Church and state separation a road that runs two ways

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/06/2010 (5580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IN conflicts involving the separation of church and state in Canadian society, the quarrel is usually that the church is attempting to interfere with or impose its will on the state.

Abortion is perhaps the classic example, with churches opposed to the deliberate termination of pregnancies lobbying politicians to make that practice illegal, although without much success — Canada is the only nation in the world that has no law whatsoever that places limits on abortion.

Another is the Quebec controversy over women wearing traditional Islamic dress in public places, dress that often covers the head or conceals the face. Allowing — or rather — prohibiting prayer in schools is one of the most frequent sources of controversy.

Governments may forbid, and usually do, prayer in public schools, but judging by a recent case in Quebec, they have no compunctions about imposing secular or opposing lessons in ethics on both public schools and, more tellingly, private schools, which are commonly religious in nature.

The Quebec government recently imposed a regulation requiring all schools — public and private — to teach a course in something called “secular ethics” as well the values of all the world’s major religions, from Buddhism to First Nations spirituality.

A Catholic school run by Jesuits appealed the ruling as an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state. Last Friday, Superior Court Judge Gerard Dugre struck down the law, saying that it not only violated Loyola High School’s religious freedoms but that it was “totalitarian” in its nature.

“The obligation imposed on Loyola to teach the ethics and religious culture course in a lay fashion assumes a totalitarian character essentially equivalent to Galileo’s being ordered by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican universe,” the judge said.

The ruling is highly contentious. Public schools that object to the original coercive law fear that this ruling will only apply to private schools in Quebec. The Quebec government, which has been on a bit of an anti-religious kick these days, immediately vowed to appeal the ruling.

Canadians, however, should welcome Mr. Justice Dugre’s decision. It marks one of the few times in modern Canadian history that a court has recognized that the separation of church and state is meant to work both ways, not only to keep the priests out of public institutions, but also to exclude politicians from parishes.