New division for Inclusion and Religious Freedom more than a little puzzling
OTTAWA (CCN)
The former Ambassador of Religious Freedom says Canadians should be concerned about how respect for religious freedom and conscience rights is waning in Canada.
“I think this is a trend that all Canadians should be concerned about,” said Andrew Bennett, who served three years as Canada’s religious freedom ambassador until the end of March. He left employment at Global Affairs Canada in June.
“I think it’s notable that religious freedom has not only gone from having its own stand-alone office with an ambassador, with its own programming fund, the religious freedom fund, but it’s been diminished down to a division under a director general,” he said.
The newly-named Office of Human Rights, Freedom and Inclusion, is a re-configuration of a pre-existing Bureau of Human Rights, with “a new division on inclusion and religious freedom,” Bennett said.
“I don’t know what inclusion is and I don’t know what its relationship is to religious freedom,” he said. “I think that a lot of different faith communities, when they see the diminishment of focus on religious freedom by the current government and the lumping of it in with this rather nebulous concept of inclusion, a lot of eyebrows will be raised and are being raised.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion announced the re-configured Office of Freedom, Human Rights and Inclusion (OFHRI) in May. Its director general is Richard Arbeiter will oversee three divisions: Human Rights and Indigenous Affairs; Inclusion and Religious Freedom; and Democracy. This bureau has an annual budget of $15 million, three times that of the former Office of Religious Freedom.
Giuliana Natale heads up the Inclusion and Religious Freedom division. Bennett described her as “very capable, a very good public servant” who is “committed to an idea of advancing religious freedom, but she is always going to have a challenge in how religious freedom and inclusion are somehow linked.”
“It’s a very confusing partnership I would say,” Bennett said.
Bennett said he thinks ‘inclusion’ is “a broad euphemism for a whole series of things, unlike religious freedom which is a core human right, the very first right in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
“In international law and human rights law there’s a very clear understanding of what religious freedom is,” he said, noting the concept dates back to the Edict of Milan in 313 AD establishing religious freedom in the Roman Empire, and has been “reaffirmed repeatedly.”
Bennett sees a shift in human rights discourse from ideas rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that human rights are inalienable from human dignity, derived from being made in the image and likeness of God.
“It seems now that equality is the paramount human right even though it is not a fundamental freedom,” he said. Equality is not enumerated in the Charter, though “it’s a concept we have to defend” on the basis of human dignity, such as the equality between men and women and equality before the law.
Religious freedom is inextricably linked to other fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression, of assembly, and of association he said. If religious freedom is under threat, as it is “in much of the world, and increasingly in Canada and the United States, that’s going to have a trickle-down effect on those other freedoms.”
While North America is not seeing the persecution found in other parts of the world such as China and Pakistan and Christians are not barred from worshipping or being arrested, “we are seeing ways in which peoples’ beliefs are being constrained at times by different institutions.”
Bennett cited the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons policy to “violate the conscience rights of doctors when it comes to referrals” on abortion, contraception and assisted suicide and that of the law societies of Ontario, Nova Scotia and British Columbia to deny accreditation to Trinity Western University’s proposed law school because of the private evangelical Christian school’s community covenant. Actions like these are “clearly discriminatory,” he said.
Some of the push to remove religious freedom and conscience rights comes from activism in the LGBT community. Bennett said advancing human rights must be distinguished from advancing a particular political agenda.
During the June 29 North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico issued a statement calling “on all members of the international community to ensure full respect for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex persons.”
“When we advance human rights it must be based on advancing the dignity of individual human beings, living in community and society,” Bennett said. “Should we be advancing the rights of different minorities to be free from persecution? Yes. Absolutely. Should we be advancing the rights of the LGBT community to be free from being attacked, to be free from homophobia, to be free? Yes, we should be striving in the interest of advancing human dignity to ensure their dignity is certainly recognized.”
“However there are certain issues right now whether its same sex marriage, rights of adoption for same sex couples that have been included by a number of groups of being central to this human rights agenda,” he said. “Now that’s where we come against fundamental questions such as freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”
At stake for orthodox Christian and other religious believers is a different understanding of marriage.
“The worst thing we can do is to retreat into a Christian ghetto and put up the walls,” he said. “That is a rejection of our baptism.”
“We have to be in the world but not of the world,” he said. “We have to be engaging all communities, including the LGBT community, on why we believe this to be true: our understanding of marriage, of human dignity, and of life.”
“The new evangelization is not simply about bringing people back to the Church, bringing people into the Church,” he said.
“We have a great responsibility as Catholics that we can’t shy away from,” he said. “I think new evangelization is a great opportunity and a great challenge, but we have to seize hold of our religious freedom and really live it.”
“The Church has been most effective when it’s remained true the Gospel,” he said. “We must recommit ourselves to bearing Christ as Christians and bringing the gospel to this society in a way that will be heard and received.”
“We cannot equivocate; we cannot compromise, but we must do it always in charity even if it brings with it persecution, ridicule and embarrassment,” he said. “The path we are called to follow is a narrow path but it is a joyful path.”
He urged Catholics to know and practice their faith, and to learn effective arguments to engage in public debate. “We can only begin to build an honest dialog when you can find a true common ground not a mushy middle or lowest common denominator,” he said. “That can only be found when people are honest, open and engaged.”
We have to be honest,” he said. “We confess that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world, and that is true for everyone not just Catholics.”
“They may not like what we have to say, but at least we are open and honest about it, and say that in love, with a desire for real human interaction,” he said. That kind of honesty leaves “much more scope for human progress.”
As a Catholic, he practiced this openness while serving as religious freedom ambassador and it never posed problems, even in interactions with atheists. With those of other religious faiths, his honesty raised the level of respect, he said.
Bennett has taken on a role as senior fellow at Cardus, and Chair of the Cabinet of Canadians for Cardus’ Faith in Canada 150 program. He will teach Church History at Augustine College in Ottawa in the fall and is looking for further opportunities in the academic world to write and teach in the area of religious freedom.
