A Celebration of Life will be held for Mark Warawa at Christian Life Assembly July 5.
“To God be the Glory.”
Those words – a version of the Jesuit motto “for the greater glory of God” – were the last ones spoken by MP Mark Warawa after delivering his final speech in the House of Commons last month.
They recall the words of St. Thomas More, patron saint of politicians, on the hangman’s scaffold: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
Warawa’s farewell words brought several standing ovations from MPs of all parties. They not only exemplified the kind of person he was, but provided an illustration of how politicians of every belief and background should model themselves. They also sounded like the parting words of a parent leaving behind their children for the last time, as Warawa called for MPs to encourage each other and love one another.
Warawa, a devout Christian, died Thursday just two months after revealing he was battling cancer, which moved into his lungs, colon and lymph nodes.
His passing is not only sad for his family and loved ones, including five children and 10 grandchildren, but a loss to Canada as well. Warawa was that rare breed for a politician, a true man of conscience willing to stand up for his personal and religious beliefs, even at the risk of his career.
His legacy in the Commons and his Langley-Aldergrove community is truly inspiring. As far back as 2008 he was acting on his principles by publicly opposing abortionist Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s receiving the Order of Canada.
He became known as one of the few pro-lifers in Parliament and accepted the stigma associated with it, regularly attending the March for Life in Ottawa and serving as chair of the Parliamentary pro-life caucus.
His efforts to imbue a culture of life in Canadian politics included supporting a motion for Parliament to review the legal definition of when human life begins.
He introduced his own motion to condemn “gendercide” through sex-selective abortion, a motion more than 90 per cent of Canadians would have supported.
When his motion was deemed non-voteable at the committee level and he was refused permission to speak in Parliament by his own Conservative Party, he took up a new cause: the democratic process and the right of MPs to represent their constituents. He complained to then-Speaker Andrew Scheer that his own party was muzzling him, leading to Scheer’s ruling that MPs could speak over the objection of their parties.
Warawa then cheekily started what was described as a mini-backbench rebellion by standing in the Commons and making a statement opposing sex-selective abortion, but without mentioning the word abortion.
Did it ultimately affect his career and his standing in the Conservative Party? Probably, although he was appointed in 2017 as shadow cabinet secretary for seniors and palliative care, a cause near to his heart. He continued to serve on numerous committees, parliamentary groups and international delegations, including as an election observer in Ukraine in 2014.
In 2015 he took up the battle against euthanasia, and then became an advocate for end-of-life care, declaring “it is currently easier to qualify for assisted suicide than palliative care.” Warawa saw the threat that assisted suicide represented for physicians and “our religious and conscience freedoms in Canada” and met with various church leaders, including Archbishop Miller [of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver].
When in recent years he saw the growing movement to expand euthanasia and force it on medical workers and institutions, he introduced a private member’s bill to make it a crime to intimidate or coerce a medical professional to participate. (Conservative MP David Anderson has now tabled private member’s Bill C-418 making it an offence to coerce someone into participating in assisted suicide. Debate began last month, three weeks after Warawa’s last day in the Commons.)
As recently as March Warawa was presenting petitions on gendercide and on palliative care in the Commons.
Ultimately, Warawa’s greatest achievement may have been to bring to light Parliament’s cowardice on life and conscience issues. When the Supreme Court struck down Canada’s abortion law 30 years ago, it urged the government to draft new legislation. Not only has each government failed to, every political party has gone out of its way to stifle the smallest pro-life initiative, including such inoffensive measures as parental consent or women’s right-to-know legislation. Of dozens and dozens of pro-life bills and motions introduced, not one has succeeded.
We need to pray for our politicians. Theirs is a thankless job, trying to represent their constituents, toeing the party line, keeping true to their conscience, trying to balance regional needs with cabinet priorities, and in the case of MPs, all while travelling back and forth between their families and Ottawa.
Warawa showed it can be done, and the praise he received from all parties after his passing showed the respect they had for the man. I hope they give their admiration more than lip service.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam, Mark.
Paul Schratz is editor of The B.C. Catholic; this comment is re-posted by permission.
A Celebration of Life will be held for Mark Warawa July 5 at Christian Life Assembly in Langley.
A man of conviction, to be sure. That being said, while I fully support his positions on assisted suicide, abortion, etc., what if there was a cure for cancer that if he had known about it would have kept him alive to keep on fighting and live to see another year, or 30? There is and there are, many, in fact I am FRUSTRATED beyond belief that so many in the church are so quick to put their faith in the disease management industry and not take on the doctors and medical establishment, but also don’t demand access to complementary therapies. JESUS is God, and it’s by HIS stripes that we ARE HEALED, and we have the right and responsibility to take the best care of what we have been given as we can.
(Don’t get me wrong. I know many fabulous and talented people in the industry, but medicine has become an industry business that cannot see past the $$$ signs to see the person behind the illness, and the primary function of the pharmaceutical companies is to earn money for their share-holders, so will NEVER invest in research that would put them out of business: in fact it’s the opposite, where they will not hesitate to use ANY and all resources available to stop that from happening, even if several tens of thousands – actually FAR MORE – people die at their hands or from their drugs. It’s an accepted fact that more people die from iatrogenesis, or as a result of their medical treatment, than from any of the diseases the medical system is supposed to be treating.)
INFORMATION. The church, (YOUR church?,) would be doing a MAJOR service in putting information out there that people can actually use. As for Mark Warara, it may be too late for him, but call up Ronnie Hawkins and ask him how HE was cured of incurable pancreatic cancer back in 2003. He will tell you about Adam McLeod, a (then) 15 year old kid from Coquitlam who called him up out of the blue and asked if he would like to be “worked on.” Adam (aka: Dreamhealer), went on to become a naturopathic doctors and now ONLY works with oncology patients.)
Then there’s German New Medicine, Hulda Clark “Cure’s for All Diseases” Rife Technology, (DR. Royal Raymond Rife was winning all sorts of accolades for curing ALL his cancer patients, back in the 1930s before the powers that be moved in and put him out of business. Look him up.
BTW. I could go on. For example, What do mainstream churches say about 9/11? DR. Judy Woods wrote a book from a totally technical point of view called “Where Did The Towers Go?” which destroys the “OFFICIAL” version of events. Then there is FREE ENERGY. Nicola Tesla, anyone?
As an aside, does the BIBLE list the names of the Giants, men of renown mentioned in Genesis? Some of them, but otherwise you would have to turn to the keys of Enoch. The names of the Angels? Doreen Virtue, who recently came to faith herself has been writing about them for decades, How about the dates that we celebrate Christmas, Pass-over, Easter, Etc? Do churches teach the truth about their pagan symbols, or the real dates of the birth of Christ? (Likely around the first of NISAN, in late March. You can thank the Coca Cola Company for Santa Claus.) How about the Sign of Jonah? (Christians would know about it, but not what it is, as in probably the total solar eclipse of June 25, 736, (or thereabouts, but had the whole population totally spooked.) The same thing happened right before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The last one over the U.S. entered in Salem, OR, left Salem N.C, and crossed over seven others en route. There is another one in April of 2024, the two forming a nice X marks the spot right over Missouri.
……………..
My point? I left my Baptist church a few decades ago, thoroughly disgusted with what I saw. Today, as I am re-entering the world of churches, I am ONLY doing so because of what I have learned from the Bible and know where this story ends. IF the BIBLE and all my OTHER sources are correct, we are VERY NEAR to the fulfillment of the Biblical end-times prophecies ranging from Genesis to Revelation regarding end-times, and “THE CHURCH” needs to stop being a part of the problem, get off its collective back-side, and start making a real difference: taking on those forces such as the banks, the pharmaceutical companies and even Caesar, to whom we are supposed to be rendering what is his (in this case, our very lives and those of OUR children), but LEGALLY Caesar is broke and needs US to pay off his debts.
The BIBLE has given the churches very specific directives, and Christ himself was absolutely brutal in the way he treated the “leaders” of his time. He also said not to be fooled, that he was not coming to bring PEACE, but a Sword. Our city needs ALL its churches to unite and GET BACK TO THE BIBLE, so at the very least, how about a NEW movement based on (Charles M.) Sheldon’s book, In His Steps?
Kudos to all those who ARE making a difference, but can’t we all do a little better if we focus more on Christ Himself? What would HE have us do??