CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION THE history of religious organization in Canada has as yet received little attention. Numerous contributions to the field, it is true, have appeared from time to time in the form of biographies of churchmen or denominational histories but a comprehensive history of the church in Canada has still to be written. Few, if any, countries offer a richer field for a study of certain important developments in the history of the Christian Church. Much valuable material awaits. the historian and sociologist for a study of such topics as: the Jesuit and other missions among the Indians; the various struggles between the different religious orders; and between the Gallican and Papal parties within the Roman Catholic church; as well as the struggle of the church for temporal supremacy; the toleration of Roman Catholicism and the provision for separate schools under British rule; the establishment of the Church of England and state support of religious institutions; denominational unions; home and foreign missions; social service; the church and the community life; and the movement for organic church union. Among all the problems of the church in Canada, however, there are none more interesting than that of the relation of church to state, because nearly all the others are more or less intimately related to this, probably the most fascinating of them all. There are, of course, many phases of this general problem. Naturally at different periods and in different provinces different traditions arose and the 13] 13 relation of church and state varied greatly. The history of church and state in Quebec is undoubtedly the most interesting of all. This interest arises, not only from the fact that in this province the British government has had to deal with a population essentially French in descent and language and Roman Catholic in religion, but also from the fact that, in the face of the decline of ecclesiastical authority among the Latin peoples of Europe, the legal status granted by the British government has resulted in giving to the hierarchy such power and control over the social, political and religious life of the people, as to make the Roman Catholic Church of Quebec without a peer among the Roman Catholic churches of the world. Many important events occurred during the long period of struggle and adjustment between the church authorities and the representatives of the British government. The chief interest in the problem, however, lies not in these features considered as striking events but in their relation to the great social forces which conditioned the adjustment that was finally made. It is the purpose of this essay to deal with these social forces and to show their relation to the growth of the control of the church itself in Quebec. The period covered is from the settlement of the country down to "The Constitutional Act" of 1791. This in many respects is the most important period, because by the the time the Constitutional Act was passed the basis in law had been laid for all subsequent ecclesiastical history of the Roman Catholic church in Quebec; and in consequence the interplay of the social forces which introduced the period of which that act was the climax formed an essential part of the conditions which determined the entire subsequent development of religious organization in Quebec. This study, therefore, has been entitled "The Rise of Ecclesiastical Control in Quebec." Its aim is to indi cate, from a sociological point of view, how closely related was the rise of that control and the social solidarity upon which it was based to the great demographic and social facts of this province. The study reviews the facts which show how inevitably the population became homogeneous, and how, for this reason there developed a social solidarity which was highly favorable for the development of a centralized and paternalistic ecclesiastical control. The character of the subjects treated is indicated by the chapter headings. In Chapter II entitled, "Demographic Factors Affecting the Homogeneity of the Population of the Province of Quebec," the attempt has been made to show how the situation of Quebec and the facts of the aggregation and composition of the population were all remarkably conducive to the production of that social and moral solidarity which the Roman Catholic church in Quebec has found so well adapted to its purposes. In Chapter III entitled, "Social and Moral Solidarity," the facts of occupation, language and other social characteristics of the population are so treated as to indicate their influence upon the same fundamental social process, namely, the production of mental and moral solidarity. In the later chapters, the relations of the state and church are considered from a more historical standpoint but in such a way that the emphasis is still strongly upon the underlying sociological causes. |