“It takes something more to create a society than acknowledging our differences” Farrow told the opening session of a McGill University Newman Club academic conference which attracted more than 100 scholars to talk about “Pluralism, Politics and God?” Sept. 13-15 in Montreal.

What bothers Farrow about the ideal of multiculturalism so often praised by Canadian politicians and media is that its cornerstone is tolerance, and mere tolerance is a negative value, he told The Catholic Register. For Farrow, toleration of other people, other cultures and other religions is at best passive, intended to avoid the evils of race riots and ethnic cleansing. It isn’t a positive ideal for which the nation can strive.

“You can’t build a society on that negative principle,” he said.

For the conservative culture warrior — author of A Nation of Bastards and co-editor of Ashgate’s Great Theologians series — the negative principle of toleration driving Canadian multiculturalism naturally implies godlessness, a nation only just restrained in its contempt of a bare remnant of religion. Farrow’s Canada has become less a nation than an agglomeration of individuals without reference to any transcendent ideal.

“Any unity you have is extremely superficial if you reject all reference to the transcendent,” he said.

Forget that old image of Canada as two solitudes. What Farrow calls “the invention of the doctrine of multiculturalism” has reduced Canada to “a plurality of communities that are in a way a multitude of solitudes.”

At the McGill conference Farrow made his case against multiculturalism among philosophers, historians, theologians and lawyers from Hong Kong, Louvain, Baltimore, Rome, Edinburgh and Spokane. Meanwhile, just beyond McGill’s pretty campus, Quebec society was staring down “reasonable accommodation” in a province-wide round of hearings under the guidance of political philosopher Charles Taylor and civil servant Gerard Bouchard.

In Rouyn-Noranda Gerard Crété told the commission the secular state Quebec had created on the heels of the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s should not be compromised one millimetre to accommodate the immigrants’ religions. Muslims and others should be forced to integrate more fully with Quebec society, Crété told the commission.

“I don’t want people coming to Quebec to be isolated in their own institutions, either. I want them to be Quebecois like me,” he told the Montreal Gazette.

Of course it isn’t just in Quebec that the principles of multiculturalism and diversity are suddenly contentious. Ontario’s tolerance for religious diversity is up for grabs in the debate over funding non-Catholic religious schools. The latest Environics poll on the issue found that less than half (48 per cent) of Ontarians believe non-Catholics deserve the same right to religious education funding as Catholics. That compares with 71 per cent who told pollsters that other religions should get the same education funding as Catholics in November 1986.

Multiculturalism also stands accused in the debate over whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils when they vote.

Conference speakers frequently linked multiculturalism with a militant, aggressive secularism which excludes religion from the public square, delegitimizing religion both politically and culturally. At a session called “Religion, sex and the city” the academics questioned whether a multicultural, pluralist society has what it takes to sustain or promote public morality. At another session a scholar asked, “Can reason deliver us from evil?” On balance, the scholar concluded “no.” A graduate student attacked the orthodox cant of multiculturalism, accusing Canadians of deceiving immigrants with a neutral, open invitation to enter Canadian society.

“When a society such as Canada maintains the fiction that one need not sacrifice anything to become Canadian, a schizoid condition is created,” declared Concordia University’s Andrew Renahan. “The implied idea behind multiculturalism is that somehow we can exist separately together.”

Not all the scholars despaired of multiculturalism. Director of the University of Toronto multi-faith centre Richard Chambers warned against a “liberalism of fear, or at least of wariness,” but urged his colleagues to recognize that religious pluralism simply represents the facts on the ground — turning away from multiculturalism would mean ignoring reality.

The plurality of faiths has created opportunities in Canada, said Chambers. Coalitions of faiths have jointly made their case to governments about same-sex marriage, poverty and the welfare state, war and criminal justice. Such exercises in lobbying and public protest demonstrate how multiculturalism creates space for faiths to contribute to public debate, even if the faiths don't always win.

“Usually, people of faith are calling for social justice,” said Chambers. “It's not about competing theologies.”

Neither do the faiths always agree, but they do present themselves in the public square as representing tradition, community and a consciousness formed by more than utilitarian calculation.

“It is a counterweight to Enlightenment individualism,” he said.

On the question of public morality, the founder of the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law saw no conflict between genuine multiculturalism and public morality. Public morality requires shared ethics, and multiculturalism affords a forum for sharing, said Margaret Somerville.

“We have to struggle to create it,” she said. “Finding shared ethics is a process, not an event.”

As a process, shared ethics is full of uncertainty and complexity. It will always disturb those who insist on immediate, simple, black-and-white answers that cannot be contested, said Somerville.

“We have to learn to live more comfortably with uncertainty,” she said.

It is not as though these are exclusively Canadian issues, said American scholar Alex Rosenthal. The Johns Hopkins University professor looks around him in the United States and sees the same debates, the same questions about how society can profit from difference while maintaining a sense of identity and a common value system.

“It certainly seems to be a global concern,” said Rosenthal. “I'm not sure it's even a recent issue.”

McGill University constitutional law professor Rod McDonald urged people to know the value that religious ideals add to the multicultural mix.

“Societies that seem to be the most tolerant are societies with the most deeply held religious convictions,” he said.