Wait, I must have missed a bit. I thought I understood that secularism was sacred in Quebec. I thought that our parents had rejected the Catholic religion en masse, and that this rejection justified our determination to eradicate religion from public space.
Yet I seemed to have heard that if Quebecers held so much to the principle of secularism, it was because they remembered too well having lived under the yoke of the Church. It had nothing, but then nothing to do with any ambient chilliness. It was historic.
And now, on this magnificent Easter Monday, the leader of the secular nation of Quebec split into an emotional tweet relaying the “Praise of our old Catholic background” laid by the columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté in The Journal of Montreal.
It was enough to set fire to the twittosphere.
The irony was tremendous. Didn’t François Legault’s government just scold schools for committing a crime against secularism by letting Muslim students pray in vacant premises at lunchtime?
More than irony, many saw it as hypocrisy.
Did the Prime Minister blunder? Did he instead light the fuse knowing full well that the All-Twitter would spend his Monday off tearing each other apart? Is that divide and conquer?
Frankly, I don’t know. But let’s take for granted that Legault is not Machiavelli. Let’s say he agrees with this statement, quoted in his tweet: “Catholicism has also engendered in us a culture of solidarity that distinguishes us on a continental scale. »
I asked a sociologist, a political scientist and a historian if this was indeed the case. I thought the answer would be simple…but no. Not really. It depends on what we’re talking about, really.
“Issues that affect solidarity, donations and social justice, in matters of religion, are complex because they vary according to the indicators that we choose, in addition to varying historically”, warns Martin Meunier, expert in the sociology of contemporary Catholicism in Quebec and Canada.
No study has been able to determine which, Protestant or Catholic societies, were more united, a concept that is also difficult to measure, adds the sociologist from the University of Ottawa. “Everyone is right in their corner by taking one indicator rather than another, and speaking of one era rather than another. »
Olivier Jacques, political scientist at the University of Montreal, believes that François Legault is right to say that current Quebec society is more united than others. But not because of his old Catholic background. On the contrary, she would lean towards social democracy despite her religious past.
“What we clearly observe is that support for income redistribution and state intervention is higher in Quebec than in the other provinces,” explains the political scientist.
His hypothesis is that this increased solidarity is partly explained by the atheism of Quebecers.
“We know that, in general, support for redistribution is weaker among believers, who rely on their Church and their support network to take care of them if they fall ill or if they lose their income. The non-religious, who do not have this network, rely on the State. »
However, Quebecers are less religious than other North American societies, recalls Olivier Jacques. He will test his hypothesis in a scientific article, which he will present at the next Acfas congress.
Until then, one thing is certain: solidarity is not a value unique to Catholicism. The Holy See did not give birth to social democracy. And Quebec did not invent the concept of the welfare state. In fact, it rather lagged behind the great solidarity movements of English Canada. Should we recall the memory of Tommy Douglas? Remember that Medicare comes to us from Saskatchewan?
“Maurice Duplessis delayed the advent of a welfare state by 15 years because he shared this liberal philosophy where the state should interfere as little as possible in social and economic issues,” recalls historian Éric Bédard. , professor at TÉLUQ University.
The leader of the Union Nationale, prime minister from 1936 to 1939, then from 1944 to 1959, relied on the Church to provide education, health care and support for the poor. “In almost all Western societies, the break took place after the Second World War. But the Quebec of Duplessis resisted. It will take a (quiet) revolution to catch up.
That does not mean that Catholicism has brought nothing good to Quebec society. “It’s a question of interpretation”, cautiously advances Éric Bédard. He recalls that the credit unions were created in church basements and that nuns were models of solidarity: Marguerite D’Youville, Émilie Gamelin, Marie Gérin-Lajoie…
“Great initiatives [religieuses] of solidarity have allowed Quebecers to be cared for, educated and taken care of. […] That this society where the Church had such an important role has become the most social democratic, yes, perhaps there is a parallel, in the following sense: the State has taken over from the Church. »
So, this old Catholic background, is it good or bad?
Make your choice: there is something for everyone. Beyond this question with multiple answers, Martin Meunier cannot help observing an astonishing “political instrumentalization of religion” in the context of the debate on secularism.
He is almost as surprised by the “epidermal reaction” of Quebecers to the Prime Minister’s “all things considered insignificant” tweet.
“The mere evocation of a positive character that could be attributed to the Catholic heritage is seen as open to criticism by the majority of people. For the sociologist that I am, it shows that the relationship of Quebecers to Catholicism is far from settled…”