Québec Church and state learned to cooperate and compromise in a spirit of pluralism, reform, and tolerance.19 This is not to say that Vatican II and the emergence of a faith and justice movement were the direct causes of the Church’s acceptance of the new Québec society and the new nationalism, but these developments had a sort of elective affinity, that, in one sense, allowed the Church to become more open to compromise and undermined the position of Catholic conservatives who dreamed of a restoration of the old society.
V. CATHOLIC ACTION AND THE RISE OF NEW LAY ELITES
VVThe arrival of the Révolution tranquille also heralded the final elevation to power of new elites that had been forming in Québec for most of the half-century before the provincial election of 1960. One of the first scholars of Québec to point out this change was the sociologist Jean-Charles Falardeau.
VVAccording to Falardeau, these elites composed two broad categories: one, flowing out of the universities, was poised to enter the expanding state bureaucracy; and another was rising swiftly through the previously English-speaking ranks of business executives. A salient fact Falardeau alludes to is that many of those who ascended into the new elites were persons who had gained their formative organizational experience as leaders of various movements of Catholic Action (“anciens dirigeants de l’action catholique”).20
VVThe original movements of Catholic Action arose almost one hundred years ago out of the direction of Catholic energies to the task of “social reconstruction.”21 The call to the service of God on earth (and thereby the transformation of the world) was not limited to the clergy or religious, the Catholic Church taught, but was to involve all Catholics, no matter what their status or station. Their work, in turn, was to be pursued through group action that was “specialized” to the social milieu of the believer.
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8819. Gregory Baum, The Church in Québec, pp. 38-47.
8820. Jean-Charles Falardeau, “Des élites traditionnelles aux élites nouvelles,” Recherches sociographiques, Volume 7, numéro 1-2, 1966, p. 139.
8821. Gabriel Clément, Histoire de l’Action catholique au Canada français, Rapport de la Commission d’étude sur les laïcs et l’Église, no. 2 (Montréal : Les Éditions Fides, 1972).
8822.