The Dead End of the Partisan Church
Route 132 along the north shore of Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula offers one of the most scenic vistas in North America. To one’s left, the extraordinary St. Lawrence River can create the illusion of driving along the seashore, for the width of the riverine estuary is such that the opposite shoreline, also in Québec, is often beyond the horizon. But does any seaside drive offer the Gaspé Extra: jagged cliffs to one’s right, beyond which are dense forests and crystalline mini lakes? Looking for a whale traversing the estuary en route to the Atlantic adds a further touch of adventure on a trip to the town of Gaspé or a ferry ride across the river.
For the Catholic visitor, the Gaspé Peninsula is also noteworthy for the names of the villages along the river and estuary, the great majority of which are in honor of the saints: Notre-Dame-du-Portage, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Saint-Simon, Saint-Fabien-sur-Mer, Sainte-Flavie, Saint-Joseph-de-Lepage, Saint-Ulric, Sainte-Félicité, Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, and so forth. The most prominent feature in many of these coastal villages is a stone church with a high steeple and a shimmering tin roof, mute testimony to the fact that Québec was once — and not all that long ago — one of the most intensely Catholic parts of the continent.
I say “mute” testimony, because it is difficult to find one of those churches that is open.
A typical example is the Church of Saint-Roch in the village of Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies, the twin spires of which invite one into the village from the drive along the St. Lawrence. Yet despite a sign announcing that the church is open every day, it was locked up this past August 25, and the fact that the historic presbytery had become a coffee-and-pastry shop — excellent almond croissants, be it noted — did not suggest a vibrant parochial life. Nor were weekend (much less weekday) Mass schedules evident anywhere on the property. The visitor is thus left to admire the exterior architecture, but with no opportunity to explore what an online search revealed to be a splendid, galleried interior, ideal for prayer and reflection.
How did this happen? How did Catholic Québec become, in my lifetime, what is arguably the most religiously arid space between the North Pole and Tierra del Fuego?
There are doubtless many reasons. One worth pondering in this electoral season is suggested by a grainy, black-and-white photograph in the display of village history found on a series of mounted posters between the old rectory-become-café and the locked church. Titled Assemblée politique en 1930, the photo shows several dozen Ford Model Ts and Model As, and perhaps a hundred or so villagers gathered in front of the parish’s great stone statue of the Sacred Heart. They were being addressed from the porch of the parish hall by what one assumes were candidates for public office, with commentary provided by the local priests — an assumption buttressed by the fact that, in 1930, the Catholic Church in Québec was joined at the hip to the provincial government, for which it ran the province’s schools, hospitals, and social services: an ancient arrangement that later morphed into a close alliance between the Church and the Union Nationale party. Then came Québec’s “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s, which shattered the tight bond between Church and state. The Church in Québec has never recovered.
That old photo struck me with particular force because, a month earlier, I saw billboards in southeastern Poland inviting the local population to Sunday Mass and a talk by the candidate of a particular political party; the signage included portraits of the local priest and the politician. Driving past those billboards, I could well imagine John Paul II shaking his head in both amazement and dismay at this decay of the Church into a partisan political actor — precisely what he had so sharply criticized in some forms of Latin American liberation theology.
Regardless of the ideological orientation of the party in question, partisan alliances are death for the Church. So, under contemporary conditions, is the kind of ecclesiastical alliance with state power that was typical of Québécois life for some 300 years. Polish Catholicism should take a lesson from what I encountered in the Gaspé — and Poland’s bishops should make it clear that the use of local churches (and still less Sunday Mass!) for partisan political purposes is inconsistent with the nature of the Church.
As for Catholic voters, well, let us judge candidates on their character and policies, not on the partisan label they wear.
