Maintenant ou jamais…Maîtres chez nous (“Now or never…Masters of our own house”).
VVCharles F. Doran, a leading American observer of Canada, skillfully describes the changes during the second half of the twentieth century:
VVVVVVVVVFrancophone Québecers lifted themselves out of VVVVVVVVVinferior social status, leaving the farm, entering the university, VVVVVVVVVembracing business, celebrating their language and culture. VVVVVVVVVThe clergy that had saved Québec from the neglect of Louis VVVVVVVVVXV and his court, and from the hardships of survival in a rough VVVVVVVVVland, now became a burden. A Catholic faith that had provided VVVVVVVVVthe social cement for the colony, as well as the solace from VVVVVVVVVfear and from societal and job exclusion for its members, VVVVVVVVVbecame an embarrassing reminder of a past that everyone VVVVVVVVVwanted to forget. …to be modern,…Québecer[s] had to turn VVVVVVVVVagainst Mother Church, the institution that had succoured and VVVVVVVVVprotected them but that now condemned their materialism. VVVVVVVVVThe Québec Church was the institution that stayed with VVVVVVVVVQuébecers when the French elite abandoned them after the VVVVVVVVVConquest, that helped defend them against the depredations VVVVVVVVVof the 1839 Durham Report (that proposed to assimilate VVVVVVVVVthem), that cared for the sick and educated their children, and VVVVVVVVVthat provided cultural continuity across three centuries of VVVVVVVVVdifficult survival as a people. Yet under the umbrella of the VVVVVVVVVQuiet Revolution this was the institution against which they VVVVVVVVVrebelled.1
VVRemarkably, the Church reacted to the secularization of Québec society with relative serenity. Certainly, the bishops and other religious leaders objected to the government’s plans for the secularization of education and the religious communities opposed the reforms which turned their hospitals into public institutions.[1] Generally, however, Québec society avoided the tragic cultural schism that marked the movement into secular modernity of Catholic countries like France and Italy. In Québec, the Church did not withdraw into a ‘Catholic ghetto,’ anathematize the new society, and work towards a restoration of the old order.[2] Part of the reason for this was that many of the supporters of the reforms were members of the Church. Part of this also had to do with Vatican II. Both of which I will cover in the following sections.
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8815. Charles F. Doran, Why Canadian Unity Matters and Why Americas Care: Democratic Pluralism at Risk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), pp. 78-9.
8811.
8812.
8813.
8814.