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It is time to stop the angelism. Churches are closing. In mass. Throughout the West, especially in the Northern Hemisphere (for the time being?), temples of historic religious traditions are no longer used. They are abandoned, converted to other purposes, or demolished. And there is no indication, as some ecclesiastic authorities openly admit, that this trend will be reversed. If practice were not in a freefall, the decline in recruiting priests for churches and the proportional increase in their average age would be enough to confirm the obsolescence of these several thousands places of worship built under other auspices. Thus, there is indeed a shortage of human and physical resources that is jeopardizing an ecclesial heritage which, in many cases, is part of the national heritage. One needs feel no religious sentiment to feel an attachment to “one’s” church. Perhaps it is because several of the historic religious traditions are found in Québec, because there are so many places of worship, because none is “established,” in other words, because none is officially recognized or supported by the State, probably because Québec’s institutional heritage (modeled on France’s) is accustomed to a certain interventionism , and certainly because in Québec, churches form a big part of the collective identity; for a good ten years, Québec has experienced “church retirements” quite intensely. Introduction No More Angelism Lucie K. Morisset, Luc Noppen and Thomas Coomans© 2006 – Presses de l’Université du Québec Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Québec, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél. : (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.ca Tiré de : Quel avenir pour quelles églises?, Lucie K. Morisset, Luc Noppen et Thomas Coomans (dir.), ISBN 2-7605-1431-5 • D1431N Tous droits de reproduction, de traduction et d’adaptation réservés 20 Quel avenir pour quelles églises? / What future for which churches?© 2006 – Presses de l’Université du Québec Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Québec, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél. : (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.ca Tiré de : Quel avenir pour quelles églises?, Lucie K. Morisset, Luc Noppen et Thomas Coomans (dir.), ISBN 2-7605-1431-5 • D1431N Tous droits de reproduction, de traduction et d’adaptation réservés In 1997, the First International Symposium on the Future of Church Property was held in Québec City, and took stock of the status of churches in central cities, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world.1 Since then, Les églises du Québec. Un patrimoine à réinventer,2 La conversion des églises au Québec: un siècle d’expériences,3 Le devenir de l’art d’église dans les paroisses catholiques du Québec,4 and Le patrimoine religieux du Québec: entre le cultuel et le culturel,5 to mention only these publications , have sought to use reports and evaluations to advantage to cut the Gordian knot of church heritagization. A parliamentary committee of the Québec National Assembly even launched a public consultation in 2005 to assess the future of “religious heritage.”6 Today, everyone seems to agree that the heritagization of “places of worship” requires government intervention, either in the form of regulation or funding, since these buildings are being maintained in the name of heritage, in other words, in the name of the collective interest. Nevertheless, although the best thing that could happen to a church is to remain a place of worship, it is becoming increasingly difficult in the current economic context to use large buildings exclusively for a handful of believers for a limited number of hours per week. Questions about the future of churches are therefore pressing in terms of use and purpose, in terms of government and urban planning and, consequently, in terms of systems of ownership. Nonetheless, the problem is anything but unique to Québec and, in the end, in the most interventionist countries or where the separation of Church and State is still a taboo subject, the traditional methods of preserving heritage are collapsing one after another because of the magnitude of the problem. The Montreal International Symposium What Future for Which Churches?, from which this work is taken, sprang from this. 1. Luc Noppen, Lucie K. Morisset and Robert Caron (dir.), La conservation des églises dans les villes-centres, Québec City, Septentrion, 1997. 2. Luc Noppen and Lucie K. Morisset, Les églises du Québec. Un patrimoine à réinventer, Québec City, Presses de l’Université du...

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