that two-thirds (67 per cent) of Canadian adults attended religious worship in a typical week, but a similar survey in 1996 showed that this proportion had dropped to 20 per cent.27 Over the decade separating 1988 and 1998, those who attended church at least once per month fell from 41 to 34 per cent of the Canadian adult population.28 This dissipation of devotion was especially acute in Québec, where monthly attendance plummeted from 48 per cent in 1986 to 29 per cent by 1998.29
VVWith respect to attendance at Mass, which for many believers is the hallmark of Catholic identity, the data from Québec is unremittingly negative. The earliest Canadian survey on record that invited self-reports of church attendance, a Gallup Poll from 1945, suggests that at the end of the Second World War, nearly nine out of ten Catholics in Québec went to Mass on a weekly basis.30 This impressively high rate of Mass attendance held fairly steady through the next two decades: in 1957 it stood at 88 per cent and in 1965 at 85 per cent. But by 1970, the percentage of Québecers attending weekly had decreased sharply to 65.
VVIt is important to note, however, despite all of the declension between the role of the Church and State in Québec, it did not markedly change the almost unanimous rates at which Québec Catholics, then and now, profess to believe in the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus Christ, and without overwhelming majorities who confess a personal habit of at least occasional prayer.31 Indeed, Québec is not as secular as the contemporary media makes it out to be. The French-Canadian nation is still, in fact, a land of Catholicism. According to a 2008 Léger Marketing poll, the proportion of Québec’s nearly six million Catholics who attend mass weekly now stands at 6 per cent, the lowest of any Western society.[3] But therein lies a paradox. That more than 80 per cent of Québecers still declare themselves Catholics, according to the 2001 census, suggests an attachment to the faith. If not a spiritual one, at least a cultural one.[4]
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8827. “Canadian Social Trends Backgrounder: ‘No Religion’ Continues to Grow,” Canadian Social Trends (Autumn 1998), p. 6.
8828. Warren Clark, “Patterns of Religious Attendance,” Canadian Social Trends (Winter 2000), p. 23.
8829. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Religious Groups in Canada, Profile Series, (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2001), p. 5.
8830. Reginald Bibby, Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada, Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 2002), p. 11 and pp. 15-20.
8831.Reginald Bibby, “La Religion à la carte au Québec: Un problème d’offre, de demande, ou des deux?” in Globe, edited by Robert Mager and Martin Meunier, Volume 10/2, 2007-2008, pp. 137-38.
8832.
8833.