Canada Imposes Relativism and Denies Freedom of Religion

[Alan]

Canada imposes relativism and denies freedom of religion

2-27-2012 | Fr. Peter Scott

A unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada on Friday, February 17, 2012, has taken upon itself to impose upon all children in Quebec, even without parental consent and in direct opposition to its refusal, a course of religious instruction that denies the objective truth of any religion. It concerns the Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) program, implemented in the province of Quebec as of September 2008, which presents side by side all the world’s religions. With unheard of dictatorial power, the province’s Ministry of Education imposed this program on all children in grades 1–11, including those in private schools and home-schooled children.

This program was legally contested by a Catholic family in Quebec, aided by the Coalition for Freedom in Education. Having lost the case in the Quebec courts, they appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which agreed to hear the case in July 2011, delivering its ruling on February 17, 2012, rejecting the family’s request for exemption from the ERC program. The unanimous decision was written by Justice Marie Deschamps, on behalf of herself and six other judges, arguing that the course does not infringe on a particular set of religious beliefs because it remains neutral to religion (LifeSiteNews.com, February 17). She furthermore had this to say:

Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of [the parents]... State neutrality is assured when the state neither favours nor hinders any particular religious belief, that is, when it show respect for all postures towards religion, including that of having no religious beliefs whatsoever. (LifeSiteNews.com of February 20).

Major progressivist steps

This is a major step in the progressive elimination of religion from society, and in the development of an always more radical and more anti-Catholic secularism. There are two main problems with this decision, both in the purely natural order.

The first is that it strips parents of all rights in the religious education of their own children. By imposing this program on every child, the government and the court have stolen from parents their responsibility and their right in the natural law to take care of the education of their children. This is a position no less perverse than that of the communist dictatorships of the past hundred years, and entirely destroys the natural fabric of society, making of the child a possession of the state rather than the responsibility of parents.

The second major problem concerns the content of the program, which is anything but neutral, and which certainly does constitute an indoctrination. The indoctrination is precisely that all the religions are equal, that no one is right or wrong, and that truth and falsehood are unattainable in matter of religion, which is rather a question of personal preference or arbitrary choice. These principles destroy most particularly the Catholic Faith, but secondarily all religion, the only ones profiting being those who have “no religious beliefs whatsoever”, in favour of whom this program was designed.

Burden of proof shifted

The family’s lawyer, Jean-Yves Cote, pointed out that the courts have changed the burden of proof. Whereas formerly it was necessary to show that a program went against the parents’ sincerely held faith, now it is necessary to show that a child’s participation in a course would impede their ability to raise him in their Catholic Faith, or as the court put it, they must provide evidence that it has “interfered with their ability to pass their faith on to their children”. (Ib.) He further points out that what is totally new about this approach is that it requires an objective proof or evidence that the freedom of religion of the plaintiff is infringed. From the Catholic perspective, there can be no doubt that such a relativist program harming the Faith of the children. However, it is impossible to prove this to a court that does not admit any argument based upon religion. Consequently, by refusing the parents’ objection of conscience as an argument in itself, the court removes from the parents any possible basis for requesting exemption from this ignominious law. It truly imposes the relativism of this course and makes it obligatory for all children, and both parents’ rights and the freedom to practice the Catholic Faith are consequently utterly denied.

Ecumenism to blame

How did the formerly so-Catholic province of Quebec descend to such a level as to wrest away from parents the right to give their children a Catholic education? LifeSiteNews gives a hint to this when it quotes the original ruling of Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois, based largely on the testimony of a priest-theologian from Laval University, Fr. Gilles Routhier, who emphasized the Catholic Church’s respect for people of other faiths, and a statement from the Quebec Bishops’ Assembly that exemptions from the course would not be warranted a priori, that is without actual evidence of harm. Thus Justice Dubois wrote: “The court does not see how a Catholic child who attends the ERC course could be violated in his conscience and his religion. Even the leaders of the Catholic Church admit the validity of an objective presentation of other religions”.Consequently, there can be no doubt that this decision is the direct effect of the post-conciliar practice of Ecumenism, and of the indifferentism that it breeds, and that if the bishops and the Catholic Church in Quebec had resisted strongly, it would never have been implemented in the first place. It would seem that the only objection that the modernists can make is if after 15–20 years they finally discover the actual evidence of harm, namely that their children have all lost the Faith. This is precisely what happened after Vatican II, and they still do not understand the relation of cause to effect.

There is, however, some reaction from the hierarchy—although too little and too late. The Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education did write a letter, used as evidence in the trial, stating that “if religious education is limited to a presentation of the different religions, in a comparative and ‘neutral’ way, it creates confusion or generates religious relativism or indifferentism...The rights of parents are violated, if their children are forced to attend lessons or instructions which are not in agreement with their religious beliefs”. Cardinal Ouellet, former Archbishop of Quebec, even described this ERC program as “the dictatorship of relativism applied beginning in elementary school”. (Ib.) This dictatorship has gone so far that the Ministry of Education has sued Loyola High School, a Jesuit boys’ school in Montreal, because it dared to incorporate the obligatory ERC course into the context of the Catholic Faith, that is because it dared to affirm the truth of its faith while at the same time teaching about other faiths. The legal battle in this case is ongoing, but the attack on the Catholic Faith is frightening.

As always, it is the weakness of the faithful and of the shepherds that it is the devil’s tool to bring about the destruction of souls, the loss of Faith, and the overturning of any semblance of recognition of God’s rights over families and society.

 

source

[Alan]

This is infuriating!

[Dawn Marie]

U.S. homeschoolers wary of Canadian bill

Posted on Mar 13, 2012 | by Erin Roach

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- Homeschool defenders in the United States are wary of proposed legislation in Alberta, Canada, that could set a philosophical precedent for government intrusion into what parents are allowed to teach their homeschooled children.

"This is concerning to us because this is the first time we've seen anything like this on North American soil, where a government has actually proposed to include homeschools in a law that would constrain what parents could teach their children or to alternatively require them to teach something in a certain way," Michael Donnelly, staff attorney for the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association, told Baptist Press.

At issue is section 16 of Alberta's proposed Education Act, which states, "All courses or programs of study offered and instructional materials used in a school must reflect the diverse nature and heritage of society in Alberta, promote understanding and respect for others and honour and respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Human Rights Act."

In the Education Act, homeschools are considered schools, and the Human Rights Act has been used in Canada to target Christians and conservatives who believe homosexual behavior is wrong.

The U.S.-based LifeSiteNews presented Alberta Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk's assistant director of communications with a test case regarding the proposed legislation and was told that faith-based schools and homeschooling families would not be allowed to teach that homosexual behavior is a sin.

"You can affirm the family's ideology in your family life, you just can't do it as part of your educational study and instruction," Donna McColl, the education minister's staffer, said.

Days later, after receiving a substantial number of complaints and after about 500 homeschool supporters gathered for a rally at the Alberta legislature March 5, Lukaszuk distanced himself from his spokeswoman's comments.

"This government in no way would ever want to interfere in what families [may] discuss or not discuss in their homes," Lukaszuk, who was present at the rally, said. "From a legal perspective ... those concerns, even though real in their hearts and their minds, are not substantiated in the act.

"There is no intention to ever infringe on their rights. They do not have to change their homeschooling practices in any way," Lukaszuk said. "Whether they're homeschooling children or not, we as government would not step into people's kitchen and tell them what they can or cannot discuss."

Paul Faris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association in Canada, said the proposed legislation should be amended to avoid misinterpretations such as McColl's by other government officials.

"Quite frankly, I don't care what the government's intentions are," Faris said, according to LifeSiteNews. "I want to know what the law says because ultimately it's what's written in the law that's going to matter.

"Even if this government does have good intentions, if a different government gets in with nefarious intentions, they've got that law sitting there waiting for them to use."

Patty Marler, a government liaison for the Alberta Home Education Association, wondered how the government could differentiate between home education time and family time.

"We educate our children all the time, and that's just the way we live. It's a lifestyle," Marler said. "Making that distinction between the times when we're homeschooling and when we're just living is really hard to do."

The HSLDA in the United States has called on its members to contact Alberta's legislative assembly and ask them not to move the law forward, Donnelly said.

"People have sort of focused on the homosexuality aspect of this, but there is certainly much more to it than that. The biggest issue from my perspective is ... there is also a free speech issue here and a line that the government in Alberta is crossing where they are attempting to in a sense seize the parents and make them government employees," Donnelly told BP.

"They're ... essentially saying that parents who teach their children at home are just state employees teaching their children," he said. "It's absurd. We're concerned about it, and we want to help the Alberta homeschoolers to defeat this very bad legislation."

Donnelly mentioned California becoming the first state last summer to mandate the teaching of gay history in public schools, requiring social science classes to include the "role and contributions" of "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans."

"You see increasing attempts across the country by legislators -- Massachusetts too -- to impose teaching requirements on public schools," Donnelly said. "From there the next step is private schools and then incorporating homeschools.

"So it certainly appears to be part of a larger plan. I don't know that there's any kind of conspiracy or they're connected with one another, but there certainly seems to be an agenda to try to control what children learn from the government," Donnelly said. "That certainly is a very serious concern. One of the things we pay attention to here is watching legislatures in all 50 states to make sure they don't do things like this."

Internationally, homeschoolers are not seeing a lot of positive developments, Donnelly said, though Brazil is in the early stages of considering legislation to recognize homeschooling.

"Brazil is a place where homeschoolers have had difficulties," he said.

In Germany and Sweden in particular, homeschooling families have fled to other countries as they faced persecution including harassment, insurmountable fines and separation of families for not sending their children to government-sanctioned schools.

"I think linking what's happened in Germany and Sweden to what's happening in Alberta is appropriate. These are examples of governments that are trying to impose a totalitarian view on society through education by not permitting viable alternatives to parents through private schools that are truly independent and by preventing parents from teaching their children at home," Donnelly said. "That's what the actions of those countries represent."

source CFN and Baptist Press