It will still have to teach the Government sanctioned courses including Ethics and Religious Culture. (If you need pointers to that effect I can supply)

2) "Other parents are homeschooling."

Yes, there is some practical freedom there (at great cost), but none in principle. Maitre Boucher, the Government counsel at the Loyola court case, said that homeschoolers must still teach this course (although this is difficult to enforce, some homeschoolers have to show the ethics work done during the year when they present their so-called portfolio to their schoolboard).

The only official exemptions : Inuits and Crees in the Kativik schoolboard.

http://pouruneecolelibre.blogspot.com/2009/05/cit…

3) "Parents must stop blaming BigBrother and get off their butts"

Parents must go on blaming Big Brother and get off their butts.

Hell, that's what it's founded upon.

Hell, that's what its founded upon.

Hell, that's what its found upon.

The State has a Monopoly of Education rather than a Ministry of Education.

Recitation, Regurgitation, and Rote.

Yikes! Their founder, Ignace de Loyola, explicitly had as one of his founding principles, fidelity to the pope.

"Last I looked the Vatican was not the only institution in the Church…"

Although it distresses the modern mind so, the Church is bulit on hirearchical lines. The Church's founder, Jesus, chose apostles, and one amongst them, Peter, to lead them. The bishops are the modern day descendants of the apostles, and the Pope in Rome is Peter's equivalent. So despite the media's fascination with dissidents like Hans Kung, Catholics worthy of the name pay heed to the bishop's and particularly the bishop of Rome' s direction and guidance on matters of faith.

As for lack of priestly vocations, it isn't so much a lack of sex for prospective priests that's the problem, it's rather a lack of faith. Things are pretty grim in the Western democracies faithwise, less so in the Third World. Where the faith is strong, there are vocations, where the faith is weak, there are a dearth of them.

"The Ministère de l'éducation provides per-pupil funding to public school boards AND to private schools."

Provides to some private schools, not all. And funding is not an issue here : whether a private school receives or not some money through the State (taken from the parent's pocket who pay twice since the "generous" subsidy covers at most 60% of tuition) , the course of Ethics and religious culture is imposed on all the children attending that school.

Such is the meaning of liberty in Quebec : the State must be able train all its future citizens (this is actually what the Minister of Education stated in their written closing arguments).

Some have argued, I think including the Fountainhead of Libertarianism herself, Ms. Rand, that the restriction on force is not a limit on freedom because people in free society acknowledge that it is only without the use of force that free decisions are made.

I tend to think that the restriction on violence is, technically, a restriction on liberty, but a necessary one. I do not think that property rights would simply be regarded naturally by all in an ungoverned society. In the end, rights are obtained and defended with force. The use of force is the domain of government, and the rules regarding this force is the subject of law. This is what separates we Libertarians from Anarchists.

Well, buster, it's the freedom you're stuck with, so just accept it. Oh, and enjoy your freedom. Comes with the rule of law. You no like? Join Wells on the deli-tasting circuit in Mogadishu.

And yet.

The Ministère de l'éducation provides per-pupil funding to public school boards AND to private schools. There is actually quite a generous subsidy to the private education of children whose parents took that burden off the hands of the state. It is thus not surprising that l'état feels entitled to meddle in the affairs of these schools. How I wish it would be in standardized evaluations of the three R's, but, whatever…

Walking away from a contract that you voluntarily entered into, is not a matter of freedom or unfreedom. If you don't want to pay your mortgage, the bank gets your house, those were the terms under which you borrowed the money. You were not forced to agree to the terms.

I find these days that there is much too much romticisation of work. People always think they need to "find the right one for me". It's work, and it's not supposed to be fun. If work was fun, it wouldn't be called work… it would be called play.

The Jesuits have always been opposed to the Pope, amigo. That's why they kept getting expelled from ultramontane monarchies in the 18th century. Last I looked the Vatican was not the only institution in the Church; and in fact one of the attractions of Catholicism is its multiple different factions — sorry, "approaches to faith."

What I was saying about it being a shame about the Jesuits not attracting new priests was not specific to their order, however. They are hardly in decline because people don't like their politics; if anything, their interest in modernity should have helped them. Anyway, "fortunately other religious orders have picked up the slack" is one of your sadder mistakes. As you know, there's a desperate shortage of priests on all counts, owing almost entirely to the Church's non-doctrinal (i.e. whimsical) insistence on celibacy. It's just particularly sad, to me, in the case of the Jesuits because they were so vital to Quebec's intellectual life for so long.

And while on the subject, I think the only thing differentiating a mental institution from a church is better music.

Now we're back to the beginning.

The Jesuits, like many religious orders of the time, started running amok in the aftermath of the Vatican II reforms and have barely recovered. Their disloyalty to the Church magisterium and the Pope and their crude adoption of cheap left-wing politics through their following of loony "liberation theology" weakened them to no end. Fortunately other relgious orders have picked up the slack.