A
dispute over whether government can require Catholic schools to teach Wiccan
and pagan rites as equal to the Ten Commandments and the resurrection of Jesus
is heading to Canada’s highest court.
“Faith-based
educational institutions should be free to live and operate according to the
faith they teach and espouse,” said Gerald Chipeur, Q.C., of the Canadian firm
Miller Thompson LLP.
“If
the government can force Loyola High School to violate its faith, then the
government can do the same to others,” said Chipeur, a lawyer affiliated
with the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The
battle is over a government program adopted in Quebec in 2008 called “Ethics
and Religious Culture” that is mandatory for all public and private schools. It
presents all religions, from Christianity to Wiccan, “as equally valid” and
requires schools to teach the beliefs in that fashion.
It
also bans teachers, including those at private, denominational or church
schools, from expressing their opinion that their own school’s faith is
preferred.
The
government order was challenged by Loyola High School, which is run by the
Jesuits, a Roman Catholic order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola. The school
provides an education that is “publicly faithful to the authoritative teachings
of the Catholic church.”
ADF
filed a brief with the Supreme Court of Canada in support of the Catholic
school after the court granted permission for other denominations to present
arguments in the case.
The
school had asked not to be exempted from the required teachings but to be
allowed to make modifications in support of its religious faith.
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