The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, 1931-1970 (review)

At this time, several scholars in Quebec are researching the cultural development that led to the Quiet Revolution of the early 1960's. In their Sortir de la 'grande noirceur' E.-Martin Meunier and Jean-Philippe Warren and in her L'Affaire silicose Suzanne Clavette focus on the resistance to the conservative provincial government and the struggles for social justice initiated by Catholic activists in the name of the Church's social teaching. These authors argue that the social democracy introduced by the Quiet Revolution was prepared by social struggles carried on by Catholic organizations beginning in the 1930's.

In his new book, Michael Gauvreau does something quite different. Social justice issues do not interest him. He focuses on the cultural transformation of Quebec society, by which he means changes in the structure and ethos of the family. He argues that the family is the institution where humans learn to be members of society, respect authority, discover their social roles as men and women, and work selflessly for the common good. Gauvreau's social analysis reminds me of the work of the nineteenth-century French sociologist Frédéric LePlay, who saw in the family the principal institution sustaining society and who argued that the destabilization of the family produced by the French Revolution threatens the well-being of France.

In his first four chapters, Gauvreau documents that specialized Catholic Action in Quebec, beginning in the 1930's, undermined the traditional understanding of the family, produced a conflict between generations, young and old, weakened the sense of authority and democratized the relations between family members. The new emphasis, which Gauvreau attributes in part to the influence of French "personalism," fostered the search for personal happiness. Gauvreau assigns some of the blame for this development to Pius XI's encyclical Casti connubii of 1930 which—despite the condemnation of birth control—weakened the institution of the family by shifting the emphasis from social reproduction to personal fulfillment, thus eroticizing the relation between the spouses.

In chapter 5, on marriage in the 1960's, the author changes his tone. The values fostered by a minority movement in the 1930's now define the dominant culture. Gauvreau argues that the women, whose erotic desire had been stimulated by Catholic Action, personalism, and the Church's teaching, now sought personal happiness in married life and therefore refused to accept Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae of 1968, which condemned the use of the birth control pill. Here the author accuses the ecclesiastical leadership of internal inconsistency and holds it responsible for the massive exodus of women from the Church of Quebec.

Chapters 6 and 7 deal with the efforts of the Church to exercise a public function in the new pluralistic society—a topic of universal interest that preoccupied Vatican Council II. The author focuses especially on Quebec's new school system. He argues that the secular society and the Church arrived at a viable compromise between 1960 and 1965, but that in the subsequent five years, the liberal idea of the State as directly responsible for the well-being of the citizens minimized the Church's role in the educational system and thus fostered the secularization of Quebec society.

This is a fascinating book that will provoke many debates. Readers will be surprised by the author's barbed writing style: he seems to be angry with the new ideas that emerged in Roman Catholicism. The reader wonders why the author never offers an adequate account of Emmanuel Mounier's personalism and why he interprets a renewal movement in the Church as elitist, fostering heroic behavior and contempt for the masses. Gauvreau fails to notice that the interpretation of Catholicism that arrived in Quebec from France was one of the main theological currents that influenced Vatican Council II. He offers quotations from speakers in Quebec without recognizing that they are citing...