"Man proposes, but God disposes." Thomas a Kempis, Catholic cleric, 1380-1471
EDMONTON – Last spring, the Stelmach government passed Bill 44, an amendment of Alberta's human rights act. The act finally amended the province's human rights code to provide equal rights protection to gays and lesbians.
As a sop to the right wing, the bill included a special provision to protect parents from the menace of having their children exposed to the notion that homosexuals are equal citizens.
Under the law, parents would have a right to advance notification when children were to be taught about religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation — and the legal right to have their children exempted from such classes, without academic penalty.
Those who felt that their parental rights had not be respected would have the power to lodge an official complaint with the human rights tribunal.
Bill 44 met with such opposition from school boards, parent councils, teachers, and universities, the province was compelled to hold it in abeyance for a year, until Alberta Education figured out how to make it work.
This week, just before the end of the school year, Alberta Education finally unveiled its updated Guide to Education, which includes its interpretation of the amended human rights act.
The guide attempts some Bill 44 damage control by narrowing the law's scope. The department says parents can't use the act to remove their children from science classes on evolution or to file complaints against teachers who condemn homophobic bullying. But Alberta Education's interpretation opens a whole new debate, one that could threaten the autonomy of Catholic schools.
Under the amended human rights act, Catholic school districts will now be required to notify all parents that Catholicism is taught throughout their schools. Silly, but not onerous.
Here's the catch. Parents with children in the Catholic school system will now be able to request formally that their children be withdrawn from religious instruction.
"A parent has a right to request that their child be exempted from religious education, in a public, separate, francophone or charter jurisdiction," says Terence Harding, who speaks for the Alberta Education.
"Catholic school boards will be required to exempt, on the request of the parent, the child from religious instruction. They are required to issue that exemption without academic penalty."
That's not how Edmonton's Catholic school district sees it.
"We are a separate, faith-based board. You can't attend a Catholic school and not go to religion class," says Debbie Engel, the chairwoman of the Edmonton Catholic School Board. "It's right on our registration form. It is district policy that you must take religion."
"It's not as simple as a parent writing a letter saying, 'My kid wants to take art and not religion'. We have the constitutional right, even with Bill 44, to tell parents they must enrol their children in Religion 10-20-30 if they want to go to Catholic school."
Hypothetically, she says, a high school student could go to Catholic school without taking religion.
"But their punishment would be that they couldn't get a diploma. They might be able to get their credits from Alberta Education, but they couldn't graduate from our high school.
"They couldn't attend graduation with their friends. That would be their penalty for not following the rules of the school board."
Alberta Education is standing by its own legal interpretation. No board, is above the new human rights code, Harding says.
"There's definitely a difference of opinion on this, but the Catholic school boards are still subject to the school act. Our lawyers are of the opinion that the Catholic school boards will be required to notify and required to make exemptions."
If you were a stranger to Edmonton's unique school culture, you might not think any of this would matter. Why, after all, would non-Catholic parents send their kids to Catholic school in the first place, if not for Catholic education?
But in Edmonton, the parallel public and separate school boards compete vigorously for students. Plenty of non-Catholic and non-Christian parents send their children to Catholic school, either because its more convenient or because the schools offer specialized programs. I've known Jewish and Muslim and agnostic parents who sent their kids to Grandin for French immersion or Archbishop MacDonald for its academic focus or Our Lady of Mount Carmel for its sports academy.
I'm sure many parents would be delighted to have their progeny excused from mandatory religion class, either for sincere philosophical reasons or simply to free up student timetables for other academic options. I've no doubt the Catholic district would see its enrolment numbers shoot way up if parents could have their children excused from compulsory religion classes.
But I understand why Edmonton Catholic is resisting the idea. Its reason for being is to provide Catholic education. That's why taxpayers fund two rival school systems, with two sets of salaried administrators and duplicate sets of expensive school buildings. If the Catholic system can't be thoroughly Catholic, it might as well not exist.
It may take a court challenge to figure out who's got the law of their side — a court challenge taxpayers would fund.
The irony here is rich. The parental rights clauses of Bill 44 were drafted to placate a few scaremongers on the religious right who feared some gay bogeyman. The unintended consequence may be to undermine the teaching of the Catholic faith and the identity of the Catholic school system.
Erratum: In my Thursday column, I poked fun at a Travel Alberta spokesman who thought Fort Walsh was near Edmonton. But the joke's on me. I wrote that Fort Walsh was in the Cypress Hills of southeastern Alberta. It's in the Cypress Hills, all right, but so far east, it's actually in Saskatchewan. But hey, isn't it good to know Travel Alberta is neighbourly enough to promote Saskatchewan attractions in its ads?