In recent days, the role of the Catholic Church in Quebec has been debated. Has Catholicism as it is institutionally embodied in our country engendered a culture of solidarity? That was the question. What surprised me in this debate is the lack of nuance; we were more into the cavalry charge than into speckled foil. For many analysts, the religious history of Quebec and its Catholic heritage can only be written in black ink.
Certainly, it is indisputable that the Catholic Church in Quebec, both as an institution of power and as a structure of supervision, in many circumstances and in many files, has acted as a conservative force driven by a pastism as distressing as it is detestable. Think of his excessive clericalism, his devaluation of the role of women, his opposition to modernism through his condemnation of theatre, dance and cinema, his contempt for homosexuals, and the scandal of sexual assaults that the theologian Jean- Guy Nadeau has brilliantly documented.
However, Quebec Catholicism as it has been lived in our part of the country also has positive elements to its credit that have contributed to the influence and dynamism of French Canada and Quebec. It seems to me that we can recognize four of them.
1. After the failure of the rebellions of 1837-1838, the Church became the main interlocutor of the colonial authorities. She never ceased to defend the use of the French language and the political rights of French Canadians, whose political elite had been decimated, to use the expression of historian Éric Bédard.
2. Thousands of men and women have swelled the ranks of the clergy and religious congregations. These people, often in difficult conditions, put themselves at the service of children, orphans and the sick, embodying self-sacrifice and generosity: so many characteristics of a culture of solidarity. Lucia Ferretti, a historian of Quebec Catholicism, wrote: “In 1931, Quebec had 4,300 priests, or 1 for 576 faithful and 1 religious or 1 nun for 97 faithful. […] At the start of the crisis, no less than 27,100 Quebec women were nuns, compared to 15,200 in 1911.”
3. The Catholic Church is not the founder of the Quebec cooperative movement, this credit goes to Alphonse Desjardins. However, the Catholic Church here provided the framework and the premises by making the basements of the parish churches available to the parish priests to support this important economic movement.
4. Many analysts have pointed out that solidarity has not been the prerogative of the Catholic religion, and they are quite right. On the other hand, the Catholic Church of Quebec has promoted social Catholicism and specialized Catholic action in the name of which lay activists, driven by Christian values, have invested in causes such as under-education, unsanitary housing, low wages, etc. These militants were, among others, the Simone Chartrand, Claude Ryan, Gérard Pelletier, Hélène Pelletier-Baillargeon, Guy Rocher of this world.
In short, the Quebec Church has been a place of formation and commitment for many people who have undertaken to modernize Quebec and make it this unique and original model of social development in North America.
If we want to debate the contribution of the Quebec Church to a certain culture of solidarity, I suggest that we bear in mind this sentence by Lucia Ferretti whose wisdom and historical veracity should enlighten us: “The French-Canadian people recognized themselves in their Church, since they nourished her with their vocations, their financial support, their participation in their works and their lasting agreement to make her one of their principal instruments of development. »