Eighteen years ago, the sociologist Jean-Philippe Warren signed, in the review Relationships (October-November 2005), an article entitled ” The Church as a Scarecrow “. The author wondered: “For 40 years in Quebec, it seems that we never stop wanting to tear ourselves away from the religious past. »
If we add these 18 years to Warren’s 40 years, we can conclude that in Quebec, the anticlerical posture is doing well! Gérard Bouchard’s recent column on the purely secular origin of our values of solidarity and mutual aid bears witness to this (The duty Saturday April 29, 2023). It is certainly not Bouchard the historian who speaks here, he himself will agree.
In the age of the Internet and to quickly retrace and reread Warren’s article which has not lost its topicality: “The Great Darkness, he writes, is a myth – not in the sense of a ‘fibulation ”, but in the sense of a grand narrative imposing itself on the common conscience in an almost obsessive way. »
We would also benefit greatly from re-reading, in the company of Mr. Bouchard, Brief history of the Catholic Church in Quebec, by historian and specialist Lucia Ferretti. Good reading !
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