refer except, a particular colour, which later I discerned in a twilight sky, and later still from an illuminator's brush, in a medieval codex.

This is a knowledge that can be banned, suppressed, punished, persecuted, hauled before Pilate by the functionaries of the state, or some self-appointed prosecuting authority. Scourged, mocked, and humiliated, by men "who know not what they do." Through 20 centuries, Christ has been crucified again and again.

And He is with us still.

Christ is Risen. And we get to keep saying it for 50 full days.
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