The Archbishop of Ottawa, Terrence Prendergast, keeps a blog that is a daily stop for me. It's called The Journey of a Bishop and it includes a mixture of homilies, reflections on saints, and lots of pictures and news of events around his bilingual diocese.
I think sometimes that maybe he might have been a journalist had not God called him to be a Jesuit priest. I am often at the same events and sometimes he's up arranging folks for a photograph while I'm still lolling in my chair. Sometimes he'll warn that blogging will be light as he's traveling to Rome or something, but then, sure enough, there will be pictures and commentary from Rome, like this post during his recent visit as a member of Vox Clara, when the committee presented the new English translation of the Roman Missal to the Holy Father. It cracks me up. His youth ministry director, who set the blog up for him, told me he took to it like a duck to water.
Sometimes I have been known to borrow the odd photo or bit of text from his blog and put it on mine. Well, imagine my delight when he recently borrowed a little something from the Anglo-Catholic! He also put up a picture of the Adoration chapel that I had written about here, though when I was there it was darkened, with light coming through the stained glass windows. Here's an excerpt of what he used from this post about renewal in the Catholic Church and a homily by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada.
“Nobody is left out,” Ouellet said. “We all have a personal vocation to be with Jesus.”
“Some of us are called to be more publicly exposed,” he said, describing Peter as being called to be in front of the flock and to speak out for the flock.
“Others are behind. John is behind. Peter is the symbol of ministry; John is the symbol of love, pure love, the loving response to the love of Jesus.”
(Thanks to Deborah Gyapong for the photo and this blog she posted at www.theanglocatholic.com)
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Except when Mass was being offered upstairs in the cathedral basilica, Eucharistic adoration took place 24/7 in the lower-level Archbishops' Chapel during the Montee Jeunesse: here a group prays silently on Sunday afternoon
Yesterday, Archbishop Prendergast joined Cardinal Ouellet in Quebec City for a news conference on abortion. This was a courageous move for two reasons. First, the Cardinal has faced an unprecedented wave of vitriol, even having a popular Quebecois columnist wish he would die of a slow, painful illness for his defense of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life, even in cases of rape. The backlash has been so extraordinary that the Quebec National Assembly (that's what the province calls its provincial legislature) passed a unanimous motion last week, in effect calling on the federal government to assert some sort of inalienable right for women to free and accessible abortion. Canada is the only western nation with absolutely no legal protection for the unborn child until after birth. So, the good bishop was sticking his head up above the parapet in making that sign of solidarity with his brother bishop. Second, Prendergast is bishop of Canada's capital city. He can see the Parliament Buildings from the front door of his cathedral. Ottawa is also home of the National Parliamentary Press Gallery, known for their feeding frenzies on controversial issues. He has put himself in their sights.
And abortion is the hot topic these days in Canada. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced he would lead, as president this year of the G-8, a maternal child and health care initiative to help save the lives of the 900,000 women who die due to preventable complications of pregnancy or childbirth and the also preventable deaths of millions of children five and under due to malnutrition, malaria or unsafe water. Opposition parties have insisted abortion be included in the package. Harper has stood his ground and said no. At the same time, he has also stood his ground against doing anything to "re-open the abortion debate," which means the legal vacuum, the horrific status quo that sees 100,000 abortions a year in Canada, and between 25,000 and 30,000 in Quebec, with a population between 8-9 million people.
The mainstream media have sometimes acted like shills for the Opposition stance that abortion is a right and somehow what's best for women in poorer countries is that we help them kill their babies before they are born. The Holy Father, when visiting Africa, spoke of the danger of spiritual toxic waste being dumped there, and I can't think of a better example than this.
So please join me today in praying for this good bishop and for Cardinal Ouellet and for Canada.
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I don't know too much about Canadian politics other than it is as screwed up as ours down here, but what surprises me is how far left Quebec has turned. I always thought they were much more conservative than the rest of Canada and were faithful Roman Catholics – what happened?
Hurrah forArchbishop Prendergast and Cardinal Ouellet, may they be Blessed.
Gross abuses of power on the part of the Catholic hierarchy, especially collusion with politicians to keep political and economic power in the hands of the Anglophone minority in return for unfettered authority over spheres such as education and social policy, led many Francophone Quebecois to turn their back on the Catholic Church when they began to assert their desire for self-determination in the 1960s. That's what happens when you line up with the rich and powerful.
C'est possible, mais la désaffection de l'Église au Québec peut aussi être due tout simplement au matérialisme, comme partout ailleurs. Vous avez raison, c'est la catastrophe!
Though Quebec still has high numbers of self-identifying Catholics, the churches emptied in the 1970s as part of the Quiet Revolution, and a radical response to the Second Vatican Council.
I hesitate to buy a lot of the received wisdom about the so-called darkness of the era when the Catholic Church allegedly had so much power, etc. and women were "forced" by priests to have 20 children etc. I really don't know that much about it, but I have an inkling that some of the move for the Quiet Revolution came from liberal forces within the Church. And of course, one of the problems with having an established church of any kind is, as historian Paul Johnson has written, the Christianity can become mechanical.
It is heartbreaking what has happened. The province has the lowest church attendance, the lowest marriage rates, the highest shacking up rates, high abortion and suicide rates. The social devastation is awful. It traded the church for statism. Quebec is the part of North America that most resembles Greece in its level of indebtedness, is aging population, its reliance on transfer payments from the rest of Canada to support its lucrative social programs. But this kind of statist solidarity has not made them wealthier, its just spread the lower standard of living around. Separatism seems to be on the rise again, too, after a brief period of dormancy.
Fr. Anthony, je souhaite que je peux parler francais!
I have never been to Canada, but I have read one or two things about Québec. In a way, Québec has become European and adopted the welfare state system that cripples all our countries over here. I would not agree with Lina Banda's analysis, but would rather suppose that French-speaking Canada has gone the way of France, or even England with our "New Labour" and political correctness.
Christianity becoming mechanical? I was at a choir rehearsal a few days ago, and we are doing a performance this evening at Saint Valéry-en-Caux (Normandy coast just next to where I go sailing). It is a lovely big medieval church with quite of lot of 19th century "restoration" work. I found some things quite gruelling – box pews like in 18th century England, and numbers on each pew. In the old days, you paid for your pew, and thus the bourgeois people got the best places (rather than being sent to the back of the church as in the Gospel – !). People had to present their confession tickets before being allowed to go to Communion. I know one or two people in their 70's who remember confessors expecting a generous tip as the penitent got his penance, Absolution and the required slip of paper. There were no fewer than four collections at Sunday Masses and the sound of jingling coins even during the Canon! I don't think I would have liked 19th century French Catholicism! The Society of St Pius X has done quite a good job at reproducing it! People kicked back at something in a massive way in the 1960's, and I'm sure it was above all the hypocrisy inherent in "mechanical" Catholicism. It was doubly gruelling to see the way lay people were treated in those days, in contrast to the arrangement of the choir (unchanged except with the addition of an altar facing the people) which witnesses to the sumptuous and joyful liturgy according to the Rouen Use of old.
I don't think things were as bad everywhere. Perhaps, priests treated people in the big cities like Paris with a little more care, knowing that clericalism is a major cause of anti-clericalism. Unlike Lina Banda, I wouldn't say "bad then, good now", because priests are often just as despising now as then, the only difference being that they celebrate the new liturgy and are dressed in the scruffy and stinking clothes they used to wear under their cassock (!). Pope John's renewal is still yet to come…
As for speaking and writing French, I was hopeless at it when I was at school in England. I picked it up by living here in France – it's the best way to learn any language.