Documents
in Quebec History
Last
revised: 23 August 2000 | Siegfried:
the Race Question
André
Siegfried, The Race Question in Canada, London,
Eveleigh Nash, 1907, 343p. CHAPTER
II THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH I.
ITS ADMINISTRATIVE METHODS
[Note from the editor: There
are some differences between this translated text and the original version in
French published in 1906, even from the French edition of 1907. One change was
that the English edition dropped all footnotes; some parts were also altered,
in the English edition, which contained quotations, sometimes in Latin. The translator,
in England, was also not always familiar with the proper terminology used in Canada.
Thus, you will find many incongruities, areas where the translator did not convey
properly the true meaning of Siegfried. As an example, compare the following translation
with the beginning of the first paragraph of page four of the text :
" Indeed, the
conception of a lay society does not seem to have penetrated into New France.
Upon visiting it, one sees rapidly that it has not gone through its 1789. The
civil state, or record-keeping, is still in the hands of the clergy and public
opinion finds that only natural. It is the same with education:
" And
the end of the paragraph should read: "While it conceives well enough of
mutual toleration between the diverse confessions, it will not admit that allowance
should be made for those without religion". Often,
Siegfried was not well served by the English translator, as fact missed by Frank
H. Underhill in the 1966 edition by Carleton Library. Therefore, we recommend
that on sensitive points, the French edition also be consulted.] OF
the 5,371,000 inhabitants of Canada, 2,229,000 are Catholics, and of these 1,429,000
belong to the single province of Quebec. The Church of Rome has its stronghold,
therefore, upon French soil, and if we except the Irish element, which is somewhat
numerous, it may be said that, speaking generally, the French of Canada are Catholic
and the British Protestant. This fact contains the key to the entire political
situation of the Dominion. There need be little fear of our exaggerating the part
played by religion; both with Protestants and Catholics it is immense. In the
case of the French Canadians the ascendency of the Church is so great that it
may be regarded as the principal factor in their evolution. It
has been too much insisted upon that Separation between Church and State has become
the rule in the New World. That is true as regards the Protestants, but it is
not quite accurate as regards the Church of Rome, at least in Quebec, where it
is in enjoyment of a privileged system of government. Let
us make haste to acknowledge that upon the banks of the St. Lawrence the Catholic
Church has achieved a place apart, that it has always proved a loyal and powerful
protection to its disciples, and that our race and tongue owe to it perhaps their
survival in America. This unique position has enabled it, ever since the British
conquest of Canada, to wrest special privileges from the victors. In many respects
the Old World rights which it still maintains are a recognition of services rendered
to our nationality. Little wonder, then, if the Church is doubly dear to the French
of Canada, who see in it not merely the exponent of their faith but also the accredited
defender of their race. Guarantees
in regard to religious points figured largely in the treaties which handed over
our old colony to England. The capitulations of Quebec in 1759 and of Montreal
in 1760 began by protecting the vanquished from all danger of that religious persecution
of which they stood most in dread. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 confirmed these
preliminary stipulations, and formally recognised the right of the French Catholics
to keep up the practices of the Church of Rome within the limits of English law.
Finally the Quebec Act, passed in 1774 by the Imperial Parliament, established
definitively the civil, political, and religious rights of the French in Canada. The
status of the Catholic Church in Canada may be regarded, therefore, as due to
a species of Concordat. The Quebec Act is really a treaty almost as much as a
law. This was almost inevitable in a bilingual country in which two races live
side by side without mingling. The
privileges of the Catholic Church in Canada are as follows: To begin with, it
is accorded a kind of official recognition. The Quebec Act, regardful of the old
French traditions, and confirmed in this by the Code Civile of 1877, cedes
to the Catholic clergy the right to gather in and retain and disburse the time-honoured
revenues due to them, provided that these revenues are to be exacted only from
those who profess the religion of the Church of Rome. The
Protestants are entirely immune, therefore, from such rates. But it is otherwise
with those who do not make an explicit declaration either that they have been
converted to Protestantism or that they have ceased to belong to any faith. Any
Catholics there may be of an emancipated kind, any free-thinkers with a bias towards
Catholicism, are subjected to a certain mild form of intimidation, inasmuch as
the law forces them either to obey the behests of the clergy or else nerve themselves
to a kind of small apostasy, severely regarded by public opinion, and in any case
an ungrateful proceeding. Unless
they make this public profession, the Catholics are subjected to the payment of
a tithe, or rather of a twenty-sixth peck of corn from their crop, for these dues
are only acknowledged officially in the country districts. Here they have all
the appearance of a regular tax, the clergy being empowered to enforce their payment
by legal processes. In the towns their place is taken by a poll-tax not usually
recognised by the law; from time to time, however, the Courts have admitted its
obligatory character, and as its levy is seldom or never challenged, it may be
bracketed with the tithe. It will be seen, therefore, that in regard to this matter
the separation between Church and State does not exist. There
are other cases also in which the clergy are able to have recourse to the arm
of the law for the recovery of their dues. When, for instance, there is question
of erecting a new church, the bishop, assisted by a building committee, levies
a special tax upon the members of the parish concerned, and he can secure a Bill
from Parliament for its enforcement. No
Protestant, I repeat, is liable to be thus taxed, but it is difficult for a Catholic,
however unorthodox, to escape. Willy nilly, all must pay, and prosecutions,
though rare, are by no means unheard of. No one protests. The French Canadians
are devoted to their Church, free-thinkers are few, priest-baiters almost unknown.
Therefore there is no talk of suppressing this ancient practice surviving from
the France of yore. It
might be supposed that these important privileges would be balanced by a certain
restriction of the liberties of the Church. That is not so. Its hierarchy and
entire organisation are absolutely free from control, or even supervision, at
the hands of the State. We shall be able to take stock of all its essential features
without so much as mentioning the name of the civil power. The
Canadian parish, the unit of the ecclesiastical State, is formed more or less
upon the basis of the French parish. It is administered by a curé and a
vestry board, composed of acting and honorary churchwardens; these boards are
renewed by process of cooption, but it is the bishop through the curé who
has the chief say as to their constitution. And though they are autonomous bodies
to a certain extent, it must not be ignored that they are largely controlled -
and to an ever increasing extent - by the bishop. The
allotting of ecclesiastical appointments also is carried out in complete freedom.
The appointing of the curés lies with the bishops; that of new bishops
with the Pope, who makes his selection from a list of three names (dignus,
dignior, dignissimus) which is presented by the bishops already on the bench.
No intervention from outside takes place, though the presence of an apostolic
envoy involves the possibility of semi-official negotiations. But the Church is
sufficiently strong in Canada to discountenance interference, and its pride would
be hurt by certain kinds of suggestions. One does not easily forget the tone of
ironical contempt with which Canadian ecclesiastics are wont to speak of the "
Concordat," under which a M. Dumay, a freemason, had the appointing of the
bishops in France. The
creation and delimitation of new dioceses is equally free from interference by
the State. These are matters for Rome. Ottawa has nothing to say to them. It is
not even necessary to notify them to the Canadian Government. Thus the Church
really achieves that perfect condition of complete independence of which its high
functionaries love to talk. It lives outside the jurisdiction of the civil power,
above it, the ecclesiastics sometimes maintain and always feel. No one
ventures to assert in Canada, as in France, the supremacy of the State. The
very conception of a civil State does not seem indeed to have ever taken root
in Canadian France. One has no difficulty in seeing that it never went through
its 1789. The reins of government are still in the hands of the clergy, and this
seems to the public quite natural. It is the same with education : there are Catholic
schools and Protestant schools, but there are no secular schools in our sense
of the word. The dead are buried in denominational cemeteries : a Catholic who
has died without receiving the last Sacraments is not allowed to be buried in
a Catholic cemetery; his family have to solicit a grave for him in a Protestant
or Jewish cemetery. Such cases have occurred more than once. But in this respect
also, though there have been protests enough, there has been no genuine effort
at reform. This gives some idea of the mutual sentiment of toleration existing
between the Churches. The condition of having no religion is simply not taken
into account. Most of
the understandings come to in other countries with the Holy See have tended to
check the intervention of the clergy in politics. In Canada the freedom of the
priest in this respect is absolute. There is no law to prevent him from holding
forth from the pulpit on the most burning questions of the day. As to the bishops,
they are free to throw all the weight of their authority into the balance either
by means of pastoral letters or of collective manifestoes [Note from the editor:
the French text wrote "mandement". This translates as pastoral letter
but carries further the sense that there is a command therein, one that demands
of Catholics to comport themselves in a certain way, that an obligation must be
carried out]. They have intervened in this way from time to time, and the Government
has had no power to cope with them effectively. The utmost that could be done
has been to annul certain elections in which clerical interference has gone beyond
all reasonable limits and has taken the form of refusing the Sacraments to influence
votes. But these cases have been very rare, and even the leaders of the Liberal
party, though opposed by the Church, recognised the priest's right to take part
in the electoral contests. The
clergy may congratulate themselves, therefore, on their position in face of the
law. The law not merely places no obstacles in their way, but on the contrary
it supports them. Only in their household, so to speak, have they rivals to contend
with - namely, the members of the religious orders. At
the time of the cession of Canada it was stipulated that the sisterhoods should
not be disturbed. There was no such provision as regards the Jesuits, Franciscans,
and Sulpicians, but the new rulers treated them in the most tolerant fashion.
The Jesuit community, however, ceased to exist towards the end of the eighteenth
century, and by an existing law their property passed into the hands of the State.
The other orders developed, unfettered in any way, and the Sulpicians, in particular,
throve remarkably. In
the course of the last twenty years the multiplication of religious confraternities
[should read: congregations] in Canada has taken on considerable proportions;
the Jesuits have returned, and have even been endowed to the extent of 2,000,000
francs by the Quebec Parliament as indemnity for the former confiscation
of their goods. In addition, the fame of Canada as a Catholic country, the liberal
tendency of its ecclesiastical rule [read: the liberalism of the rules governing
the Church] - to say nothing of the anti-clerical laws promulgated in France -
has had the effect of attracting thousands of monks and nuns to the Dominion.
They have to go through some formalities, it is true, before becoming established,
but these are formalities and nothing more; they must obtain a Bill from the provincial
Parliament, but this is rarely refused them; and they must submit to the jurisdiction
of the bishopric. This done, they are free to receive offerings and legacies,
without trammels of any kind upon their activities. Their
activities are very diverse in form. For the most part they win the goodwill and
approval of the public. Some orders give up their lives to prayer and meditation,
amply supported by alms. Others devote themselves to education : the Sulpicians,
for instance, have most of the seminaries under their sway; the Jesuits play an
important rôle in secondary education ; the Christian Brothers find their
occupation in the management of primary schools; while there are many who, availing
themselves of the exemption from taxation which they enjoy, earn their livelihood
just like laymen by setting up printing works or kitchen gardens, taking in washing,
etc. They find a large field for their energies also in hospital work and charitable
duties of all kinds in a country in which the province of the secular administration
is not yet very clearly marked out. Finally, these orders sometimes are moved
to build chapels, and it is in this connection that they come into direct conflict
with the secular clergy. Chapels
are apt to be formidable rivals to parish churches. This has been discovered in
Canada as elsewhere. The monks are well equipped for making way. They have
all their time at their disposal, and are able to win adherents among rich and
poor alike by their visits and good offices. The poor have recourse to them as
their special protectors, as regards both body and soul. The rich are attracted
by a stamp of elegance which distinguishes certain confraternities. These
are not the remarks merely of a foreign visitor. They come from the bishops and
curés themselves. The bishops, especially, look with alarm at a competition
which in some cases seems fraught with danger to them. They have even gone so
far as to appropriate for their congregations certain chapels which seemed in
too great demand; and, in order to avert the evil, they have sought to discourage
the immigration of the members of religious orders in too great numbers. Not openly,
but by means of hints, they convey a friendly warning to new arrivals and to intending
comers that Canada, though a big place, has but a small population, and that for
its still somewhat restricted flocks there is not scope for an unlimited supply
of shepherds. If you must come, they say, at least go farther West and
open out the prairie! You
may even hear people in close touch with the Church, but enjoying a greater freedom
of speech than its dignitaries, complain openly of this troublesome invasion,
and talk of the possibility of introducing a law dealing with the whole question
of religious confraternities - a law which would meet with no very determined
opposition from the bishops and curés. But these are wild words, the outcome
of jealousy and ill-humour. Against the common enemies, Protestantism and Free
Thought, all the forces of Catholicism are united and as one man. There may be
diverse currents, but they are turned by the Vatican in the one direction. The
Catholic Church in Canada is in truth in a condition of deep submission to the
Holy See. It bent the knee, not perhaps without reluctance but to the full, to
that new order of things by which, thirty or forty years ago, the Church became
an absolute centralised monarchy. We shall note many evidences of this in the
course of the chapters that follow. CHAPTER
III THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH (continued)
II. ITS FEAR OF THE PROTESTANT
INFLUENCE ALL
the old beliefs have been preserved as it were in ice among the French of Canada,
and it would seem that the great stream of modern thought has as yet failed, with
them, to shake the rock of Catholic belief. It is rare to find a body of the faithful
so submissive in their attitude ; and it is not merely the country folk who are
to be found rallying round their priests, but also the townsfolk and the industrial
population generally. Indifference is to be met with, of course, here as everywhere,
but it hardly ever takes on the form of disrespect. We are far indeed from modern
France. In a bilingual
country peopled by two races it is natural that the limits of religious jurisdiction
should be very clearly drawn ; this is the normal result of historical conditions,
no less than of a very consistent and resolute line of policy followed by the
Roman clergy since the first days of the conquest - the policy of isolation. Dispersion
and absorption are the two dangers which menace unceasingly the unity of our race
in Canada. Therefore it was that the Church, profoundly convinced that to keep
the race French was to keep it Catholic, came to look upon isolation as the chief
safeguard for a racial individuality threatened on all sides by the advances of
the New World. Therefore it is that it has put out all its efforts to segregate
its flock from the rest of America. Instead of attempting the difficult and ungrateful
task of making converts in the enemy's camp, it has devoted all its energies to
retaining its hold over the souls belonging to it from the far past. In this work
the two influences it has most to fear are those of Protestantism and Free Thought.
To keep its members out of the reach of these two powerful tendencies is the programme
which it continues to have constantly before it. The
first of these two dangers is the more threatening, for the solid body of French
Catholics is beaten upon at all points by the on-coming waves of the Anglo-American
ocean. English and Protestant have become almost synonymous terms in a country
in which there are doubtless many English Catholics but in which French Protestants
are practically non-existent. And it were vain to ignore the fact that conversion
to Protestantism involves generally the passing of the convert into the ranks
of the English body: the two things go together. In order to prevent these defections,
the Catholic Church has done everything in its power to lessen the contact of
the two races. The development of the Canadians may have suffered from this division,
but to it is due in great degree the astonishing persistence of their distinctive
individuality. Natural
circumstances facilitate the accomplishment of this programme. Victors and vanquished,
English and French, might well be expected to avoid rather than seek out occasions
of intercourse: everything, or almost everything, tends to keep them apart. The
fact of their speaking different languages in particular constitutes a real barrier
between them, which the clergy naturally do nothing to break down : the
state of things produced by it is all in their favour. This,
however, does not apply to the bourgeoisie ; for business, like the learned
professions, demands a thorough knowledge of English. The colleges for secondary
education managed by the Church have had to recognise this necessity, with the
result that almost all Canadians of the upper or even the middle classes are now
able to speak both languages quite well ; they are in consequence more exposed
to the influences of the neighbouring form of civilisation. But
the great mass of French Canadians are unacquainted with any foreign tongue. They
will probably remain so, and the Church can be at rest in regard to them as long
as they do, for they are proof against the influence of the English-speaking races.
Monseigneur Laflèche, Bishop of Trois-Rivières, has expressed his view upon the
whole subject in a phrase that has become famous: " My children, be well
up in French, but not too well up in English! " Language
constitutes the outworks protecting Catholicism in Canada. When these have been
overcome, the stronghold of the Church is open to new attacks in the shape of
the social intercourse that ensues between the two races, and above all in mixed
marriages. It is impossible
to prevent all intercourse between two races living together in the same cities.
The Church has realised this, and has reserved all her strength for the prevention
as far as practicable of marriages between Catholics and Protestants. To this
end she imposes severe conditions : the ceremony must take place only in the Catholic
Church, and an undertaking must be given that the children shall be brought up
in the Catholic faith. This attitude is easy to understand, and its effects are
clear. The Church wishes to keep its boundaries intact and well defined. She would
prefer to lose a single individual member altogether rather than sanction the
admission of a Protestant upon any other terms into a Catholic family. Otherwise
the result might be the formation of dubious groups, half Catholic, half Protestant,
likely to tend later towards Free Thought and to be lost entirely to Rome. The
success of this policy has been well-nigh complete. Mixed marriages are few, and
in all cases the question of religion is settled one way or the other. It is not
the clergy alone that are responsible for this solution. The whole Canadian community,
Protestant as well as Catholic, supports them in the matter. Both races seem to
feel that it is necessary to be either French or English, Protestant or Catholic
- that it is not possible to be both at once, or to maintain a state of equilibrium
between the two. Both armies have made prisoners in the strife, but each has in
the long run held good its position. The
situation of the French Protestants between these opposing forces is a very difficult
one. The French Protestant is something of a paradox in Canada. There is no place
for him. The moment comes for him sooner or later when he must choose between
his race and his religion. It is not easy for him to keep to his religion: no
French Canadian girl will be allowed to marry him unless he be prepared to hand
over his children to the Church of Rome. If he wishes to remain a Protestant he
is almost bound to marry an Englishwoman, and the result is that even if he himself
resists British influences and remains French, his children will be barely able
to speak his language, and will develop almost certainly into Anglo-Saxons. It
is true that there are some small French communities in Canada belonging to the
Reformed Church - small colonies perhaps it would be more correct to designate
them, for they have nothing Canadian about them. Their moral elevation of character
and their cohesion are worthy of all praise, but their position is a precarious
one owing to the state of things I have described. It
would be quite a mistake to suppose that the Canadian Catholic clergy are animated
by any anti-English feeling in their policy of isolation. What they are guarding
against is Protestantism and advanced views. That is why they look askance at
the Americans also, even the American Catholics who are suspected of too great
independence in their attitude towards the Holy See. Therefore it is that the
neighbouring peoples are kept apart almost as by water-tight partitions. The Canadian
Catholic spirit follows its own course, and knows no other guidance than that
of Rome. In these circumstances it is not surprising that Protestant Jewish and
Theistic America should be an object of even greater alarm than England, as being
more alive and less conservative. The policy of annexation has no more resolute
opponents than the clergy of Quebec, for they realise on the day the province
should be merged in America there would be an end to its old isolation, and it
would be overwhelmed by the torrent of new ideas. It would mean the end of Catholic
supremacy in this corner of the world, perhaps the deathblow to the French race
in Canada. Such, then,
in its main outlines, is the policy of isolation so effectively pursued by the
Canadian Catholic Church. It is becoming a more and more difficult one in the
face of the unceasing advance of methods of communication and the progress of
education and the growth of the power of the press. However, the clergy are not
relaxing their efforts, and they maintain their desperate struggle for the upper
hand in the matter of the schools. And if they do not win over many Protestants
they still retain their authority over their own flocks. Up
to the present their defences have not suffered much at the hands of their English
opponents. Let us see now how they have fared face to face with the revolutionary
France of 1789. Their resistance in this direction we shall find is not less persistent
or less energetic. Source:
André Siegfried, The Race Question in Canada, London, Eveleigh Nash, 1907,
343p., pp. 11-25. © 2000
Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College |