Tuesday June 29, 2010
Quebec Bishops Welcome Court Ruling Upholding Religious Ed
By Patrick B. Craine
QUEBEC, June 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Quebec Bishops Assembly has applauded the province’s Superior Court’s June 18 ruling upholding the right of a Catholic private school to teach religion and morality within a Catholic context.
In a Monday letter, Bishop Martin Veillette of Trois-Rivières praised Justice Gerard Dugré’s decision to allow Loyola High School, a Catholic boys’ school in the Jesuit tradition, to offer Quebec’s highly controversial and rigorously secular ethics and religious culture program from a faith perspective.
“This ruling sheds new light on a very complex issue and opens new avenues for those interested in establishing, in our schools, a true formation in pluralism and religious diversity,” wrote the assembly president on Monday.
Loyola High School launched their case against the Quebec government in June 2009 after the ministry refused to bend on the mandatory and secular nature of the course. The school, which has taught world religions for decades, did not seek an exemption, but merely permission to teach the course from a Catholic perspective. The ministry refused, however, maintaining that such an approach would represent a religious bias.
Justice Dugré wrote that the ministry’s efforts to impose the course on Loyola assumed “a totalitarian character essentially equivalent to Galileo’s being ordered by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican universe.”
“In this age of the respect of fundamental rights, of tolerance, reasonable accommodation and multiculturalism, the attitude adopted by [Education Minister Michelle Courchesne], is surprising,” he added.
According to Bishop Veillette, Loyola’s program shows that the ERC course’s two main goals – the respect of others and the pursuit of the common good – “are not threatened when they are initiated in a setting of serious faith.”
“No one is better prepared to accommodate in matters of faith and beliefs than he or she who has learned to find in his own spiritual and religious identity the foundations of hospitality, respect, and dialogue,” he maintained.
Leading up to the implementation of the course in the fall of 2008, the bishops assembly expressed concern about the course, but nevertheless committed to “an attitude of openness and caution” for a three to five year period. At that time, they indicated a disapproval of exemptions to the course, saying that would require “very serious reasons,” and that the ERC “does not seem to be open to such a priori objection.”
That statement ultimately helped to further the goals of the ministry, as it was cited by the Superior Court judge in Drummondville who denied the exemption request of a Catholic family in August 2009. The family’s case was later rejected by the Quebec Court of Appeal, and they are currently seeking to bring their case before Canada’s Supreme Court.
In September 2009, Bishop Veillette issued the bishops’ first year assessment of the course, expressing serious concern over the lack of parental involvement, the downplaying of Quebec’s Christian heritage, and the poor training of teachers. At that juncture, they renewed their pledge to monitor the course.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Archbishop of Quebec City and Primate of Canada, has been a fierce opponent of the course, however, denouncing it as “the dictatorship of relativism applied beginning in elementary school.”
Concluding his letter, Bishop Veillette quoted from the bishops’ letter to the Ministry of Education in March 2008, when they emphasized the need for choice in religious education. “The Assembly of bishops has always expressed its preference for the respect of the choice of parents in matters of religious and moral education,” they wrote. “That is why we have favoured establishing a regime of options between faith-based teaching and moral teaching without a religious dimension.”
“This freedom of choice will disappear with the introduction of the new program,” they continued. “This represents, in our eyes, a loss and we estimate it will require great attention to ensure full freedom of conscience in the new context that has been created.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Judge: Quebec Gvmt ‘Totalitarian’ in Imposing Relativism Course
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062110.html
Quebec Bishops ‘Concerned’ With Compulsory Course in Relativism, Will Continue ‘Monitoring’
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09092406.html