struggles that have allowed the Church to recognize its waning authority, ultimately bringing to fruition a situation where the “omnipotent God was able to be displaced by the omnipotent law-giver.” Although a God has been displaced, however, a clear hallowed residue remains, which has still helped to mold Québécois thought, albeit more silently and subtly.
VVThe Roman Catholic Church of Québec transformed tremendously from the start of the seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth and continues to do so. Many times, we tend to forget that, in earlier centuries, the Church led the creation of missions and scholarship which helped to spread ideas of Catholicism ‘from sea to sea’. The sacred institution was also vital to the development of cities like Montréal and Québec City. Most importantly, however, the Church was the bearer of education and healthcare for the people of Québec. It was through these various and central means whereby the Catholic faith became firmly embedded in Québécois culture; shaping the society and its institutions to this today as social and political fragments linger from Quebec’s profoundly religious past.
VVTo understand the province’s queasiness about organized religion, it is necessary to appreciate just how strong the Church used to be – and how decisively it was displaced. In an effort to avoid emphasis on presentism, this essay will traverse back in history to examine the structural and sociological precursors of the Roman Catholic Church’s diminished salience among francophone Québecers. It will start by highlighting the overarching power of the Church prior to the 1960s, and then ease into a period of Québec’s history when Church attendance plummeted; education was not a privilege granted by the clergy, but a right protected by the state; marriage was something one might or might not do; and the slogan Maîtres chez nous had become a rallying cry for everything from anti-clericalism to the nascent sovereignty movement. The essay will also take time to focus on the ‘quiet’ tumult of the Révolution tranquille and the eager reception accorded in Québec with the sweeping ecclesiastical reforms of Vatican II, which, in terms of elective affinity, helped the Québécois to escape from the tutelage of the Church. Throughout this essay it will also become clear that the secularity of contemporary Québec was the culmination of a long and fairly intense course of preparation that was conceived well before the 1960s and, more significantly, that it largely proceeded under the auspices of the Catholic Church itself. Yet, despite the fact that these labours were guided by the Church’s clergy and peopled with its laity, they had the ironic effect of ushering into Québec society the very trends whose results the faithful remnant and their leaders now lament
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