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.
VVMembers of Catholic Action met regularly in intimate settings, in the absence of the clergy, to read Scripture and to divine its meanings for modern times. They thus learned not merely how to organize themselves, but also how to plan in groups; how to reflect, discern, debate, and decide in a manner free and autonomous; and how ultimately to orchestrate outreach activities.22 Imbued with Catholic Action’s decision-making method of “See-Judge-Act,” veterans of the movement, including such luminaries as Pierre Juneau, Marc Lalonde, Jean Le Moyne, Gérard Pelletier, Claude Ryan, and Jeanne Sauvé, consequently went on to careers in the media, government, and civil society of Québec.
VVPelletier – in his youth an international officer (sécretaire-général) of a major organization in Catholic Action (the Jeunesse étudiante catholique), and later a Member of Parliament, a federal cabinet minister, and a Canadian ambassador – can be taken as a suitable representative of the post-war Canadian elite in Québec. As an adult, committed simultaneously to religious action in the world, to his profession as a journalist and television broadcaster, and to principled public service, Pelletier saw no conflict between the removal of the Church and its ministers from social institutions and the promotion of an authentic faith. In fact, to him the two processes were complementary. To unbelieving friends, Pelletier was inclined to say, as he confided in 1961, “You are persuaded that the withdrawal of the clergy from temporal responsibilities that are not theirs will lead fatally to the practical undoing of all religious life. We judge, to the contrary, that the Church in Québec needs to abandon a role that is not its own in order to rediscover its true direction and that it will emerge greater from this transformation.”[1]
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8822. Robert Choquette, Canada’s Religions : An Historical Introduction, Religions and Beliefs Series, no. 12 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2004), pp. 345-50.
8822.
8823.
8824.