They were arguing that the course's contents put their children's faith at risk by being premature, relativistic and polytheistic, and teaching ethics detached from the parents' moral framework.
Loyola High was challenging the fact that the Ministry of Education has not allowed it to teach what it deems an equivalent ethics and religion course better fitting the Catholic outlook of the school.
On 18 June 2010, Superior Court Justice Gerard Dugre compared the attempt of the education minister to impose a secular emphasis on Loyola High School's teaching of the course to the intolerance of the Spanish Inquisition: "The obligation imposed on Loyola to teach the ethics and religious culture course in a lay fashion assumes a totalitarian character essentially equivalent to Galileo's being ordered by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican universe," the judge wrote in his 63-page decision[19][20] Several polls had shown the Quebec population to be polarized around this course.
While 45% opposed the course in October 2008, 72% wanted parents to be able to choose the moral and religious training their children will get at school: the new ERC course or a traditional denominational religion course.
[22] On May 28, 2009, the Canadian Jewish News announced the formation of a grassroots organization to represent "a response of Orthodox Judaism to the Ethics and Religious Culture program."
The "Hade'ah Vihaddibur" online Orthodox Jewish weekly newspaper reported a comparable sentiment expressed by the Israeli halakhic decisor Yosef Shalom Eliashiv.
Consistent with this response, the Montreal Gazette, in an op-ed published on June 6, 2009 (p. B6), noted that Quebec Jewish school curricula are exclusively loyal to the theology of the Torah.