Widespread spiritual blindness in the land of saints and scholars! This is what an avalanche of bread and circuses (bread - such as free college education, etc) do to a previously tough, intelligent, and, for centuries, DEEPLY DEEPLY CHRISTIAN people.
Could say the same about Quebec, only the collapse happened 40 years ago. Formerly the most conservative, most practicing, part of Canada. Undermined from within by communists (most of them clergy or ex-clergy) in the 1960s and the whole society folded like a house of cards. Now the lowest rate of practicing Christians and the highest rate of suicide, abortion, and out-of-wedlock births.
One of the best articles I read is this one: Caelum et Terra, Vol 5 no 2 Spring 1995,
Je Me Souviens: Remembering Quebec by Juli Loesch Wiley
https://www.caelumetterra.com/cet_backissues/article.cfm?ID=26 Unfortunately, the document is in .cfm format and I can't figure out how to open it (I have Linux). Believe you might have more luck if you use Windows . I read it shortly after it was published.
Anyway, there are a lot of commonalities between Ireland and Quebec.
Both have a tradition of sincere devotion since gone.
Both had primarily rural societies, normally a good thing as rural life connects you to reality in a way city life does not.
Both had high levels of practice and vocations.
Both had problems with some clerical sexual abuse that was swept under the carpet, with the sweeping part arguably causing a widespread loss of confidence.
Both were racial and linguistic minorities overshadowed and dominated by a larger British English society, for which Catholicism also doubled as a political protest movement as much as a religion...
Both secularized incredibly rapidly.
And in both cases it's next to impossible to get any analysis deeper than "well of course it collapsed; Catholicism is such a horrible backwards religion".
If anyone wants a good PhD thesis topic, there's a lot of material in there to explore if you want to take the angle that losing the faith is NOT a good thing for a society. The high level of suicide and depression that comes from that ought to be enough of an indicator!
You're most welcome! I am enjoying our discussion.
I see what you mean about Wiley! Thanks for that.
Funny that you mention Robert Waldrop: I read his website with great enthusiasm back in the 90s. I bought a copy of his piano music CD that he was selling at one point to raise money for his CW house. Found out he had died about 2 months after the fact....
Must have cross-posted with you: had exactly that in another response.
It's a topic that's interested me for years: I was born in Quebec and still have family there though I grew up elsewhere, and visited Ireland for several months in the late 1980s (primarly Dublin and Wexford, but also Galway). It was still a relatively devout place at that time, but I got a really wierd vibe from it that I can't describe other than to say it seemed hollow. I could tell it was headed for a Quebec-style nosedive, even back then.
Could say the same about Quebec, only the collapse happened 40 years ago. Formerly the most conservative, most practicing, part of Canada. Undermined from within by communists (most of them clergy or ex-clergy) in the 1960s and the whole society folded like a house of cards. Now the lowest rate of practicing Christians and the highest rate of suicide, abortion, and out-of-wedlock births.
Here's a couple of links for background:
One of the best articles I read is this one: Caelum et Terra, Vol 5 no 2 Spring 1995, Je Me Souviens: Remembering Quebec by Juli Loesch Wiley https://www.caelumetterra.com/cet_backissues/article.cfm?ID=26 Unfortunately, the document is in .cfm format and I can't figure out how to open it (I have Linux). Believe you might have more luck if you use Windows . I read it shortly after it was published.
The last couple of paragraphs of this article posit that the apparent devotion of the Quebeckers was a bit of a facade: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/fruits-of-the-quiet-revolution-catholic-church-quebec/ Not sure I buy that theory completely. Yes, social reinforcement certainly helps one's faith (or non-faith), but it's not the only factor.
Another theory was that the religious orders most common in Quebec were overwhelmingly of the devotional sort--Sulpicians in particular. The net result was a distinct lack of a Catholic intellectual tradition in Quebec. The people may have been devout, as well as many of the clergy (some incredibly devoted, even saintly, men). But on the whole, they had no "intellectual chops" to withstand or counteract the tremendous double-whammy wave of nonsense that came out of the socio-political révolution tranquille (quiet revolution) and the post-Vatican 2 religious-liturgical "out with the old; in with the new". Like hothouse plants, they had no ability to withstand the buffeting--intellectually, and therefore religiously.
Anyway, there are a lot of commonalities between Ireland and Quebec.
And in both cases it's next to impossible to get any analysis deeper than "well of course it collapsed; Catholicism is such a horrible backwards religion".
If anyone wants a good PhD thesis topic, there's a lot of material in there to explore if you want to take the angle that losing the faith is NOT a good thing for a society. The high level of suicide and depression that comes from that ought to be enough of an indicator!
You're most welcome! I am enjoying our discussion.
I see what you mean about Wiley! Thanks for that.
Funny that you mention Robert Waldrop: I read his website with great enthusiasm back in the 90s. I bought a copy of his piano music CD that he was selling at one point to raise money for his CW house. Found out he had died about 2 months after the fact....
The Quebeckers are so socially liberal that they skew the results. The entire rest of Canada is more conservative than Quebec!
Must have cross-posted with you: had exactly that in another response.
It's a topic that's interested me for years: I was born in Quebec and still have family there though I grew up elsewhere, and visited Ireland for several months in the late 1980s (primarly Dublin and Wexford, but also Galway). It was still a relatively devout place at that time, but I got a really wierd vibe from it that I can't describe other than to say it seemed hollow. I could tell it was headed for a Quebec-style nosedive, even back then.