Quebec bishops fight bill that will end Catholic religious instruction (CNA)

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Quebec City, Jun. 02, 2005 (CNA) - The Quebec bishops met Wednesday with Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier and a parliamentary committee to discuss a bill, which would replace Catholic and Protestant religious instruction in public schools with a religious culture and ethics program by 2008.

The bishops were one of about 20 groups that presented before the committee. The bishops’ statement was under embargo and should be released shortly.

The hearings were held in Quebec City May 31 to June 2.

The education minister had introduced the new bill May 4. The Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops had expressed its disappointment with the bill.

The bishops had submitted a document to the minister in October, urging him to maintain confessional instruction in public schools and to renew the notwithstanding clause for another five years.

The clause is necessary since a Constitutional Amendment in 1997 revoked Quebecers’ right to confessional public education.

But the new bill only extends the clause for three years, enough time to create the new religious culture and ethics program.

Private faith-based schools would also be required to adopt the new program. They could, however, offer confessional instruction as an extra course.

The minister’s press attache said the government expects to pass Bill 95 by June 20.
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No offense to Canada, but that is sort of messed up.

The options are either you get denominational indoctrination in public school, or private schools are required to teach a modernistic tolerant course?!?

While the idea of denomination specific education in public school is interesting, they should just do it like the USA does it:

Public schools don’t teach religion-specific things, but private schools can teach whatever they want and have no required course in it.
 
There are a couple of things going on here.

In general, considering the condition of secular moral relativism that characterizes the state in Canada today, (I would say out and out paganism in some areas) I personally am always nervous about the idea of Catholic schools receiving public funds. That is based on the simple old adage that “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” There are, of course, many reasonable practical arguments on both sides of that issue, but the main compelling point that is made in the similar debates in the U.S. is that a truly separate system puts an added burden on Catholic (or other religious) taxpayers, unless they can direct their tax money. I have to say that up until recently in Ontario, where I live, we are asked on our voting registration to which school system we wish to direct our tax dollars, the Catholic or the Public, and to my knowledge that hasn’t been changed yet.

The other issue specifically to Quebec is the great cultural change that has happened in that province over the past fifty years, roughly. The nationalism, the language issue and great economic change all factor into a steep decline in adherence to the Catholic Church and a corresponding decline in birth rates.

Simply put, the province of Quebec has gone through in a relatively short time, what North America has gone through since the Industrial Revolution. The accelerated pace causes extremes by virtue of its own momentum sometimes. The things that we would decry in our culture like secularism, greed, contraception, sex obsession, abortion, anti-Catholicsim, etc. seem to exist almost in carricature in Quebec, on occasion.

Truly, despite being an English Canadian tracing my Protestant roots back to Ulster and England, as a Catholic I find I have sympathy for the people of Quebec. They have been sold a bill of goods, so to speak, but don’t realize it.

The great modern society that they feel they have finally caught up to, at a great price I would add, is vacuous and lonely without God. We who have lived on the other side of the cultural divide are well aware of the great malaise of death and despair that is the enlightened secular humanist society. People like myself think wistfully of the close family culture and continuity of the Catholic dominated society that Quebecers have simply tossed away in their quest for “the good life.” Many of us would love to have what they threw away, and would trade our prosperity for it in a heart-beat.

This recent Bill in Quebec City is just one more small step in the larger process of Quebec secularization.
 
Les Richardson:
This recent Bill in Quebec City is just one more small step in the larger process of Quebec secularization.
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Unfortunately 😦
 
Sarah Jane:
Unfortunately 😦
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I only gave a cursory summary of what, as a resident of Quebec, you know up close. Personally, I think that when one has lived there one tends to sympathize with their national aspirations. At least I know that I did.

It is ironic, however, that on the one hand there is a rejection of the English Canada, yet on the other, a love of America and the American Dream. And in the headlong rush for that dream, the very worst of America, the moral bankrupcy, has been inhaled and absorbed.

Not that they would get any better moral example from English Canada.

But I know that in the long run, the one thing that will surely break and disintegrate that national/cultural bond that has kept their identity and has been the context of the separatist dream, is massive prosperity. It breeds and nourishes selfishness and self-centredness.

Having walked away from Holy Mother Church, whom they thought was helping to keep them down, they will increasingly lack any moral compass and will lose that final cultural bond when they are unwilling to give personal sacrifice for the good of all.
 
Les Richardson:
It is ironic, however, that on the one hand there is a rejection of the English Canada, yet on the other, a love of America and the American Dream. And in the headlong rush for that dream, the very worst of America, the moral bankrupcy, has been inhaled and absorbed.
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Yes, many Kebekers migrated to work in the upper States. Some in the stone quarries. So they were bi-cultural and soaked up the spirit of freedom. I know that the extended family meets at the shopping mall on Friday evening. To chat more than to shop. I have also noticed that the price of real estate in La Belle Province is much more reasonable. People there seem to believe that people have a right to housing. A young married couple still in their teens can afford a house. In Ontario? Ha! Well, maybe in some regions. There are still folksy regions in Ontario, Les. The Huron coast for instance. Port Elgin, Southhampton, Wiarton, Tobermorry.
 
Ani Ibi:
Yes, many Kebekers migrated to work in the upper States. Some in the stone quarries. So they were bi-cultural and soaked up the spirit of freedom. I know that the extended family meets at the shopping mall on Friday evening. To chat more than to shop. I have also noticed that the price of real estate in La Belle Province is much more reasonable. People there seem to believe that people have a right to housing. A young married couple still in their teens can afford a house. In Ontario? Ha! Well, maybe in some regions. There are still folksy regions in Ontario, Les. The Huron coast for instance. Port Elgin, Southhampton, Wiarton, Tobermorry.
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I hope I didn’t give the impression that I think all is lost. As a generalization I think the antipathy toward English Canada has to do with the British victory that subjugated Quebec to the Crown. One can hardly blame them. And the history since then of English attitudes toward French Quebecers has reinforced that.
Obviously none of these things are universals, but generalizations. As to the moral and religious trends in Quebec, there is a direct correlation between the decline in faith and the rise in prosperity. I suppose to me, what makes it that much more sad, is that, as a recent convert to the Church, I can see that one would be hard-pressed to find such a large and rich Catholic heritage anywhere else in Canada outside of Quebec.

Also, my intent was not America-bashing or bashing the American Dream. Even in the context of Protestant Christianity there was a time in America that faith and high moral standards held a high place in public life, and the American Dream was pursued in that context. I don’t think a nation, a people, a culture need to reject their faith to pursue the goal of rising above poverty. I think wealth and prosperity can go hand in hand with deep commitment to Christ and his Church. The great patriarch of the Old Testament, Abraham, was a wealthy man. What I am saying is that prosperity, and the pursuit of it, can easily take precedence over faith, if we allow it, and I think a lot of Quebecers, at least from the last generation believed that it was Holy Mother Church at least in part that kept them poor. (My own father, an English Baptist minister thought that very thing himself.) So there came to be a certain equation between secularization, moral “liberation” and prosperity and self-determination. It is and was a false equation.

Having said that, I don’t think, in some respects, that Quebec has gone as far down the road of selfishness that we have in the English world. Just the fact of national identity binds them together in a way that we don’t experience, and as you suggest, the French extended family bond is not yet lost, especially in the rural areas. With that goes a higher sense of social responsibility, yes, but even that is eroding.

It is not a question of “folksy” although I know what you mean. I would say that the basis for that social and family cohesion is normally a common faith, either still active and vibrant, or residual, as in what we call “folksy”. As you mention, there still are pockets of that here in Ontario as well.

The how and the why are an interesting discussion, but I think Sarah Jane gets right to the main point. The Church in Quebec needs our prayers, and I would certainly say we need theirs.
 
On the other hand, Quebec has Cardinal Ouellet who is a very strong cardinal. While the rest of us have Turcotte and Ambrozic…
 
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