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OraLabora
Guest
And as a child adopted in infancy…
I understand your point but in our case it was coupled with poverty, as I believe was also the case in Ireland.
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I understand your point but in our case it was coupled with poverty, as I believe was also the case in Ireland.
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pnewton
Guest
It sounds like you are saying the the Pope used a word that was more observational reality than insult.
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twf
Guest
There are nearly half a million Catholics in my archdiocese of Vancouver. While we constitute a minority of the population, I have never felt persecuted for my faith…
Yes, there has been the odd violent assault at the cathedral, but that has always been the work of unhinged individuals with their own agenda / issues.
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kyrie03
Guest
I’m not an urban legend and am blessed to be 1 of 13 children (plus 5 miscarriages). Guess that gave me the “rose colored glasses” tinged with the blood of Passion my mom embraced…may she Rest In Peace! And may her grandchildren (all 38 so far and sure to increase) chose to embrace the Cross as their key and ladder to union with Christ crucified.
I suppose you can look back on past failings of particular priests who were possibly attempting to combat the “contraceptive mentality” invading society and judge their actions to be atrocious. But what GOOD does it do us to dwell on crosses? And how does it compare to the real atrocities we tolerate today? (Abortion, denial of natural and moral law, irreverence to Eucharist, etc…)?
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Rau
Guest
Your doubt is understandable, because the charge is extraordinary. But we’ve heard that Bishops we’re sanctioned.
Facts not yet clear to me are;
- how widespread in Quebec was this behaviour by clerics?
- how widely did the Catholic people accept this behaviour?
- what proportion of the Quebec population were catholic?
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OraLabora
Guest
I’m just reporting historical facts. Most Quebec families that had that many kids were dirt poor and could ill afford them.
And I repeat, there is no need for a “contraceptive mentality”. The Church teaches that there are licit ways to space children. The Quebec priests of the era forbade even that, which was simply wrong.
Forcing women to bear so many children isn’t “combatting the contraceptive mentality”. It is abuse, period.
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Don_Ruggero
Guest
You are, of course, correct in everything you write, OraLabora.
It is, however, important to remember that the American readers will, with rare exception, be ignorant of the socio-political situation in Quebec following upon the Plains of Abraham historical turning point and what that meant
They will also be ignorant of how the Church, which already had considerable power and influence in New France, stepped into a role of which they made an awful mess of it, to be frank. It only intensified at the time of confederation, under HM Queen Victoria, and thereafter.
One, of course, confronts a dreadful situation when one’s political existence as a sovereign entity ceases, when one’s culture and language are threatened with annihilation as one is subsumed into an empire that was neither French nor Catholic. Poland confronted the same existential threat but, thankfully, the Church there reacted differently
It is also important to remember that American readers will think through their lens of separation of Church and State…which, of course, is/was not the situation in Canada
I remember, in what I was doing, being particularly taken aback, not that the Church had control in social service provision (although that was a recipe for disaster) but how brutally this mechanism was used by Church officials to control people
The Church in Quebec in these epochs would have done well to have looked to Europe, where we experienced that such repression leads to revolution followed by the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of a Church that sought to dominate society rather than being a prophetic voice and a humble witness to that society. That inevitable result became, ultimately, what the Church in Quebec experienced…if in a quiet way
I am saddened that the fruits of that time of exceptional horror, the Church in Quebec will have to live with and deal with for many generations to come, alas. It is very sad…in terms of the past, in terms of the present, and in terms of the future. The harm to souls was and is incalculable
An excellent illustrative case study was that of poor Mother Blondin, whose tragic case I have never been able to forget
It was, all in all, a chapter of life I shall never forget. I cannot say that I regret the obedience I received…but I was certainly forever changed by it
I was greatly enriched by some of the things I had to delve into…and absolutely horrified, in turn, by the terrible things on a massive scale with which I came face to face
The Church ruined itself and lost for itself the legitimate role in society it could and should play and, by what it did, short-circuited its ability to be the face of Christ to the population en masse
Utterly beyond tragic, as Quebec was and is such a very special place and its people are also most special
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LittleFlower378
Guest
The Church likes large families, God likes large families. Couples should know this going into a marriage as should be taught by the priest who talks to them before marriage. If there are super super super super super serious reasons to delay pregnancy, only then can they use NFP.
Children are a blessing for both husband and wife and both should want to have a big family if that’s what God wills. Both should make sacrifices for their family. This shouldn’t be a struggle pit man against the woman.
All Catholics are traditionalists or should be because we take the WHOLE of the Church from the birth of Christ to today. With that said so many in the Church want to sqaush traditional thought and even traditional liturgy. People hate the tradition of the Church and the people who follow tradition, its a shame.
Children are a blessing for both husband and wife and both should want to have a big family if that’s what God wills. Both should make sacrifices for their family. This shouldn’t be a struggle pit man against the woman.
All Catholics are traditionalists or should be because we take the WHOLE of the Church from the birth of Christ to today. With that said so many in the Church want to sqaush traditional thought and even traditional liturgy. People hate the tradition of the Church and the people who follow tradition, its a shame.
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KSU
Guest
Thank you; that’s what I suspected. And none of my English-language Bibles use “stupid.”
It really disturbs me when translators with an agenda mis-characterize what the Pope says; even his writings. It’s not the first time.
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KSU
Guest
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OraLabora
Guest
Pervasive, especially in Rural Quebec.
Most did, especially in Rural Quebec.
At the time, almost all Francophone Quebecers, at least 95% of them. Overall, Francophones were 82.5% of the Quebec population according to Statistics Canada, in 1951; most non-Francophones were concentrated in the southwest of the province, especially Montreal, the Eastern Townships and some parts of the Outaouais region… So it is safe to estimate that the approximately 80% of the population was Catholic at that time, and in Rural Quebec and north and east of Montreal, it was over 90%.
Nominally at least, the proportion of Quebecers that is Catholic is still around 80%.
Until the “Quiet Revolution” there was pervasive discrimination against Francophones by the Anglophones, who ruled the business class and industry. Francophones were seen as backwards, uneducated, poor and inferior. It was a circle of poverty: too poor to educate themselves, and too uneducated to rise from poverty. Many of the brighter ones entered into religious life or the priesthood simply to escape the crushing poverty and back-breaking labour on the farm.
The situation was not unlike Ireland under British rule.
I can understand that to outsiders this seems all incredible. I can assure everyone that this is well-known history in these parts. The changes all happened in my generation and I lived through them.
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OraLabora
Guest
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Don_Ruggero
Guest
Telling a European priest, born in the aftermath of World War II and who knew growing up survivors of forced labour camps, that Canada – a constitutional monarchy that is one of the freest nations on the face of the earth (and a place moreover where I spent part of my priesthood) – is an anti-Catholic gulag indicates exactly how to evaluate what you write: The statement demonstrates detachment from reality.
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Don_Ruggero
Guest
Indeed!
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LittleFlower378
Guest
Lol! Okay, maybe I used one too many supers! But I was just trying to prove a point.
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Rau
Guest
I note your assessment of the 3 point I raised is:
zz912 may have some Quebec graphs to contrast with the Canada-wide graphs?
On the basis of that information, we would expect historical statistics to report a materially higher birth rate in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, providing objective confirmation of your personal assessment of typical family sizes under the influence of these wayward clerics vs. in other parts of Canada.
zz912 may have some Quebec graphs to contrast with the Canada-wide graphs?
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Rau
Guest
While you describe appropriate reasons as* “super, super, super, super, super serious”*, Pope Pius XII remarked that reasons in fact are
"…those which** not rarely **arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called ‘indications’ "
I don’t think we can say that there is any kind of equivalence between circumstances which arise “not rarely” and circumstances which are “super, super, super, super, super serious”.
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KSU
Guest
My grandparents, my father, and close friends (one disfigured by torture) also survived/escaped the WW II Socialist horrors in Eastern Europe. Some of my family members, to whom we sent CARE packages, simply disappeared there. So, what have we proved?
You ignore my point–the disgraceful, official persecution of Christian clergy and citizens who want to practice their Faith in the Canadian public square (one of the freest places on the face of the earth, as you put it). But for a reason known only to you, you make an issue out of my use of a metaphor–a mere figure of speech that refers to something as being similar to another thing for rhetorical effect.
At the same time, no one in this thread made an issue out of your questionable use of the word Church, viz:
“American readers will, with rare exception,… be ignorant of how the Church, which already had considerable power and influence in New France, stepped into a role of which they made an awful mess of it, to be frank.”
And
“I was…absolutely horrified, in turn, by the terrible things on a massive scale with which I came face to face…The Church ruined itself and lost for itself the legitimate role in society…”
We know that the Church itself is holy; the Body of Christ on earth. It didn’t make an awful mess in Canada, nor did it ruin itself and lose its legitimate role in society.
Readers merely winced, knowing you simply took literary license. But you did not see fit to do the same with my metaphor, anti-Catholic gulag, where in fact there is persecution and oppression of the Church in Canada.
As for the last part of your post, to save this thread, I’ll ignore it.
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OraLabora
Guest
There was, the paper I linked to some posts ago documented it. However by 1960 the difference had lessened greatly, a trend that started some time in the 50s.
Although I don’t quite understand the statements of someone who lived here for 58 years and who has personally met the people involved have to somehow be proved. It’s like me asking you to prove that the Civil War actually happened or that sex scandals in the Church happened in the US. I find it borders on rudeness in fact. I can appreciate that as Americans this will not be common knowledge, but some measure of respect for the knowledge of someone only one generation removed from this era would have been appreciated.
We need to remind ourselves that the Church is populated by sinners including her clergy and local bishops; I and Fr. Ruggero have pointed out the sins of the pre-conciliar Quebec clergy. These events were to us every bit as tragic as the sex scandals in your local church (and indeed ours too), as you can imagine. It saddens me that fellow Catholics would have so little solidarity and empathy for what happened here, instead blaming it all on on the perceived faithlessness of French-Canadians. They didn’t lose their faith, they had it crushed by their own clergy by placing demands on the people that the Church never did, as your quote above from Pius XII shows so well.
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