Moira McQueen says doctors and universities deserve conscience-rights protection
The B.C. Catholic
A Canadian bioethicist with a high-level task from the Vatican is coming to Vancouver.
Moira McQueen, a moral theologian and former lawyer, will give a keynote address on freedom of religion and conscience at this year’s Red Mass. The annual event for judges, lawyers, law students, and other professionals will take place March 9.
The B.C. Catholic reached McQueen by phone to get a sneak preview of what she’ll talk about and to learn about her passions for law, theology, and freedom.
The B.C. Catholic: What will you focus on during your address at the Red Mass?
Moira McQueen: A couple of stories are big in B.C. One, of course, is about physician-assisted dying, especially since it originated with the Gloria Taylor case. The other question I’m also very interested in is Trinity Western University and the concept of religious freedom.
BCC: Gloria Taylor was an advocate for assisted suicide. TWU is facing opposition because it asks students to abstain from sex outside marriage between a man and a woman. How are these topics similar?
MM: I may (talk about both) in that context of conscience and religious freedom. Certainly to me, the TWU thing and anything else that’s dealing with telling people what they can and cannot do is vital. There are wider implications for health care and education across the board.
Freedom of conscience is actually essential to being human. Any attempt to do away with it or to restrict it is counter-productive over the long haul.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s draft resolution about how (assisted suicide) will be handled in Ontario has had the whole battle about saying: “Okay, physicians, you don’t need to do these procedures, so we’re protecting your conscience, but you have to refer to someone else who will.”
There are really strong pushes from pretty important bodies to make restrictions on conscience. Those inroads are very, very dangerous. I think there are parallels there with TWU as well about what you can talk about and what you can’t talk about.
The whole question that really bothers me and that I think is the underlying question is this area of compulsion. The CPSO said physicians “must” and “should.”
“Must” is a compulsion word, in areas of conscience in particular. The two shouldn’t be in the same sentence together. They are really contradictory.
It really is this whole freedom of conscience, and in (TWU’s) case, freedom of religion as well. The two are really linked.
BCC: Let’s talk about your background. You graduated in law from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. What drew you to law?
MM: I was pretty idealistic. I was interested in politics. I wouldn’t call myself an activist at that age, but there were certainly some areas I was following. I had written letters to some MPs about the abortion issue and that kind of thing.
It came from a sense of justice. Even then, I saw the links with what actually happens in a country: why things happen, and how we let things happen, or how some other people try to do something about what happens, that kind of approach. That was the foundation for it.
BCC: Later, in Toronto, you studied moral theology. Were your reasons for pursuing theology similar to your reasons for studying law?
MM: I think it was pretty similar, though I have to say I didn’t recognize it quite in the same way at the time.
I was home raising our children. It gave me some time to become pretty involved in the pro-life movement. I was always president of our local group and that sort of thing. In doing that, I became interested in the responses of people when they were asked questions. I realized some of the ways I was explaining things were not satisfactory to me. They didn’t go deep enough.
I think lawyers and other people who like to analyze things ask those kinds of questions all the time. It’s not really that surprising that I would be asking them, too.
I was really interested in theology as such, as well as being interested in theology to get answers.
BCC: You made headlines when Pope Francis appointed you to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission in 2014. What is your role in this commission?
MM: The commission, 30 members, is divided into three subgroups. One was dealing with synodality. Another was dealing with sacraments in general, and that group could work out what aspect of the sacraments they wanted to deal with. The third one was religious freedom.
I’m interested in all of them, but religious freedom represented a lot of where I am now in bioethics and the state of things in Canada in general. It’s a very fascinating area. The 10 of us in our subgroup, we’ve divided up the work. We’re each responsible for a specific area of religious freedom.
I’m dealing with the concept of the neutrality of the state, and challenging that. The idea that the state is neutral is a little bit like saying the Supreme Court is neutral and objective.
The goal is to produce a fairly in-depth document on religious freedom. We’re also involved in the other groups’ documents as well. I’m really very honoured to be on it. It’s, as you can imagine, a fascinating group of people and it’s so rewarding to be with them.
The Red Mass will be said at Holy Rosary Cathedral March 9 and a reception will be held at the Vancouver Club after Mass. Information and tickets are available at www.rcav.org/red-mass.
