Date Published:
August 2006

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Stéphane ST-PIERRE, François-Albert Angers et la nation confessionnelle (1937-1960) , Mémoire de M.A. (histoire), Université de Montréal, 2006, 181p.

Summary of the Thesis

François-Albert Angers’s university career was outstanding; his national and social commitment, unwavering. This economist and intellectual was faithful to the nationalist traditionalism of Lionel Groulx and Esdras Minville.

Our analysis of his ideas between 1937 and 1960 attempts to understand how Christian philosophy, material progress and democracy can be combined; how modernity and tradition blend. His dynamic conception of social organisation tackles the problems of the modern world. The notion of denominational nation links all the components of his ideology, which functions as an organic whole. Catholicism, cultural identity, education, economy and collective life are the foundations of this concept. According to an all-encompassing perspective inspired by social Catholicism, the denominational nation provides the person with the means to achieve spiritual, moral, intellectual and material purposes.

Angers’s aim was a radical reform of society through corporatism and cooperatism in order to develop a democratic, personnalist and national state, where were to be found liberty, responsability and justice, without undue egalitarianism. His economic nationalism was directed toward the emancipation and empowerment of French Canadians. In the 60’s, the ideal of a denominational nation was gradually declining in the Quebec society due to secularization, rejection of nation as cultural entity and expansion of welfare state. Therefore, it is fair to say that secular and materialistic modernity overcame denominational modernity.

Keywords

- François-Albert Angers

- Social Catholicism

- Economic nationalism

- French Canadian Traditionalism

[Introduction]

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Source: Stephane St.-Pierre, François-Albert Angers et la nation confessionnelle (1937-1960), Mémoire de M.A. (histoire), Université de Montréal, 2006, 181p., pp. iii-iv.