The view of the Attorney General of Quebec is that corporations don’t enjoy religious freedom protections under either the Quebec or Canadian Charter of Rights. When the Supreme Court hears Loyola’s appeal March 24, the school will argue the state is violating the right of the school to be thoroughly and authentically Catholic.
A Quebec Court of Appeal decision last December, overturning Loyola’s original win in the Quebec Superior Court, held that the Ministry of Education could require that the province’s Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) program be taught from a secular point of view and this does not infringe on the right of parents to raise their children as Catholics. The infringement on Loyola’s right to be a Catholic school was trivial, according to the court.
Teachers were not being asked to “refute the teachings of the Catholic religion, but to refrain from expressing their opinion or belief,” said the judgment.
“This comes down to a misunderstanding of what religion actually is,” said Donovan in an interview with The Catholic Register. “It’s part of your identity. It’s part of who you are. On any other issue, if you were to say, ‘Suspend your identity for two hours, it’s only two hours a week. You can be yourself the rest of the time, but just not for these two hours,’ that would be considered unacceptable by most people.”
The Hamilton, Ont.-based Cardus think tank has backed the Loyola legal fight on the grounds it has implications for the whole country, said Cardus publications and media director Peter Stockland.
“What we’re saying is that this is not simply a Quebec issue. It’s not just a Catholic issue. It’s an understanding of how far governments can go to dictate what children are taught even within private religious schools,” Stockland said.
As a Jesuit school, Loyola isn’t teaching the ERC program as a matter of rote learning from a catechism. The Jesuit tradition of disputatio and debate is a high value in the school. However, the students are expected to understand and grapple with Catholic teaching as they delve into any topic.
“To be told now you can (teach world religions) but you’ve got to divorce yourself from your own traditions is problematic,” said Donovan.
He admits that Loyola Catholic teachers could have simply closed the classroom door and taught the course any way they pleased.
“You’re not going to have a ministry official standing in the classroom seeing whether you’re bringing your perspective into all of this,” he said. “The reason we’re going this route is to say that what this says about society and the direction we’re going in is not something we agree with.”
As with the Quebec Charter of Values debate over religious dress and symbols in the public service, at issue is whether Quebec will embrace an open or closed secularism, said Donovan. An open secularism encourages people of all faiths or no faith, both as individuals and as groups, to contribute to society. Closed secularism would insist that all public life be conducted as if religion doesn’t exist — keeping religion locked behind doors in churches, synagogues, mosques and homes.
The Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation advocated open secularism, but both Liberal and Parti Quebecois governments have since opted for an increasingly narrow interpretation of secularism, said Donovan.
Stockland drew parallels with the fight over homosexuality and anti-bullying programs in Ontario schools, where the province decided gay-straight alliances must be approved in Catholic schools. Catholic schools were not free to deal with bullying on their own terms, he said.
“If people think it isn’t coming here and it doesn’t matter to them, they need to think again because this is government reaching across the boundary,” Stockland said. “The implications for a Catholic education in Ontario are very, very significant.”