What Role Religion ? - II

A comment posted yesterday opens enough assorted questions and issues that I thought I would give it 'front page' billing rather than writing what was clearly going to be a lengthy reply comment.

One of the interesting features the phrase 'freedom of religion' is the notion of equivalence. As soon as the phrase is interpreted in the courts as the freedom to practice any religion you wish, it places them all at the same level of moral equivalence. Regardless of how bizarre the practices of that religion may seem to an outside observer. (For example, some faiths do still practice blood sacrifice of animals - it's relatively rare in Canada, certainly not practiced "in public" per se, but it is still practiced at certain times)

With regards to the solemnization of marriage, the writer claimed:

I will also point out that the church does NOT have the innate legal authority to perform marriage; no more than anyone off the street has the power to perform as a justice of the peace. It is a license granted by the province.

However, a brief dig through the legislation in Alberta turns up that the rules do differ somewhat between Clergy and Marriage Commissioners. According to the Government's website, a Church merely needs to register itself with the government as an agency performing marriages, and provide the government with a list of names that will be performing the marriages. This is quite different from the 'apply-and-interview' model that is used for civil marriage commissioners. The civil commissioner is provided their commission on the whim of a bureaucrat somewhere in the nameless Vital Statistics office.

Among other things, this model makes the horribly misguided assumption that because someone is an ordained minister in a registered church, that somehow they are immediately qualified to perform marriage ceremonies. Perhaps in the days when communities were small, and people were known by the minister individually, the minister's "blessing" might serve as a rational acceptance that the couple would succeed together. Today, mobility being what it is, and congregation sizes being in the hundreds or more in many urban areas, there is little or no chance for a minister to "know" more than a small fraction of their congregation. This renders an old "check-and-balance" irrelevant.

By removing the power to solemnize marriages from the Churches, we remove an impediment for them. There is a possible legal argument that says that the Government authorizes the Church to solemnize marriage, and because the government is bound by the legal clauses of the Charter of Rights, particularly in regards to non-discrimination, the Church is similarly bound with regards to that particular authority. I would hope that the obvious counter argument is that Section 2 of the Charter would be interpreted in this circumstance to continue allowing Churches to choose which couples they are going to bless. (I believe that there is precedent for this in the fact that since 1982, nobody has taken the Catholic Church to task in law over the issue of ordination of female clergy - something which is in clear violation of the equality provisions of the charter)

I'm not saying that individual members of the clergy could not become marriage commissioners - in fact I think that would be a very good thing. I am merely advocating that the _fact_ one is a minister/priest/imam/whatever should not automatically permit them to solemnize a marriage. Celebrate it within the context of their faith, absolutely, but not necessarily solemnization.

How does this make a difference in the overall scheme of things? It's more semantics than anything else. Essentially we are freeing the Churches from any _legal_ implications surrounding their celebration of marriage. In doing so, the Churches are thereby absolutely freed from possible legal challenges arising from section 15 of the charter.

Religious bodies have long equated spiritual power with political power. In a world where there is no apparent unity of faiths, nor is there even geographic regions of any consequence that are unified in their faith, the notion of moral absolutes is radically different than perhaps it was 50 or 100 years ago. Religions have a valid voice in the discourse of our affairs, but their voice is no more, or less valid than those of the rest of the citizenry.

Laws which are based on largely arbitrary moralization will ultimately collapse under scrutiny. Like it or not, law in Canada must become independent of individualized moral codes. The question that must be asked is one of harm. Is harm done, and to whom? If you can demonstrate that harm is done by an act, then and only then, will the law created stand to scrutiny in the courts.

Churches can legitimately serve as social guides in our society. However, arguments of law that are fundamentally scriptural in their origins must be avoided, for there is no unity of belief, even within a faith, much less between and betwixt.

On a final note, I think that Jason Kenney has given the country a taste of the kind of illogical, bone-headed rhetoric we can expect to see recorded in next week's Hansard's during the same-gender marriage debate. (I swear he has calluses on his hands from walking, and headaches from trying to think)