The Social Conservative Case Against Separatism

I've had these thougths around in my mind for many months now. I've been thinking about writing a piece about why separatism is not Catholic. Or Christian. Or supported by the Natural Law.

There are so many angles to this from a social conservative point of view.

I hesitated posting on this because I didn't have all my arguments lined up neatly, and I hadn't gathered all my "documentation" to back up my case.

At the risk of writing a rambly kind of post that sort of meanders everywhere, I will attempt to show that, under normal circumstances, it is morally unacceptable to call for the separation of a province.

Are you listening Alberta and Quebec?

First we have to establish some principles. Political authority is ultimately from God. This is well established in the New Testament, in the epistles of St. Paul. All the while the Christians were being persecuted, there was never any question of doubting the authority of the Emperor. Throughout the first centuries of the Church, in the age of martyrdom, imperial authority was never questioned. One of the ways the Early Fathers wanted to convince the authorities to stop persecuting them was to prove that they supported the Emperor and that they were not subversive elements.

Even our Charter of Rights implicitly acknowledges this as it believes it rests on "the Supremacy of God".

Another principle to acknowledge is that: if the family is the basic cell of society, then a country is a big group of families. It is assumed in the natural law mindset that the individuals in a nation are basically "related" to one another, by virtue of family ties. A country is kind of "super-family".

And if the family is the model of the Church, it's also the model of the larger society. The family is where we learn how to behave in the larger society.

Another point to establish is that God creates nations and their borders. As Acts 17:26 says:

"From one ancestor he made all the nations to inhabit the whole earth,and allotted the times of their existence, and the boundaries of the places they would live".

One last point before I move on to my case: Natural Law recognizes the legitimacy of a Just Revolution (which is akin to Just War Theory). If authority is to be overthrown, there must be strict guidelines to be followed. The situation in Alberta and Quebec does not fulfill the criteria.


From all this, we can deduce that a country, as a superfamily, whose existence is from God and whose authority is from God, must be respected. You can't perceive a country as a purely man-made thing. It is the product of Divine Providence, just like a marriage or the conception of a baby.

When there are problems in a family, the last recourse is separation, and this is only allowed in extreme situations, where abuse or neglect takes place. Even in these situations, natural law theory does not acknowledge the right to divorce.

A country lives on the same principles as the family. When there are problems, even difficult problems, the answer is normally not separation. There are usually behaviours from all concerned parties that contributed to the crisis. They have ALL have to be dealt with.

Parental authority is to be respected, even if it can be, at times, poorly exercised, sometimes on a constant basis. But there's no basis to reject parental authority. Separation would only occur when the situation would become critical to the child, gravely endangering his well-being.

In the same way, political authority is to be respected, even if it is poorly exercised. Unless there is some extreme situation at hand, that authority must be respected.

And so, in the same way, a body of people in a country does not generally have the right to call for separation. If parental authority must be respected, so must political authority.

Quebec and Alberta sometimes have legitamite grievances. Their relationship with the rest of the country must be healed through dialogue and an attempt promote national unity, not in the quest to get the most for one's province, to the detriment of others.

When would it be appropriate for a province to separate? There would have to be a grave human rights crisis. The situation would have to be on-going and with no hope of recourse. All other means must be tried, and there must be hope of success for separation.

Clearly, the situations in Alberta and Quebec do not justify a separatist movement. As terrible as it is to be unfairly burdened with supporting the rest of Canada, Alberta does not have a human rights crisis. Same thing with Quebec; the survival of the French language is not a human rights case.

If they did have a human rights crisis, these provinces would have to try every means at their disposal to change the situation.

Some social conservatives might object: what about the fetal rights situation? If Alberta could separate, then there could be fetal rights legislation.

The fact of the matter is, social conservatives have not been especially forthright and active in the last thirty years. I do not believe every means has been tried. We don't have mass numbers of social conservatives voting pro-life, protesting at every turn, speaking up at every turn.

If they did that AND that there was no progress, then there might be a case for separation.