Miller urges Catholics to be alert in protecting their religious freedom

OTTAWA - Though Canada has traditionally had a healthy relationship between Church and state, Catholics need to remain alert to protect religious freedom, says Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller.

There is a secularist agenda that “basically wants to privatize religion and leave it restricted to the private sphere,” Miller said from Vancouver Nov. 10.

Pressures to compress religious freedom into private belief and private worship are not what is intended in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the universal human rights documents, he said.

He described circumstances where vigilance is required:

o the encroachment of various human rights commissions on religious institutions or on the rights of their leaders to publicly profess Christian doctrine;

o the imposition of mandatory programs in schools that are contrary to Catholic teaching;

o the forcing of marriage commissioners in some provinces to conduct same-sex ceremonies against their religious convictions;

o the forcing of health care professionals to participate in or refer patients for abortion;

o and ordering pharmacists to dispense morning-after pills against their consciences.

Religious freedom and freedom of conscience are nearly always linked in magisterial documents, but one can have non-religious reasons for conscientious objection, he said. 

There needs to be a guard against a belief that rights are given to us from the state and can be taken away from us “if we’re not good,” he said. Religious freedom and conscience rights are not granted by the state.

“You are not giving me my freedom of religion, I’m enjoying it because I’m a human person,” he said, noting that religious freedom existed prior to the state.

The state plays a role in regulating freedom when conflicts arise, and in protecting rights, he said.

Religious freedom is not merely a private matter involving individual rights, he said. Religious believers belong in the public square, with an agreement “not to ever impose” their beliefs on others, he said.

Some, such as American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have begun referring to “freedom of worship” instead of “religious freedom.” This change in language has troubled some religious freedom advocates.

Parents also have the right to educate their children, he said. A case involving the rights of Quebec parents to exempt their children from a mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture program they consider relativist is now before the Supreme Court of Canada. There are efforts to impose mandatory sex education programs that parents argue introduce material at too young an age or that they consider against their religious teachings.

But Miller noted it would be rash to compare the problems in Canada with the “egregious examples” of religious persecution elsewhere in the world. The Canadian state has respected the rightful autonomy of religions, though there are signs of a need to “be attentive to preserve the freedom to act in accordance with our own tradition and belief.”