French-Canadian Heritage in Michigan Week, September 29 to October 5, 2014 Post #6 –The Roman Catholic Church in the New France Colony and in the Interior of the North American Continent This is the hardest of these posts to write because the very mention of the Catholic Church evokes such widely-varying responses. I grew up within a religious heritage that was 400 years old on this continent. My parents immigrated to the United States in 1926, long before the Quiet Revolution in their native Province of Québec in the 1960s. As such, they experienced from a distance the very-real rebellion against the Catholic Church of those who began to call themselves Québécois and Québécoises, not French Canadians or Canadiens-français. My parents’ visits “home” to see relatives occurred almost every year until the 1970s: I was with them most of those years. In addition, all of my formal schooling from first grade through my post-graduate degree has been in Catholic institutions. Marygrove College, in particular, saw to it that every graduate received a thorough grounding in the history of the Church and a minor in the great philosophers, including St. Thomas Aquinas. For the last 16 years, at least, I have read the actual Church records; great portions of the Jesuit Relations; the works of some of the women religious leaders; other documents that deal specifically with the Church and its disputes with the secular government and the secular government with them. Separation of Church and State was definitely one of the goals of the Catholic leaders. Catholic leaders protested the brandy trade vehemently; some historians find this to be an encumbrance to “making money.” And I have read how predominantly-protestant historians have dealt with the Roman Church in New France and also the comments by those who encountered French Canadians for the first time in New France or in Detroit and elsewhere. While acknowledging their perceptions and biases, I have a very different view of the Catholic Church in New France. A few observations: The male religious leaders and the mainly-neglected female religious, such as Marie de L’Incarnation and Sainte Marguerite Bourgeoys, and other women religious, labored mightily to provide for the spiritual, educational, and medical needs of colonists and Indians alike. (For the women religious, see Jan Noel’s Along a River: the First French-Canadian Women (University of Toronto Press: 2012), available on Amazon.) The priests, those who belonged to religious orders, such as the Jesuits, Récollets, and Sulpicians, as well as the secular priests, ministered to the inhabitants and Indians both in the parishes of the mother colony and in the establishments in what became the United States at considerable sacrifice. They accepted all men and women of whatever origin or ethnicity as Children of God. They did not administer baptism indiscriminately, as they have been accused of doing. (I can provide examples.) The Church in Nouvelle France recognized that humans are not perfect, that they sinned, but that redemption through acknowledgement of error and the intention to reform were possible. They followed the essence of Jesus’ words in the Parable of the Talents, Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Matthew: 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. […] 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me […] 45 Then shall he also answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. Some young historians call this Socialism. I call it living the message of the Gospel. You may disagree with me, but, to me, it is a question of values that were very definitely transmitted to my family and are, thus, part of my French-Canadian heritage. On returning from a visit to Montréal in 1995, I was delighted to show several people the photos I had taken, including one of a statue of Marguerite Bourgeoys erected in Old Montréal on Rue Nôtre-Dame Est, between Blvd. St-Laurent and Place Vauquelin. She is depicted as a teacher with two of her students. As my Access® guide to the city describes it, the lawn and fountain dedicated to Ste. Marguerite de Bourgeoys Square “separates the new courthouse [Palais de Justice] from the old one. … The bronze sculpture-fountain unveiled in 1988 portrays [her] helping two children over stepping stones across the basin of the fountain.” Marguerite looks directly at the children, her right arm and fingers pointing towards the new Palais de Justice, while at the same time she reaches out her left hand to a boy who is stretching his right arm towards her over the water. Behind the boy on a higher rock, a girl extends her left foot forward, as if ready to jump onto the lower rock the boy is about to leave and to follow him. When I saw the memorial, I smiled. An in-law who saw my photograph of the memorial cynically commented: “They put up a statue to honor a teacher?” Suddenly realizing he was saying this to someone who had spent thirty-one years as a teacher, he quickly, and sheepishly, retracted his words. All I could do was smile once again and add that perhaps the fact Marguerite was now Sainte Marguerite Bourgeoys would impress him more. New France was a vibrant society that has, on the whole, not been reported as fully as it can now be.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 22:24:54 +0000
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