Re: ‘Word Catholic doesn’t make greater St. Albert different from other public schools,’ March 9 Gazette:
Excellent is far too weak a word to describe that very enlightening letter by former minister of education David King. It served to properly explain the serious problems concerning the four public schools in Morinville. By mistake, or by the sheer stupidity of its trustees, those four schools are being called and treated as ‘Catholic public schools.’ If the truth can be both read and respected, there are no such things under law, as Mr. King very well explained. To read his very informative letter only once is hardly enough. As he wrote, the law permits Catholic and Protestant ‘separate schools,’ but neither Protestant or Catholic ‘public schools.’ According to law, public schools are to be strictly secular. And so should they be! No powerful religious group should have the right to bully its beliefs upon hapless students of other faiths in our public schools at all!
As you might agree, absolute perfection is a quality of God — not men. For this good reason, beliefs in the ‘infallibility’ of men have led to some of the most stupid mistakes in history. Faith without logic is for fools and the world has far too many of them. To date, man has neither discovered nor created a perfect religion. This serves to explain why we still have so very many of them and why public schools should be strictly secular despite the demands of some people claiming to have ‘infallible’ religious beliefs, practices, teachings and Popes. Religious rights must never be wrong. We have no use for religious abuse upon or from any religious group. It follows that freedom of faith also demands ‘freedom from faith’ so that we can’t be bullied into the beliefs of any powerful religious institution, regardless of how ‘infallible’ it might consider itself to be.
To date, trustees from the Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division have ignored and failed to respect the human rights of non-Catholic students and their parents concerning public schools that continue to be non-secular in far too many aspects.
And to respond to the letter ‘Town cannot ignore lack of secular school options’ by Mr. Thomas Kirsop in the same issue, I fully agree that the members of the municipal government may not continue to be ignorant of the wrongs taking place in Morinville’s public schools. No doubt, religious ‘infallibility’ is a tough subject to tackle. But without secular schools for the huge majority of its students, Morinville will be a mess.
To quote Albert Einstein: “Two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.”
Richard G. Nobert, Morinville
