Catholic School in Quebec Loses Religious Freedom Case

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Loyola High School, a Catholic school in Quebec, Canada, has been ordered by a court to teach a government-imposed ethics and culture course that is at odds with Catholic teaching. The school is considering appealing this order to Canada’s Supreme Court.
en.radiovaticana.va/articolo.asp?c=646129
 
If they ultimately lose, they should seriously consider some civil disobedience (nonviolent, of course). I think that is what it is eventually going to come down to in Canada and the US, perhaps Europe as well if not all is lost there.
 
Very sad, but it’s not surprising in the least. Quebec has a very left-leaning government even by Canada’s standards and has shown on numerous occaisons that it will violate supposedly democratic freedom of speech values to enforce a tyranny of secularism.

The problem with Canada is that it enshrines secularism as some kind of “religiously neutral” position and a sound Catholic faith is “that thing” that you do on your own time but keep quiet about when your out in the “real world”. If Catholic values and secularism ever conflict, secularism wins by default because there’s no way that “God actually exists, afterall…” 😦

The devil is the author of secularism and he knows that you don’t convince others by presenting your point of view as being one of a set of acceptable alternatives. Secularism is forced on us as the correct belief and authentic Catholic teaching is at the very least treated with disdain and it’s now starting to be legally surpressed in Canada.

Catholics need to wake up. We have no business referring to Catholicism as “our personal beliefs”, or asking for “religious freedoms”… Catholicism is the divinely established Truth and there is no provision for any belief that conflicts with it. When Christ said the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church, He wasn’t suggesting that the Church would merely withstand Satan’s attacks (since when do “gates” attack something?). Christ intended for his Church to declare war on and destroy those gates. Secularism is nothing but a sick twisted set of beliefs that promotes sodomy and child murder and it needs to be purged from our society.
 
So it begins… :cool:

Catholics in the western hemisphere have been sitting on their laurels for far too long now.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen and Patroness of the Americas, Pray for us who have recourse to Thee!!

St. Joseph, Pray for us!!

St. Andre Besette, Pray for us!!
 
Is Loyola a tax funded school? It is becoming a problem for Catholic schools to be tax funded because when they are they have to abide by what the government says they must teach
 
_Abyssinia said:
Is Loyola a tax funded school?
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According to the Canadian newspaper The Catholic Register, it is a private Catholic high school.

The Catholic Register article notes that the Quebec Minister of Education ordered Loyola High School to use the mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture course because its intent is to foster tolerance and dialogue. In response, Marie Bourque, vice president of the Association of Catholic Parents of Quebec, claimed that Loyola’s course was more comprehensive, examined the historical roots of various faiths and their philosophical underpinnings. Loyola’s course also brought in a Muslim iman and a Jewish rabbi to explain their beliefs.

Whether or not to appeal the ruling will be made after a thorough study of the court’s decision:
The plaintiffs have 60 days to decide whether to seek leave to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. Zucchi said they are still reviewing the issues raised by the Court of Appeal’s decision with their lawyers. A the decision will be made in the New Year, he said.
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The court ruled it is a minimal intrusion on religious freedom to require for one hour a day a teacher step outside of his or her Catholic faith and adopt a neutral position as the ERC requires. The decision said the school is free to teach from a confessional standpoint outside ERC program time.
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The Court of Appeal relied on arguments in last spring’s Supreme Court of Canada’s Drummondville Parents’ decision that said the parents who wished to have their children exempted from the ERC at the public school on religious freedom grounds had not sufficiently proven the course would harm their ability to pass on their Catholic faith.
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catholicregister.org/news/canada/item/15542-quebec-school-ruling-another-blow-to-catholic-education
 
In a video statement, Paul Donovan, the principal of Loyola High School, said that the reason they have pursued this case it because it concerns the role of religious education in an increasingly secular society. The questions are important, far larger than Loyola High School, and he feels those questions have not been answered.
youtube.com/watch?v=YtHa6ARwjJg

It sounds as if he wants to appeal.

BTW, here is a link the the website of Loyola High School
loyola.ca/
 
Dale_M said:
According to the Canadian newspaper The Catholic Register, it is a private Catholic high school.

The Catholic Register article notes that the Quebec Minister of Education ordered Loyola High School to use the mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture course because its intent is to foster tolerance and dialogue. In response, Marie Bourque, vice president of the Association of Catholic Parents of Quebec, claimed that Loyola’s course was more comprehensive, examined the historical roots of various faiths and their philosophical underpinnings. Loyola’s course also brought in a Muslim iman and a Jewish rabbi to explain their beliefs.

Whether or not to appeal the ruling will be made after a thorough study of the court’s decision:

catholicregister.org/news/canada/item/15542-quebec-school-ruling-another-blow-to-catholic-education
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Govement can tell what a private school should teach?

:eek:
 
For the non-Canadians reading this story I feel as though I should provide some context. While its true that Canada is basically a giant, secular monster the province of Quebec is twice as bad. Quebec is paranoid about preserving their own culture and will go to extraordinary means to preserve it. The culture of Quebec is about as liberal and secular as you can get and apparently this Catholic school was not complying.

If you think the situation is bad in Quebec for Catholics you should try being a Muslim. Whereas the Catholic Church has a great deal of protection for historical reasons, Islam is naked against the storm. An excellent area where our respective faith cultures could help one another.

Onto the topic as a whole. I find it interesting that the struggle wasn’t over some controversial issue (ala abortion or homosexuality) but over the way something is taught. If the Quebec government isn’t going to allow a Catholic school to teach from a Catholic perspective then they should disallow Catholic schools. Let there be no ambiguity.

A sad day for freedom in general.
 
Very sad indeed. If they don’t win, let them simply close the school or move it to another state.
 
kelvinf said:
Very sad indeed. If they don’t win, let them simply close the school or move it to another state.
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Closing the school seems drastic. Moving the school to Ontario (the province closest to Montreal, where the school is located) would likely mean the current students would be unable to attend. Setting aside whether such a move would be practical, would Ontario be more hospitable than Quebec?
 
Close the school. It sounds drastic, but drastic measures have to be taken. The liberal seperatist Government in Quebec is disgusting. They have betrayed the deep heritage and beauty of the Faith in Quebec and are selling the Faith out for homosexual marriage and abortion on demand. Shame on the atheistic government running Quebec. The government in Quebec has betrayed St. Joseph, and all the great Saints that we have. I think its time that Catholics, particularly in Quebec start thinking about peaceful, but firm civil disobedience.
 
Dale_M said:
Closing the school seems drastic. Moving the school to Ontario (the province closest to Montreal, where the school is located) would likely mean the current students would be unable to attend. Setting aside whether such a move would be practical, would Ontario be more hospitable than Quebec?
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Ontario might be a TAD better than Quebec. Although with mcgunity, I wouldn’t count on that relationship too long. 😦 :mad:
 
What’s the percentage of Catholics (and Christians) in Canada? It seems like countries with a very little Catholic population are the ones taking a lead in promoting secularism and persecuting Christians.
 
**Quebec is paranoid about preserving their own culture and will go to extraordinary means to preserve it. The culture of Quebec is about as liberal and secular as you can get **

I thought Catholicism was the culture of Quebec. In fact until the 1960’s didn’t the Church run all the hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, orphanages etc?
 
kelvinf said:
What’s the percentage of Catholics (and Christians) in Canada? It seems like countries with a very little Catholic population are the ones taking a lead in promoting secularism and persecuting Christians.
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Quebec is 90% Christian: out of a population of 7,125,580 people, 5,939,715 stated they were Catholic on the 2001 census.
Without a doubt, the social institution which exercised the greatest influence and had the most impact on Quebec was the Roman Catholic Church, simply referred to as the Church for the most part in Quebec as a recognition of the unique place it occupied in the history of the province and the important role that it came to play.
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For quite sometime, in the English speaking literature on Quebec the most common image was that of a priest-ridden province whose clergy not only exercised a disproportionate amount of influence on a fairly simple people but, as well, by keeping them in relative ignorance, and isolating them from the rest of the continent, contributed to the increasing economic inferiority which came to mark the province and remained severe until the recent past. * The Roman Catholic Church and Quebec, Claude Bélanger, faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/readings/church.htm*
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mymamamary said:
Ontario might be a TAD better than Quebec. Although with mcgunity, I wouldn’t count on that relationship too long. 😦 :mad:
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Living in Ontario (Toronto) McGuinty has resigned as leader but whoever becomes leader won’t be any better than him and the Conservative leader is no better either (Hudak) although the Government hasn’t expressed any interest in interfering in Private School affairs.

Too bad the Montreal diocese can’t help take up the fight against the Separatist Government.
 
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