The Church in Quebec

George A. Rawlyk is a history professor at Queen’s University and the
author of Champions of the Truth: Fundamentalism, Modernism, and the
Maritime Baptists.

This slim book contains a number of previously published articles
written by the distinguished Canadian theologian Gregory Baum. Among
other things, he attempts to explain why the process of secularization
in Quebec “has not been characterized by cultural schism but by
compromise and pluralism.” Without question, he argues, the Catholic
leadership facilitated the peaceful movement toward secularization.

Baum is particularly concerned about making English Canadians aware of
the “prophetic social and political critique” of Quebec put forward
by Jacques Grand ’Maison and the “Contextual Theology” of the
McGill theologian Douglas Hall. Some readers will view Baum’s
treatment of the growth of Quebec nationalism (especially the Catholic
endorsement of the movement) as being both too uncritical and too
positive. It may also be persuasively argued that since the Quiet
Revolution, many Quebec Roman Catholic Church leaders have lost faith in
their religious ideology and have replaced it with a secular nationalism
that has become a powerful secular religion. And, as might have been
expected, they have been thrust by the politicians to the periphery of
Quebec society, where their irrelevance is matched only by their
powerlessness. Their enthusiastic and uncritical endorsement of the
gospel of Quebec modernity may have, ironically, disemboweled their
Church.