[BRIEF NOTE] On linking Ontario's Roman Catholic schools with abortion

[rfmcdonald]

Continuing a theme on the questionable future of publically-funded Roman Catholic schools in Ontario, suitablyemoname made a comment I'd like to promote to the front page. First, he linked to Sarah Boesveld's National Post article describing the hostile reaction of prominent figures in said school system to a recent statement by the education minister on abortion and misogyny.

Ontario’s education minister is facing backlash from Catholic and pro-life groups after she appeared to equate anti-abortion views with “misogyny,” sparking questions of whether the provincial government seeks to restrict these teachings in publicly funded Catholic schools.

Catholics and religious groups have long worried an anti-bullying bill, now passed into law, would infringe on their constitutionally held right to teach church doctrine because it requires Catholic schools to allow students to form Gay Straight Alliance clubs.

Now, Laurel Broten’s comments at a press conference last week in her other capacity as Minister Responsible for Women’s Issues have stoked concerns the government wants to dictate what Catholics can and cannot teach.

“Bill 13 is about tackling misogyny,” she said. “Taking away a woman’s right to choose could arguably be one of the most misogynistic actions that one could take.”

[. . .]

“The right to life, from conception to natural death, is a core teaching of Catholicism,” Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League said in a statement Friday. “Ms. Broten reportedly said she doesn’t think there is a conflict between ‘choosing Catholic education for your children and supporting a woman’s right to choose’ so she is clearly ill-informed about the fundamentals of Catholicism.”

[. . .]

The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association was more perplexed by her statements than offended, since there is no reference to abortion or misogyny in Bill 13. “Catholic parents who send children to our school expect that their children will be educated according to the tenets of the Catholic faith,” said president Marino Gazzola. “Our curriculum isn’t going to change, but this is certainly posing questions.”

Linking this school system to the abortion question, suitablyemoname argues, is a shortsighted idea given public opinion.

A 2012 Forum poll found that 87% of Ontarians believe that abortion should be legal in "some" or "all" cases. Only 11% share the doctrinal Catholic view that abortion should never be an option.

With that in mind, this is a spectacularly stupid fight to pick.

The GSA fight seriously weakened the very foundations of Catholic education in Ontario. Bluntly stated, a majority of Ontarians support the existence of GSAs in Catholic schools, and because the Catholics raised an enormous stink about it, they forced many of their traditional allies (including the Liberal Government, under a Catholic premier) to turn against them. Catholics lost the battle, and by drawing so much negative attention to Catholic schools, they've turned Ontarians against their existence. Polls taken this summer suggest that, in light of the GSA controversy, over 50% of Ontarians now support defunding the Catholic schools.

Abortion is even more one-sided as an issue. We're no longer talking about queer teenagers and their supporters, a relatively small constituency: we're talking about 87% of the population. We're talking about the women's movement, the unions, the social justice organizations, and countless other groups who have their fingers in all sorts of pies. Even the Hudak Conservatives won't touch abortion as an issue. (At least, not in public.)

In short: the Catholics have found an issue where they're overwhelmingly on the wrong side of popular opinion, where there are no political allies to be found, where people don't even want to discuss the matter, and which intersects directly with the existence of Catholic schools.

jsburbidge's [Bad username or site: http://jsburbidge.livejournal.com/39525.html @ livejournal.com]argument that the Roman Catholic Church under the current Pope may be preparing to withdraw from the idea of serving society in its entirety, instead retreating to a doctrinally orthodox hard core, makes more sense than ever.