Mr. Legault’s famous tweet about Catholicism, which “brought to us a culture of solidarity that distinguishes us on a continental scale,” surprisingly elicited a large number of comments. They have come to us mostly from people who have moved away from Christianity. Of course! This is now the case for the vast majority of Quebecers.
For my part, I am from the inside. And what happens there deserves to be known. Indeed, I belong to a Montreal Christian community. In accordance with its mission, its members find there both the privileged place for the celebration of their faith and its deepening; they maintain fraternal ties there that they want to extend, beyond their community membership, through service to their loved ones and in their environment; they engage in the city in the search for justice and peace. Finally, in the joy of Sunday gathering, they share bread and wine, in memory of the Risen Jesus, source of their hope. Added to this is the fruitful ethic proposed by the Gospel and which can be summed up in a single formula: love your neighbour, including your enemies.
These general objectives translate into a set of activities planned by the pastoral council, but also stimulated by the life of its members. The community lives by a fundamental value: the equality of all, priest included!
That said, she is a tiny speck in the Church. And this is plural. There are conservatives and progressives. But we are also invited not to succumb to self-righteousness, that is to say, to take ourselves for models of virtue.
The happiness that I experience in my belonging to Christianity does not make me deaf or blind. I know the serious failings of yesterday’s Catholicism that need not be listed: they are repeated ad infinitum. I regret and denounce his past and current flaws, first and foremost, of course, sexual abuse. I condemn as scandalous the inequality of the status of women in institutions, which its leaders persist in maintaining, worse, in justifying. I abhor, despite its decline, the clericalism of which the locker room of our “Monseigneurs”, as archaic as it is pompous, remains the unbearable indicator.
Never mind ! The members of my community and so many others around the world are aware of the great heritage which, despite its faults, transmitted to them their Church, a community of faith beyond its institutions, founded 2000 years ago in the wake of the Passover which we have just joyfully celebrated.
Today’s believers are aging and declining in number. Their children have generally dropped out. The institutions they knew have disintegrated or are struggling. Even our community is ostensibly declining, to see the gray heads in the majority in its assemblies. Like everywhere else.
Quebec itself is also suffering the repercussions of this decline in terms of heritage, with the rampant closure of the magnificent churches built by previous generations. Not to mention those that are falling apart. Only the “secularists” can rejoice!
Christians still know the indifference of our media which no longer talk about religion, except for scandals, or which echo an aggressive secularism. “Blessed are you if men overwhelm you with their contempt”, we read in the Gospel. Surprising, but fruitful affirmation. Just like this invitation to love our enemies, which does not mean accepting injustice.
From a demographic point of view, what the Church of Quebec (and even those elsewhere) is going through is therefore easy to predict: it is on the way to extinction. In the Old Testament, there is a theme that is often taken up: that of the “little remnant”. For Israel, stricken by misfortune, it announces the end of an era and the advent of a new era, the contours of which are undecided. The myth of the Flood and Noah’s Ark is the magnificent prototype. For now, in the West at least, Christianity, or at least its institutions, seems to be dying. But I remain, with many others, a man of faith and hope. For “unless the grain of wheat that has fallen into the ground dies, it remains alone; but, if he dies, he bears much fruit”.