Erosion of religious rights has ‘severe consequences,’ Canadian bishops say in report

On the Feast of St. Thomas More, who was beheaded rather than submit to the King’s authority on marriage, Canada’s bishops released a pastoral letter that says all Catholics have a role to play “not only in defending religious freedom but in publicly living out a vibrant Catholic faith.” 

The letter, Living as Catholics in the Public Square: Freedom of Religion and Conscience in Canada, while hardly a manifesto, wades rather deeply into political waters considering its source. The document from the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace came about as a result of the bishops’ 2019 decision “to prepare a document on the erosion of Charter rights,” paying particular attention to the loss of religious freedom and the persecution of Christians. 

Coincidentally, the letter comes out the same month Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) released the latest edition of its Religious Freedom Report. While Canada is nowhere close to countries where religion is under extreme attack from oppressive governments, the report contains substantial mention of growing religious persecution in recent years, from pandemic restrictions to hate crimes to the burning of churches.

The report notes, “Canada continues to be a place where rule of law is respected, but generally there has been a palpable reduction in respect for religious freedom in recent years, particularly where it has come into conflict with entrenched views relating to equality, diversity, and public health.”

It is in this background that the bishops have written their pastoral letter, and if they have been subdued in responding to many of the numerous attacks on religious freedom in recent years, the pastoral letter goes a good way toward compensating.

The bishops lay the groundwork by saying they first noted the decline in “robust freedom of conscience and religion” more than a decade ago, when the Permanent Council wrote a Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion in 2012, which “showed foresight in many respects.”

Indeed, “the trends that were discerned 11 years ago have sadly accelerated, particularly in Canada and in other Western societies.”

The reference to Western societies is noteworthy. Much of the focus of the 2012 document was on restrictions on religious liberty around the world. Not so in the 2023 letter, which is 100 per cent about the threats to religion in this country, everything from professionals losing their right to conscientious objection, to restricted freedoms on university campuses, to advocacy groups promoting new individual rights through legal action rather than “civilized and respectful debate.”

In a statement that sums up the dilemma, the letter says Canada has moved from a country that accommodated different beliefs to one that “barely allows” the public manifestation of belief.

The suppression of religious voices is “a restriction on their right to freedom of religion, one which should be forcefully challenged,” say the bishops. “In a constitutional democracy such as Canada’s, the system of justice must strive to protect more effectively freedom of religion and of conscience as key elements of our free and democratic society.” 

The bishops boldly proclaim that freedom of religion and conscience, being fundamental freedoms in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “form the bedrock of our democratic society and reflect our common life as human beings who are bearers of the image and likeness of God.”

Without this “incarnational understanding and embrace of religious freedom” in our democracy and culture, “the fabric of our collective and shared spiritual lives can be eroded, often with severe consequences.”

Beyond that, if Christians become “cowed so as to not live a public faith,” they would be effectively denying their faith and the Cross.

The last several years have seen an enormous outgrowth in hostility toward religious faith, in particular Catholicism and Christianity, which have been treated by governments as nuisances, and increasingly as thorns that need to be removed.

Qutoing St. Justin Martyr, the bishops say, “We must reaffirm in an age of relativism and radical autonomy that as Christians ‘we say true things.’” 

The bishops close with a reminder that “this great work requires daily actions guided by love, mercy, and an unflagging commitment to truth,” and “manifesting this great joy within a public square often devoid of joy and hope.”

It’s a consequential task, and one that St. Thomas More appreciated full well.

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