On Feb. 4, Jesuit-run Loyola High School announced it was seeking leave to appeal a recent Quebec Court of Appeal decision reinstating the Quebec education minister’s ruling the school must teach the province’s mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture program (ERC).
“The Minister’s argument that it would be impossible to teach tolerance, goodwill and good citizenship from a confessional perspective is absurd,” said a Loyola news release. “Catholic education in general and Jesuit education in particular, have produced a whole spectrum of intellectually competent individuals who made, and continue to make, a difference in the world.”
Loyola principal Paul Donovan asked whether the goal of secularizing public schools should extend to confessional schools as well.
He called it “remarkable” the “Quebec Attorney General has gone on public record saying that religious corporations, such as Loyola, do not even enjoy freedom of religion.”
“According to this position, only individuals possess freedom of religion,” said Donovan. Religious corporations do not and “the state can restrict their religious practice and belief as much as it wishes.
“This would mean that the numerous religious groups in the province are entirely at the mercy of the state,” he said. “This is completely contrary to Canada’s tradition of religious freedom as we understand it.”
“The Supreme Court has never judged whether a corporation or legal person has religious rights,” said John Zucchi, who has been a co-plaintiff with the school as a parent.
If this matter is not settled, Zucchi warned the state could also begin interfering with other religious institutions such as churches.
“Unlike virtually all other schools, Loyola had a program in place already teaching what the ERC purports to teach,” Zucchi said. “We are not here trying to defend some kind of hypothetical right. We have had the equivalent of the ERC for a couple of generations.
“Now the ministry is saying the school no longer has the right to run this program. There is something wrong here. We hope the Supreme Court recognizes there is a right that has been taken away.”
Loyola is asking the Supreme Court “where the line must be drawn between the State’s interest in education and the rights of institutions to act in conformity with their religious mission, beliefs and character.” Forcing Loyola to teach the ERC as is would violate its canonical requirements as a Catholic institution.
“The ministerial program is resolutely non-confessional. It expressly forbids the instructor to discuss God or faith. It requires him or her to discuss religion as a cultural phenomenon,” says the school memorandum to the court. “It prohibits the instructor from expressing his or her personal views on any religious or ethical question from advancing any one position as the favoured one.”
The Catholic Civil Rights League has indicated it will seek to intervene in the case if the appeal is granted.
“Because this case raises questions that are pivotal to Catholic education as well as to religious freedom, the League plans to apply to intervene if the appeal is allowed,” it said in a news release.
Marie Bourque of the Association of Catholic Parents of Quebec said her organization has not decided yet whether it will intervene but said it has “a big interest” in the case.
“The Appeal Court said you cannot promote the common good or the pursuit of the common good and the recognition of other through a Catholic perspective,”
Bourque said. “It declares you must be neutral and relativist.” Bourque called for more freedom and more competition for excellence and less ideology in the schools.