Msgr. Vincent Foy: the 101-year-old priest who refused to be silent about betrayals in the Church
by Lianne Laurence
TORONTO, March 14, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian Catholics are mourning the loss of one of the local Church’s most ardent defenders of life. Monsignor Vincent Foy, who died March 13 from natural causes at age 101, is remembered especially for his decades-long battle to promote the Church’s authentic teaching on procreation.
A canon lawyer and priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto for 78 years, Msgr. Foy was “an inveterate defender of the sacredness of all human life, especially that of unborn babies,” said Basilian Father Alphonse de Valk, former editor of The Interim and founding editor of Catholic Insight Magazine.
“His greatest and most courageous contribution to Canada’s pro-life cause came when he decided that he could no longer be silent about the betrayal by a large majority of Canada’s bishops” of the Church’s teaching on contraception, Fr. de Valk told LifeSiteNews.
That betrayal came in the form of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 1968 Winnipeg Statement, released two months after Pope Paul VI publishedHumanae Vitae in July 1968, which reaffirmed Catholic teaching that contraception is intrinsically evil.
In the Winnipeg Statement, the bishops “contradicted and opposed” Humanae Vitae, “virtually nullifying the encyclical in large part in North America and elsewhere,” said Fr. de Valk.
The “bishops fell into the trap of moral relativism,” Msgr. Foy wrote in Tragedy at Winnipeg, his major critique of the document first published in Challenge Magazine in 1988.
It gives a play-by-play account of the lead-up to and fall out from the Statement’s publication on September 27, 1968, which Foy described as “the saddest day in the history of the Catholic Church in Canada.”
The Statement’s Paragraph 26 tells Catholics if they sincerely try but cannot follow Church teaching in this matter, “whoever chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”
Msgr. Foy was unflagging in his opposition to the Winnipeg Statement, even though “he often seemed like a lone voice” speaking out against it, “with many Canadian Catholics welcoming the document,” noted a 2014 LifeSiteNews article.
“Despite advice that he was wasting his time, reprint after reprint appeared, article after article continued to savage contraception,” de Valk told LifeSiteNews.
TORONTO, March 14, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian Catholics are mourning the loss of one of the local Church’s most ardent defenders of life. Monsignor Vincent Foy, who died March 13 from natural causes at age 101, is remembered especially for his decades-long battle to promote the Church’s authentic teaching on procreation.
A canon lawyer and priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto for 78 years, Msgr. Foy was “an inveterate defender of the sacredness of all human life, especially that of unborn babies,” said Basilian Father Alphonse de Valk, former editor of The Interim and founding editor of Catholic Insight Magazine.
“His greatest and most courageous contribution to Canada’s pro-life cause came when he decided that he could no longer be silent about the betrayal by a large majority of Canada’s bishops” of the Church’s teaching on contraception, Fr. de Valk told LifeSiteNews.
That betrayal came in the form of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 1968 Winnipeg Statement, released two months after Pope Paul VI publishedHumanae Vitae in July 1968, which reaffirmed Catholic teaching that contraception is intrinsically evil.
In the Winnipeg Statement, the bishops “contradicted and opposed” Humanae Vitae, “virtually nullifying the encyclical in large part in North America and elsewhere,” said Fr. de Valk.
The “bishops fell into the trap of moral relativism,” Msgr. Foy wrote in Tragedy at Winnipeg, his major critique of the document first published in Challenge Magazine in 1988.
It gives a play-by-play account of the lead-up to and fall out from the Statement’s publication on September 27, 1968, which Foy described as “the saddest day in the history of the Catholic Church in Canada.”
The Statement’s Paragraph 26 tells Catholics if they sincerely try but cannot follow Church teaching in this matter, “whoever chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”
Msgr. Foy was unflagging in his opposition to the Winnipeg Statement, even though “he often seemed like a lone voice” speaking out against it, “with many Canadian Catholics welcoming the document,” noted a 2014 LifeSiteNews article.
“Despite advice that he was wasting his time, reprint after reprint appeared, article after article continued to savage contraception,” de Valk told LifeSiteNews.
‘A hero in every sense of the word’
“Monsignor Foy was a hero in every sense of the word,” noted John-Henry Westen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.
“He battled on the most difficult field, against his own confreres in the hierarchy who refused to remain true to the teaching of the Church on the intrinsic evil of contraception.”
“Through his writings and clarity he likely saved countless souls,” added Westen.
“Not only of those Catholics who would otherwise have been led astray into a false vision of their warped consciences as supreme arbiter, but also the souls of clergy who would otherwise have misled many of the faithful resulting in their own damnation.”
“He was solid as a rock,” echoed Jim Hughes, president of Campaign Life Coalition, who knew Msgr. Foy for 50 years.
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