Editorial

By Paul Schratz

Can a society that forces a Christian charity to shed its Christianity be considered on the right track?

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered the Christian Horizons ministry to rescind its morality code and send its employees to anti-discrimination training.

The organization, Ontario's largest service for developmentally disabled people, requires its employees to sign a lifestyle and morality statement that prohibits, among other unchristian behaviours, homosexual activity.

A former employee who engaged in a lesbian relationship was forced out of her job, but now the tribunal has ruled against the organization and fined it $23,000 as well.

So the long arm of the human rights tribunals reaches a little farther, as Christian organizations learn they must undertake unchristian work or face the consequences.

The Christian Horizons decision is just the latest in a long, long line of judicial and quasi-judicial rulings that put Christians between the rock of the law and the hard place of conscience. The irony of course is that this epidemic of injustices is taking place in the very name of human rights, which now trump other rights, including freedom of religion, virtually every time.

In his recent address to the United Nations on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the member nations to reflect on human rights from a proper perspective.

"As history proceeds," he said, "new situations arise, and the attempt is made to link them to new rights."

Before heading down the path toward enshrining those new rights, the Pope said, governments must consider the impact on existing, superior rights. In short, they must use discernment to distinguish good from evil.

The need for discernment "becomes even more essential in the context of demands that concern the very lives and conduct of persons, communities, and peoples," the Pope said. "In tackling the theme of rights, since important situations and profound realities are involved, discernment is both an indispensable and a fruitful virtue."

The Pope nailed it when he said that placing our entire trust in individual states to meet the "aspirations of persons, communities, and entire peoples can sometimes have consequences that exclude the possibility of a social order respectful of the dignity and rights of the person."

For examples of those consequences, just check out some of the recent decisions of the Ontario and B.C. Human Rights Tribunals.

The world today appreciates the charitable works that Christians perform, but not the religious inspiration behind them, so it wants hospitals, food banks, and counselling services, but not the charitable spirit that inspired them. It's as though Jesus was permitted to heal the blind man, but not tell him to sin no more.

In short, on the 60th anniversary of the declaration of rights and freedoms, the world is like a baby playing with building blocks, trying to master the ability to reorder rights and freedoms. Sadly, the structure being built rests on a foundation where the right to act without restraint supersedes core beliefs such as religion and life.

In his talk to the UN, Pope Benedict issued an urgent reminder to the nations that with rights come responsibilities, and of immense importance is the responsibility to protect.

"Every state has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made."

One prays that the Pope's remarks will cause some government leaders to take another look at their policies, and consider whether they are in fact defending their citizens from rights violations that can never be countenanced.