Article content continued

In a survey of 1,504 Canadian adults, taken after the Supreme Court found official public prayers violate the state’s duty of religious neutrality, three-quarters approved of just starting meetings with no ceremony at all, and a similar proportion approved of a moment of silence.

The least acceptable idea was for rotating specific prayers — Jewish on Monday, for example, Muslim on Tuesday, Christian on Wednesday — which only 30 per cent of people found acceptable.

Continue reading…

[/np_storybar]

If someone checked, they could probably catch me doing these things in consecutive weeks. This time, I stand with the masses. According to Angus, a slight majority of Canadians approve of the April Supreme Court decision that outlawed the recitation of a Catholic prayer at meetings of the Saguenay, Que., city council.

That lawsuit began when some cranky village atheist — I use this as an epithet of praise — went before a human rights tribunal objecting to the prayer, which invariably commenced with the mayor intoning: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The complainant also groused about the presence of religious symbols in the council chamber, including a crucifix and a statue of Jesus displaying His electrically illuminated Sacred Heart.

The tribunal agreed that these items were unlawful, but the city took that ruling to Quebec’s Court of Appeal, which overturned it partly on the grounds that the prayer “expressed universal values and could not be identified with any particular religion.” This would have been quite ridiculous enough: I’m no scholar, but I’m reasonably sure that the Holy Trinity is strongly identified with a particular religion, and it ain’t Shinto. The court, however, doubled down, adding gratuitously that the Sacred Heart and the crucifix were “works of art that were devoid of religious connotation.”