Post for January 29, 2010
Padre Roberto and I decided to head out to see (yet another) film this evening. I was a bit worried my presence was a distraction to him, but as he put it, “If I live alone I don’t get to see movies I want to see, because I don’t want to see them alone. With you here, I can go and see them!” Made sense to me.
We decided to see Up in the Air, the George Clooney film that people are talking about. It is about a guy whose job is to fire people — companies hire his firm to let people down easy (and in a way that covers their legal butts). He spends so much time on the road doing his job that he is barely ever home, a situation that he enjoys. He *likes* being in planes and airport lounges and hotel bars. Simply put, he is a travelling pro, who belives that the only way to be happy is to have no attachments to anything, not even people.
Of course, the vacuous nature of this rootless existence eventually catches up to him. His only goal in life is to acquire a particular level of frequent flyer miles, and he starts to wonder if this is enough. And he discovers it isn’t.
The end.
Well, there’s more. There are a number of funny (and sweet) moments that come from his interactions with a new employee in his firm who is young and perky and full of impractical ideas… he gets the job of showing her the ropes (to his dismay and hers). In some ways his rediscovery of idealism parallels her loss of hers. And there is his relationship with his family, which itself evolves.
But in the end, he is still left with nothing. The movie is about the deconstruction of an anti-hero. The possibility of some kind of redemption is held out at the end (quite literally, actually — he contemplates redeeming some travel points), but he does so with a lost look on his face. He starts out confident, he ends up lost. The end.
Quite depressing, if you ask me.
What is it about movies these days that they can’t have heroes? Maybe that’s why Avatar did so well. Not just the special effects, but the fact that the protagonist was himself changed and, in a way, redeemed. The nihilists were the *bad guys*.
At least Up in the Air faces the nihilism and shows us where it goes. I suppose that is valuable. And I’m sure there will be some who will say that it should be applauded as an aid to helping people become Nietzchean supermen, facing into the abyss. But personally, I think there is meaning to the world and to human existence. So I can’t celebrate tragedy, nor Up in the Air.
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Post for November 23, 2009
So my niece has been waiting with great anticipation for the new Twilight film, called “New Moon”, and now it is finally here. I had seen the first one, and while it was “ok” I had found it pretty cheesy, so I was wary about seeing the sequel. However, the various reviews I read of the film were actually quite positive. In general, the consensus was that the movie was better than the first installment of the series, and that the performances really let you get into the mindset of the main character Bella. Granted, she’s an angst-filled teenage girl, so I wasn’t sure it was a mindset I wanted to explore all that much, but I figured what the heck. After all, how bad could it be?
Oh my gosh. Pretty bad, as it turns out. After almost falling asleep after the first half hour (it was so slow) the movie became a complete caricature of itself. I mean, it was really painful. A friend sitting beside me whispered to himself aty one point, “This is torture!” And it was, it really was. Now I have seen bad cheesy movies in the past and thoroughly enjoyed them (Army of Darkness comes immediately to mind), but this film suffers from the fatal flaw that typically prevents a movie from elevating its cheesiness to an art form: it takes itself WAY to seriously.
As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones to think this: several times people in the theatre burst out laughing at moments that you can tell were not meant to be funny. And I must also confess that those of us who went to see the movie together wound up spending a considerable amount of time talking about the movie or, more accurately, our experience of the movie. We were merciless, and I laughed so hard I actually cried. Ah well, it was a good excuse for us to get together after and share a good scotch.
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Post for April 22, 2007
I got together with Fr. Benoit tonight, and we watched Live and Let Die (he got a bunch of Bond movies for his birthday recently).
Wow. I just can’t believe it. A blaxploitation Bond flick. It might not be the worst Bond flick ever (I never did see Moonraker, which I hear was really REALLY awful), but it was certainly a real stinkeroo for me.
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Post for December 26, 2006
This book is a collection of photographs around the theme of the simple shrines one finds scattered throughout Italy. I am not referring to the major centres of pilgrimmage, but rather to the classic “statue on the lawn” sort of simple sites of devotion. And as much as the book is an hommage to these works of piety, it is really a reverential look at that piety itself.
Steven Rothfeld, who authors just a few words here and there to introduce or comment on the photographs, does not appear to really understand the deep faith that roots the popular devotion to these shrines, but to his credit he respects that faith and understands that there is something to understand. This is not a book one “reads”, in that there are few words. But with the marvelous photos, which capture both the simplicity and spiritual beauty of the shrines, there is plenty upon which to meditate. I give this book a 4/5.
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Post for December 26, 2006
Thank God for converts to the faith — they bring a fresh energy and perspective to our ancient Catholic tradition. Meredith Gould is one such person, a convert from Judaism, who took a look at the how the faith is lived in our homes and saw that something is missing. But rather than just bemoan the situation, she decided to be part of the solution and wrote “The Catholic Home”, a guide to living the faith throughout the year so that our celebrations of faith don’t stop at the church door, but flow into our homes. The home-based traditions of the Jewish religion are very important (such as Passover), so Gould brings an important and fresh perspective.
This book has a lot to recommend it. It is written in an easy and personal style; it is full of practical suggestions, as well as links to additional resources should a family wish to adopt a suggested practice; and it contains numerous references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which makes it educational as well. Frankly, it is a fun read.
Still, the book is not perfect. The clearest demarcation comes when Gould departs from suggestions on how to live the liturgical year, to how we should live the sacraments. Unfortunately it seems Gould was herself catechized by someone with a very poor sacramental theology, and she passes on some of that to the reader. It made me wince at times. If you read the book, enjoy the first 2/3 (the sections on the liturgical year), but don’t take her comments about the sacraments seriously.
Despite these flaws, this is the kind of book the Catholic Church needs right now. I’m hoping that Gould will one day do a second edition in consultation with a decent theologian to see these points corrected, or better still, that her book will inspire others to write similar works for our families. I’m giving this one a 3/5.
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Post for November 21, 2006
In my experience, there are two sorts of biographies (or autobiographies, for that matter). The first kind offers insight into a human being. The second kind offers insight into human nature. The first kind tells a personal story. The second kind transcends the merely personal to get at elements of the universal human condition. For the first kind, the reader is often little more than an interested voyeur. For the second kind, the reader recognizes himself as part of the drama found at the heart of every human life.
The Tulip and the Pope is a work of autobiography. It is the story of some of Deborah Larsen’s younger years (age 19 to 24, 1960-1965) when she spent a few years as a member of an order of women religious. The idea of getting a peek at the “hidden life of nuns” does, of course, pique the curiosity of many, and so I am sure there would be more than one interested voyeur ready to jump into this book. But does Ms. Larsen then rise to the challenge of a second kind of autobiography, one that touches the universal condition of man?
Sadly, the answer is no. There is no doubt that this is the work of a mature woman and writer. But it is a mature work about an immature subject: a nineteen year old girl who’s guiding image of a nun is from Kathryn Hulme’s The Nun’s Story. The young Deborah enters the convent quite naive, obedient to authority, fearful of hell, and unrealistic about sex and human relationships. The book is about how she grows up, at least in part, during those years as a nun. But curiously, while this is the real drama of her autobiography, it seems oddly disconnected from her time in the convent. Did it help her to mature? Did it hold her back? The author is very ambivalent. And so the next question is: why should I care?
Of course, there is the reality that Deborah Larsen is a fellow human being, so on that level I — and you — should definitely care. But I don’t actually know Deborah Larsen, I only know her book, and the reality is that the type of experience she relates is so specific to her personal background and the time in which she lived that I just didn’t feel I was getting much out of it. On the level of sheer prose, the book is beautifully written, but it is an exquisite example of a mediocre type-I biography. It is so focussed on her and her experience that even the other persons mentioned in the book are very two-dimensional — and it makes it very hard for the reader to become personally engaged and to walk away with some new wisdom.
I do not doubt for a second that everything Ms. Larsen writes is genuine, but the bottom line is that the Catholic Church of the 1950′s and 1960′s, in which she grew up (and it seems, grew out of) no longer exists. I am from a newer generation that is naive, yes, but also cynical and world-weary. It has a very different relationship with authority — one that, for better or for worse, feels entitled to respect, even from superiors. My generation was raised on the idea that God is love, and in some cases was taught that hell may not even exist. Indeed, the members of my generation often feel that an over-exposure to sex has caused them to lose some of the wonder and awe that should be possible in the face of this mystery of love.
Ms. Larsen’s book has very little to say to the next generation, and so probably will have little to say for subsequent generations as well. Indeed, it would seem to me that it only has something to say to those who were young when she was young, and who would enjoy going back to those “olden times” for the sake of some sort of criticizing nostalgia. It is a book written by a member of an often self-congratulatory generation — the baby boomers — for members of the same generation, almost for them to be able to reassure themselves how mature they now are in comparison to where they once were. But I must admit that I am forced to wonder: is that really the reaction of people who have genuinely grown up?
Ultimately, this book is not the story of a young woman exploring life in a convent, but rather it is the story of a young woman exploring an immature fantasy of life in a convent. It is not the story of a young woman leaving behind this fantasy for a more mature discovery of the real life of a nun, but of a young woman leaving behind her immature vision and never pursuing what real wisdom lay behind the rules and traditions. As such, the book itself communicates her experiences, but falls short in communicating what our experiences are supposed to teach us: wisdom. Or at least, the kind of wisdom from which others can benefit. And so, while I savoured the well-written word of her prose, I found myself still feeling hungry by the end.
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Post for November 20, 2006
I remember once when I visited a small parish church in Ottawa with my friend Richard. From the outside it was a very plain, ordinary looking red brick building, but when we got inside we were amazed by the beauty of the decoration, as well as the feeling of light and warmth pouring in from the stained glass windows. I turned to Richard and said, “Somehow this place is bigger on the inside than on the outside!” to which he sagely replied, “Yes…..it’s like a parable of the Catholic Church.”
And so it is. To many, looking at it from the outside, the Catholic Church seems somewhat…..restricted, even narrow. But once one is inside, and is able to really take in the treasures it presents illuminated by the grace of God, one’s vision becomes transformed. Reading the book The Lure of the Saints: a Protestant experience of Catholic tradition, one gets the sense that this is what has been slowly happening to Jon M. Sweeney.
Mr. Sweeney, according to his own telling, began his Christian journey within a more fundamentalist branch of Protestantism. Over time, however, be found himself opening up to certain elements of a broader Catholic tradition, and in this book he shares with us his love for the saints and his devotion to them. To read this book is like accompanying a tour guide through some small part of the Catholic Church, but not just any tour guide — one who comes across not only as learned, but also as passionate for his subject, and who hopes that the hearer will catch on fire with the same passion.
Despite this charm, however, The Lure of the Saints is a deeply flawed book. Continuing with my tour guide analogy, as I read this book I recalled the time I was being given a tour of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, by a tour guide who knew art but not theology — and so could not really explain the art, either. As the only churchgoer in the tour group (and a seminarian to boot) I found myself regularly having to correct his theological explanations, because some of them were simply incorrect (e.g. there are 4 gospels in the New Testament, not 3). Looking over my notes in the margins, I see that the same process was going on as I read the book: I delighted in the author’s delight, and in his love for things that I myself love, but I winced at the unfortunate inaccuracies and occasionally flippant snipes at authority and organized religion. Some easily-quotable examples:
Pope John Paul II has in many ways retreated from the theological and ecclesiastical flexibility initiated at [John XXIII's] urging. (Oh? Examples, please?)
As a university student in Bonn, Karl Marx often went to church with a friend in order to laugh out loud in mocking protest. I’ve done that, too. Sometimes it does seem more appropriate to protest religion than to engage in it. (Not a terribly edifying example…)
Centuries ago, litanies of the saints were recited over a child just before baptism. (Ummm…..they still are.)
Rome dropped [St. Nicholas] from the liturgical calendar in 1969. (Nope, still there, December 6).
Ultimately, however, the basic problem with The Lure of the Saints is that it is not really a work of theology, but of biography and apology. The subtitle of the book is well-chosen, in that Jon M. Sweeney definitely has an approach shaped by a Protestant perspective, even as he explores Catholic tradition. In the final analysis, the author is telling the story of his own discovery (biography) and attempting to legitimize it to others with the same Protestant background as his (apology). Despite the little sections suggesting possible devotional practices, then, I found myself ultimately quite “outside” the book. To combine my previous two analogies, it was as though there was a tour guide inside that little red brick church, shouting inaccurate exhortations to those outside the church to try and get them to enter and share in the (albeit wonderful) experience. He means well, but the situation is just a little too bizarre for the average person to take the first step.
As much as I would like to, then, I cannot recommend this book to others. On the scale of Truth it falls short, and I don’t want to promote a book that could wind up creating confusion. The only exception I might see is if it were read in a group, with someone else present who really knows the tradition from the inside and is able to correct the text as the group read along (much as I once did in the basilica in Assisi). Perhaps then, the danger of confusion being removed, it would be possible to leap into the wonder to which Jon M. Sweeney invites us.
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Post for September 21, 2006
Here is my review, which I also placed on Amazon.ca and Chapters.ca:
When I saw the title of this book I was worried it was going to be a long takedown of the heroes of the Christian faith. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The book is quite short, and the description of each saint quite brief, but at the same time the author manages to place each saint in his or her proper historical context AND to show how each can inspire people of the present day. I found each description respectful and orthodox, but at the same time realistic, warm, and humourous. To be honest, I was often unable to read more than a chapter at a time, because my mind would then tend to wander off into prayer and reflection! I feel like I’ve gotten to know these saints better as brothers and sisters in Christ, and I thank the author and the publisher for that opportunity. I would have given this 5 stars, except (as previously mentioned) I didn’t like the title, and I found the author missed some of the real drama of St. Matthew’s conversion. But don’t let these small details prevent you from purchasing this delightful little book – it is worth the read.
So there you go. If you do read the book, let me know what you think!
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Post for June 26, 2006
One of the neat things about having a blog is that sometimes people send you free stuff, asking you to write a review. It’s pretty clever marketing, actually, as people are more willing to trust a known source (such as the writer of a personal blog) than a simple advertisement. Kind of like word of mouth, except it is word of….pixels on the screen 
.
My latest acquisition is On This Mountain, an album of Catholic “good-time” music, available through Company Publications. I received permission to post an mp3 of one of the songs, entitled Kyrie Eleison, on one condition: that I mention the names of all those who participated in the project. So here goes:
- Dan Adam, Guitar, Keyboard, Producer
- Kara Fay Coulter, Vocals
- Columbus James, Percussion
- Bill Kassel, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard
- Tom Loewe, Vocals, Harmonica
- Ron Patterson, Vocals, Bass
- Eden Simmons, Vocals
- Rachel Waddell, Flute
- Scott Waddell, Vocals
Enjoy!
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Post for February 20, 2006
Lasy July I was contacted by Company Publications to do a review of their recently-published novel This Side of Jordan, by Bill Kassel. The book arrived a few days later, and I dove into it. To make this brief, I didn’t like it. It turned me off. And I rather dreaded having to do the review, and I would rather praise something than do the opposite.
August brought with it the World Youth Day in Germany, September and October I was settling into a new home and starting in a totally new ministry, and soon thereafter I started to not feel well. Christmas, followed by my January retreat, meant that the delay in writing the review grew longer and longer. Finally, I decided to make a push to get it done, and I realised I would need to re-read the book. I decided to do so at a more leisurely pace this time, really trying to see if my initial impression had been correct. I was pleasantly surprised at what I found, and my initial negative reaction became quite a bit more nuanced.
The multiple themes of This Side of Jordan co-exist on different “layers”. For the sake of clarity I’m going to divide these layers into 3 parts: the Good, the Bad, and the Hmmm.
The Bad
The “surface layer” to the novel is the murder-mystery it contains. Two people are dead, a young actress and a young gay man who works in the theatre in production. The initial tension in the novel, then, is pretty simple: whodunit?
Unfortunately, the books falls quite flat in this regard. I was never more than mildly engaged in wondering who the murderer was, as the classic elements of a murder-mystery (such as the dropping of varied clues) were largely absent. Granted, some such clues were dropped…but they really only ever led to one person, and in a fairly linear way. The discovery of the murderer is really quite Deux ex machina, unfortunately, and to be honest, it was a character that one barely knew and honestly felt little sympathy for. There simply was no “a-ha!” moment that defines a good murder-mystery.
One thing the novel did have going for it, however, was a good set-up of the main characters themselves. I must admit, I enjoyed them for the most part, and in some cases I could just picture people whom I know who resembled character X or Y in a rather uncanny manner. I found, in particular, that the novel portrayed the clergy and religious in a realistic way — something rare for print today!
Which brings me to…
The Good
The second “layer” of the novel is, essentially, a catechesis on the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church regarding homosexuality. On the level of Truth, the novel is first-rate: the position of the Catholic Church is accurately portrayed, down to the finest nuance. By using the fictional setting of a novel, the author uses the humanity of his characters to show all sides of the reality of homosexuality, both the precise nature of the teaching of the Church, and the practical realities of people living with same-sex attraction (whether their own, or in someone else). In other words, Kassel manages to humanize the presentation of an otherwise complex and touchy subject — including an acknowledgement of the feelings of alientation that can occur even if the teaching of the Catholic Church is presented with great affection.
I do have one caveat to add to this otherwise positive assessment, however: the moments where the doctrine of the Church is actually presented lack any real artistry. Kassel resorts to having has characters engage in long speeches in response to questions obviously designed to give his characters a chance to make long speeches. While reading these passages I felt like saying to myself, “OK, it’s time to listen, the teacher is speaking now”. I would rather have been “taught” in a more subtle manner — something harder to pull off, but which would have been a sign of a true artistry.
While brings me to my final point…
The Hmmm
The deepest layer, I came to realise, was on the level of a philosophical question about the relationship between Beauty and Truth itself. Initially, the story is about a small town trying to organize a theatre festival. They want a nice family production, that tells some of the history of the region. They engage a few theatre professionals to try and pull things together, but these professionals (one in particular) start to tinker with the story so that it slowly loses its historical credibility. Gradually some racier elements are added as well, and it starts to divide people, both internally and from one another. Of course, many townsfolk argue in favour of the continuation of the project, but it seems that the motives now are decidely mixed: the objectives of prosperity and glory seem to be overtaking the project, and many wonder if the festival is losing its soul.
These are good questions! What is Beauty, for example — is it merely “what people want”? What if people want something sinful — can Beauty and sin co-exist? And what is the connection between Beauty and Truth? There is a very interesting exchange between the young woman Sonia and her father Laszlo (who has no patience with his daughter’s involvement in theatre), in which Laszlo concedes “if a play can make people see truth…it is not completely wasting time…But it must speak truth.” I suspect that this is Kassel’s own view of his own novel.
Should you buy This Side of Jordan? If you are looking for a murder-mystery, you’ll be disappointed to discover that the mystery is really just a vehicle to move along a discussion of underlying doctrinal and philosophical themes. If, on the other hand, you are looking for an interesting and human take on the bigger questions of Truth, Beauty, and the truth and beauty of human sexuality (and one that is far less dry than a catechetical textbook), then this book is for you — or for someone you know who needs to read it.
This Side of Jordan can be purchased from both Amazon.com (USA) and Amazon.ca (Canada).
UPDATE: Here’s something interesting! The author of the book contacted me shortly after I posted my review, and he shared a bit regarding his original intent in writing it. He took my criticisms in a very positive light, and I was very impressed with his professionalism — one of the signs of a mature artist is the ability to welcome precise criticism. I do hope he writes another book (this was his second), as we need more Catholics getting into the arts as part of the New Evangelisation.
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Post for January 5, 2006
A new meme popped up around the blogosphere recently, regarding this article (originally in the Toronto Globe and Mail) about the eating of “communion wafers” (actually a local product called retailles d’hosties) by Quebecers. A number of bloggers started to write about it (some quite disparagingly), including power-hitters like Mark Shea, Dave Morrison, Jimmy Akin, and Kathy Shaidle (archive not found). I first came across the story on the Curt Jester blog, where I posted a comment explaining how this was really a non-issue, and when I saw the meme continuing to make its rounds I decided to post something on my own blog as well. I figured that was it.
Unfortunately, it was not. The ultimate Catholic blogger of them all, Fr. Richard Neuhaus (who has been blogging since before blogging was blogging, by means of his First Things column “The Public Square”), picked up on the story and just today wrote an opinion piece on the First Things website. Like all the others, he has fallen victim to a poor newspaper story, and his subsequent commentary on the decline of religion in Quebec also contains inaccuracies. So, as a blogging priest from Quebec, I feel I must respond. I hate having to do it, as I don’t want to appear to be trying to “take on” Fr. Neuhaus (I genuinely have the greatest respect for his work), but the demands of Truth are what they are. I’m sure Fr. Neuhaus himself would understand and even approve.
The elements of the First Things post are in italics, and my comments follow.
“The Christ-haunted South.” Flannery O’Connor’s phrase came to mind, said a friend, upon reading this report from UPI:
Just to point out: the UPI article was not the original piece, it is a condensation of a piece that originally appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail is known for taking pot-shots at the Catholic faith (sort of the New York Times of Canada). Any piece it does on a supposed Catholic practice should be read with a critical spirit.
“Unconsecrated communion wafers are growing in popularity as a snack food throughout Quebec, alongside potato chips and popcorn on supermarket shelves.
“The paper-thin morsels made from flour and water hark back to when Quebec was one of the most devout Roman Catholic enclaves in North America and the wafers were seen only at holy communion.
The original name for this product is the retailles d’hosties. These were the cuttings left over from the production of round hosts from a flat sheet of bread, and they were sold by the nuns in bags to the faithful. This is a very old practice, one which goes back to the days when Quebec was more Catholic than the Pope, and it never raised any eyebrows. The article is quite wrong when it states that this food product was “seen only at holy communion”.
Where the article *is* correct is in stating that these were not originally sold in wafer form to the faithful. But the product that is being produced today, contrary to the statement above, is not “unconsecrated communion wafers”. Among other things, the typical supermarket product has had sugar added, to appeal to the well-known Quebec sweet tooth. These “communion wafers” do not taste the same as hosts, and would never be valid matter. In addition, the baking process quite often causes the added sugar to caramelize in the oven, so the bread changes colour to a golden brown.
My point? The typical retailles d’hosties that one sees today usually does not look like a communion host (whether due to shape or colour), nor does it typically taste like a communion host. It certainly does not have a cross or other pattern stamped into it. Quite simply, it is just a fancy sort of sweet potatoe chip with a name reminiscent of a snack food the ancestors ate.
“Gaston Bonneau, one of the two major commercial producers in Quebec, told the Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper his business started with just himself and his wife in the mid-1980s. Now it’s grown to 16 employees and he plans to automate production.
“‘My son can eat a whole bag while he’s watching TV,’ said supermarket manager Paul Saumure. ‘He’s had more of them outside of church than he ever did inside one.’”
You see, it’s snarky quotes like this one from Paul Saumure that make me suspect the real intention of this article is to (once again) kick the Catholic Church. “Let’s delight together in the latest sacrilegious practice!” the Globe and Mail seems to say. The ire raised in the Catholic blogosphere shows that they at least understood that point, even if they didn’t join in the rejoicing. But honestly, the fault is with the article, as the practice (as I said) is a very old custom that simply does not have the connotations the article implies. This kind of article would never sell here in Quebec, despite the anti-clericalism we find here, simply because people would see right through it and ask, “What’s the big deal?”
Christ-haunted Quebec? Maybe so, but there are important differences. In the South, preoccupation with Christ took and takes a multitude of forms from the admirable to the bizarre: gentle community caring in the everyday, blind men claiming to be John the Baptist or Jesus, Bible-prophecy enthusiasms about the End Time, big business mega-church empire building.
In Quebec, the specter is the Catholic Church that once was and, it is feared, may be again. Centuries of caesaropapism resulted in a collaboration between Church, state, and culture so thorough that it was hardly possible to distinguish one from the other. Then young turks, including future prime minister Pierre Trudeau, collaborated with bishops and priests, who were inspired by “the spirit” of Vatican II, to overthrow the ancien regime.
The result was a “secularization†of Quebec that proceeded with stunning rapidity. The pace and scope of change was comparable only to what happened in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 70s, and perhaps to what is now happening in Ireland.
Fr. Neuhaus, for those who do not know, was originally from Canada, and (I believe) still maintains a home in Ontario. He is, therefore, quite familiar with the Canadian scene. Unfortunately, there are some details he does not quite get right in this commentary.
First of all, the “centuries of caesaropapism” comment is not quite right. It is true that Quebec, first settled on a permanent basis in 1608, remained under the French king until the British conquest in 1760. In this period, the relationship was relatively cozy. But after 1760, under the Protestant British, the Church had to fight for its life. One tactic used, for example, was an attempt to “starve” the Church out of existence by denying new ordinations.
What saved the Church here was, ironically, the American Revolution. The British were terrified that Quebec might join the 13 colonies in the revolution, and indeed the Revolutionary Army, under Montgomery, did occupy Montreal for a time in 1775. But they were not received very enthusiastically. The Quebec clergy were very well aware of the virulent anti-Catholic publications that sometimes came out of the Protestant 13 colonies, and protecting the faith was paramount. So Quebec did not join the Revolution, wringing out some concessions from the British in the process. The one lasting effect was the founding of the Montreal Gazette by Benjamin Franklin and Fleury Mesplet, to try and spread the secular ideas of the Enlightenment.
So while there was some “cooperation” (really more like a rivalry cum marriage of convenience) between the colonial government and the Church, it can hardly be called “caesaropapism”. The British changed tactics and decided that rather than deny Quebecers their religion they would simply assimilate them culturally into the British mainstream. In this way, their culture (including their faith) would simply evaporate. Among other attempts, they settled fleeing United Empire Loyalists in the Eastern Townships of Quebec to try and slowly change the population balance. Fr. Neuhaus is correct when he states that there was a close alliance between Church and culture, but I should point out that a close association between religion and culture is actually (it would seem to me) normal and good. It does not necessarily mean that the faith was “merely cultural”, but rather that it was more and more inculturated. Did not Vatican II, not to mention Pope John Paul II, mention culture as a key locus for the Church’s activity?
Now in all fairness, Quebec *did* go through a period where Church, state and culture were closely intertwined, but it lasted decades, not centuries, and is more properly described as “ultramontane” rather than “caesaropapist”. Again it was driven by a revolution, this time in France. Quebec was always a couple of decades behind the European continent culturally, so by the time the ideals of the French revolution came to Quebec stories of the Terror (and the bitter persecution of the Church) also arrived. Quebecers, as a whole, said “no thanks”, as it was the Church that had been the staunchest advocate of the people during the cultural assault from the British. The chaos of revolution that consequently swept across 19th century Europe seemed to prove Quebecers right, and so when the Ultramontane ideas emerged in France they found a ready reception here in Quebec. Ultramontanism proposed (in part) that the restoration of order in society required a renewed affiliation with the Pope in Rome, and so strongly advocated doctrines like Papal infallability and Papal primacy of jurisdiction. Quebec devotion to Ultramontane ideas can be seen in the Catholic cathedral of Montreal, which is a scale replica of St. Peter’s in Rome. Quebec even sent a detachment of Zouaves to join the defense of the Papal states against Garibaldi.
The time of closest affiliation between the Church and state was actually a period of merely 23 years, 1936-1959, known as the “Duplessis era” (after Maurice Duplessis, who was Prime Minister of Quebec for all those years). By now the winds of revolution had blown to Russia, and Communism and Fascism seemed on the rise everywhere. The interests of the state in maintaining control, combined with the interests of the Church in resisting these new ideological enemies, coincided quite nicely, and each supported the other. Unfortunately, some in the hierarchy turned a blind eye to some of the abuses of Duplessis, including corruption and human rights abuses. This period is now known in Quebec as la grande noirceur (the “Great Darkness”). Duplessis’ Union Nationale Party was eradicated in subsequent elections, but the Church is still here — so we get all the residual cultural anger.
Now Fr. Neuhaus mentions that a new group of “young turks”, along with priests and bishops, were influenced by the “spirit of Vatican II” to overthrow this old regime. In reality, however, they were not following this false spirit, so much as actually following the teachings of the Magisterium itself up until that time.
Thanks to the ultramontane spirit in Quebec, the population tended to make a careful study of papal encyclicals, including the famous social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. In response to these new social teachings, the Church in Quebec founded Catholic labour and credit unions, becoming a world leader in these areas of social justice. The atheistic socialist ideas did not get a foothold here except among a small group of intellectuals still enthralled with the revolutionary ideas of Europe. These ideas would not have had any chance of success if the Quebec bishops had not actually betrayed these very same principles of social justice by betraying one of their own.
The year was 1949. The mine workers in the town of Asbestos went on strike, mainly to protest the danger to their health caused by asbestos dust from the mines. The strike was extremely bitter, in part because Prime Minister Duplessis used punitive measures against the strikers. The Archbishop of Montreal, Joseph Charbonneau, supported the strikers according to the social teaching of the Church. He directly challenged Duplessis, but received little to no support from his fellow bishops. On February 9, 1950, he suddenly “resigned” and was transferred by Pope Pius XII to Victoria, BC — about as far away as you could get and still remain in Canada. He certainly was accused by the government as being a closet Communist, and the rumour was that he had been betrayed by his fellow bishops who fed the same line to Pius XII. The net effect was that it shattered the confidence of the intelligensia in Quebec in the hierarchy, who were no longer as seen as defending the “little people” against the government (as had been their role in the past). But the social justice ideals of the Magisterium were still strongly present, however, despite the seeming betrayal of those principles by the local hierarchy. Prime Minister Trudeau, educated in schools run by the Church, would have been thoroughly familiar with these principles, and his ideas were driven by them. Or at least in part, for this betrayal meant that the new intellectuals began to reexamine as well the revolutionary ideas from the 19th century. Slowly, slowly, the unions, the newspapers, the artistic community and the universities became more and more liberal — absorbing the European ideas that had long since been rejected. In some cases they even flirted with Marxism, but at the very least they were increasingly critical of both Church and State.
It was only then that the “spirit of Vatican II” really had a major impact. The 1960′s brought with them a crisis of civilization that engulfed the Western world. Vatican II happened at the same time, and Quebec (again, with its old ultramontane habits) strove valiantly to implement the documents. But the skewing of these texts that happened in the rest of the world was even worse here, for the reasons already stated. The cultural imagination now rested with people who believed in the liberal idea of Progress, making the Church always appear reactionary by comparison. The local hierarchy, having spent its moral authority backing a hated government, embraced the idea of collaborative decision making and lay participation — but in doing so, they saw the contempt of the population increase. The crisis around Humanae Vitae did not help, as it seemed like the “old Church” trying to dictate the terms of a most intimate part of people’s lives. A bitter anti-clerical spirit arose, so bad that I know priests who tell stories of being accosted in the street, even spit on, if they wore their clerics in public. The late 60′s and the 1970′s saw priests and religious leaving the orders in droves, but in general they desired to remain at the service of the population. So they became leaders in (you guessed it) the unions, the newspapers, the artistic community and the universities. The Church was now at an all-time low: some of its best and brightest were now wresting away from it its historic role in the development of Quebec culture, proposing the new 20th century philosophies (such as Existentialism, Marxism, and Deconstructionism) as alternatives to the Gospel and the papal encyclicals.
Couch potatoes munching on communion hosts reflects not so much a Christ-haunted as a Church-haunted culture, although of course the two are not separable. Gaston Bonneau is capitalizing on the “edginess” that flirts with blasphemy, taunting the specter of Old Quebec, almost daring it to try and make a return.
Again, I’m not sure Gaston Bonneau is really capitalizing on a “flirty blasphemous edginess”, given that the retailles d’hosties is an old custom. As Tom of Disputations dryly remarked in response to the irritated bleating of the blogosphere, “What fresh outrage is next? People drinking wine?” The real problem, it seems to me, is that the journalist in question (along with his editor) simply saw another opportunity to reinforce the idea in English North America that The Church Is Irrelevant. After all, the article seems to say, if even Quebec, that “bastion” of Catholicism, has been reduced to sacrilege as part of its culture, then why should we pay any attention to the Church at all? The comments and cries that arose from bloggers ignorant of the cultural practice in Quebec (including, unfortunately, Fr. Neuhaus) merely underscore the success with which the article attained its goal.
In other words, you were suckered, people. A shoddy article designed to provoke worked on you, and in your case you improperly vented against your fellow Catholics in Quebec when in reality you should have first asked us here what *we* thought of the whole thing. We would have told you not to get worked up about it, to not fall into the trap set for you, and to demand better service from the media in question. That was exactly what I tried to point out when I posted my comment on Jeff Miller’s blog, and I was hoping the matter would rest there. Unfortunately, it did not — hence this post. I’m not saying the custom of the retailles d’hosties is not without its potential dangers — of course it is — but these comments about how this supposedly “new” practice is indicative of the sorry state of the Church in Quebec make us all look dumb for no good reason, and let the real culprits (in this case, the Globe and Mail), off the hook. Assuming they even knew how Catholic-baiting their article was, they must be laughing, laughing, laughing!
The sadness is that the church leadership in Quebec, with few exceptions, is guilt-ridden about what it views as its collaborationist past and accepts its cultural exile as punishment fully deserved. In his months as pope, Benedict has repeatedly declared the Church’s support for authentically secular government, meaning government that attends to the temporal (which is the meaning of secular), and respects the most basic of human rights, the freedom of religion to engage personally and publicly, privately and corporately, the transcendent and eternal by which we understand our little moment in time.
I am not so sure that the Quebec leadership is so much guilt-ridden as it is contrite. This “collaborationist past”, as I explained above, was real. What we really find today is two classes of leader. Both try and engage the local society in dialogue, as suggested by Vatican II and Pope Paul VI, but they find themselves having only ex-clergy and dissenting Catholics to talk to and work with. Some bishops then proceed extra-cautiously, unfortunately at times becoming tainted by such dissent, while others tackle the problem head on. The latter is *extremely* difficult, because it brings back memories of a very authoritarian Church, and such efforts meet strong resistance among both clergy and laity. And you have no idea how strong this resistance can be. Among other things, here in Quebec the law itself mandates that every parish have its own lay board of directors — imagine the St. Stanislaus question in St. Louis possibly multiplied a hundredfold, and you start to get an idea of what our bishops face. I have heard of one archbishop who openly and publicly wept at a meeting of his priests because they would not obey one of his pastoral directives. I know of one of our local bishops who suffered a total nervous breakdown a few years ago trying to resolve parish conflicts in his diocese. These men are not sissies — they are good, kind men who in accepting to become bishops in modern Quebec actually accepted a slow martyrdom.
How do our bishops go about trying to bring about renewal, then? By supporting new initiatives, which honestly they generally do quite well. At the very least, they don’t get in the way, and they are willing to provide guidance when new movements start to go off the rails (like this quite muscular statement regarding the heretical Army of Mary). The bishops also strongly backed the World Youth Days in Germany, with my diocese sending over 900 young pilgrims. New religious communities like the Famille Marie-Jeunesse and the Fraternité Monastique de Jérusalem are starting and flourishing, filled with the joy of orthodox Catholic faith. Many of us would like to see more leadership (and a little more ecclesiastical discipline) in our local churches, but to be honest it is also up to us to take advantage of this “breathing room” to ourselves *start* the initiatives that will turn things around. Whining about episcopal inaction is, in many cases, merely a distraction from our own lack of vision. The bishops I know are doing their best — are we? Specks and logs, people. Specks and logs.
In many places, and not least in this country, this understanding of the authentically secular is little understood. That, as I wrote here, was vividly brought to mind in my recent visit in Spain where the Church and a socialist government bent on creating a naked public square are in bitter conflict. And so it is that in Quebec, Ireland, Spain, and elsewhere people munch on communion hosts, warding off the ghosts of caesaropapisms past, and not knowing what to do about their hunger.
My blog is called Waiting in Joyful Hope because I have learned and experienced in my own life that a personal faith in Jesus as Lord, and particularly as Lord of history, is a great source of both joy and hope. Without wanting to get all mystical on people, I have what I can only describe as a “spiritual intuition” that the Lord wants to do something special here, to “redeem” Quebec anew so that it might be able to continue the mission it had in the world that was truly its shining glory. Even the “munching” Fr. Neuhaus mentions is part of this hope, as it shows that Quebecers have not forgotten their Catholic past. This is a great opportunity for us, and what is needed now is for it to become alive again, in that joy and hope. As I pointed out in a comment I made to this post on Amy Welborn’s blog (scroll down a bit to find it), we in Quebec (and, I imagine, in Ireland, Spain, Holland, and elsewhere) need to resdiscover the vibrant creativity that comes from authentic holiness. The naked public square is not only naked, it is sterile. Here in Quebec at least, an orthodox faith which is fully alive will once again be able to compete with the sterile old stories of the secularists — and who knows what can happen then.
UPDATE: Fr. Neuhaus has added a new comment on the First Things web site, where he generously refers to the points made in this post. Thank you, Fr. Neuhaus!
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