| Inroads Newsletter | | |
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Ethics and Religious Culture
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An introduction by Bob Chodos In the ongoing drama of Quebec’s effort to find a generally acceptable balance between affirmation of its majority culture and accommodation of minorities, the months since the most recent print issue of Inroads appeared last November have been a busy and active time. And once again, the compulsory Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) course, to which Inroads devoted its main theme section in that issue (Inroads, Winter/Spring 2010, pp. 22–51), has been a major flash point in that drama. In early December, the Institut de Recherche sur le Québec, a natitonalist think tank, issued a study by one of its researchers, Joëlle Quérin, entitled Le cours Éthique et culture religieuse: transmission de connaissances ou endoctrinement? (The Ethics and Religious Culture course: transmission of knowledge or indoctrination?). Quérin’s answer to the question in her title was clear: the course is indoctrination, specifically of a multiculturalist ideology inspired by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Excerpts from this “étude-choc,” as Antoine Robitaille termed it in Le Devoir, appear below in translation. The study elicited a barrage of commentary both for and against, including the opinion piece by four prominent academics — one of whom was Georges Leroux, one of the designers of the course and a contributor to the Winter/Spring issue of Inroads — that appears here in translation. We also present a commentary by Quebec City writer Louisa Blair, who introduced the debate between Leroux and Gary Caldwell in the print issue. Nowhere was the impact of Quérin’s study more strongly felt than in the opposition Parti Québécois, which had previously supported the ERC course. PQ education critic Pierre Curzi endorsed Quérin’s study and demanded that the ERC course be withdrawn. However, his leader, Pauline Marois, took a different position: she called for a parliamentary commission to evaluate the course, with the aim of taking “the necessary corrective measures for the next school year.” This difference led to some uncertainty as to whether Curzi was still the party’s education critic; he was eventually confirmed in his role. The controversy over the Quérin study died down, but not the underlying questions: While some of its elements are specific to Quebec, in essence this drama is a reflection of issues that are being faced in one way or another throughout the Western world. Inroads will continue to follow the drama closely. |
Bob Chodos is managing editor of Inroads.
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Education or indoctrination?
Joëlle Quérin begins her critique by outlining the long process that led to the introduction of the Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) course in Quebec schools. She then moves on to the content of the course. Course contentThe content of the course needs to be understood in the broader context of the structure inherited from Quebec’s educational reform. The framework for the ERC course is the competency approach to education, which emphasizes the development of capabilities rather than the acquisition of knowledge. This approach is applied not only to evaluation of students but also to classroom teaching, whose content is entirely dependent on the competencies the course aims to develop. In the case of the ERC course, there are three such competencies: Reflects on ethical questions (ethics component), Demonstrates an understanding of the phenomenon of religion (religious culture component) and Engages in dialogue (dialogue component). The program in its entirety is built around these three competencies. It specifies what they mean, what they consist of and what criteria are to be used to evaluate them at each stage of the student’s academic progress, divided into cycles. The competencies themselves flow from the program’s two major objectives, which are ultimately what the ERC course is about: and pursuit of the common good. This hierarchical structure provides the orientation for the course as a whole. Largely interchangeable because they come from the same ideological source, the two objectives and the three competencies are constantly referred to in the description of the program, each providing justification for the others. They are also mobilized in the selection of the limited knowledge to be transmitted and the educational activities that are prescribed. The objectives The two major objectives of the program are recognition of others and pursuit of the common good. This wording leaves no doubt as to the objectives’ ideological character. Anyone who is familiar with theories of recognition, especially that of Charles Taylor, knows that the principle of recognition is the philosophical basis for multiculturalism.[1] Within the framework of the course, children are supposed to develop particular attitudes in their relationship with “the other,” and a predetermined — and contradictory — conception of the common good is imposed: the promotion of individual identities. The explanations the program provides for these objectives confirm this ideological character: These two objectives take into account diversity, and contribute to further enhancing community life and to encouraging the construction of a truly common public culture, that is, to sharing the underlying principles on which community life in Québec is based. Such references include the basic rules of sociability and of living within a community, as well as the principles and values found in the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.[2]The terms community life (vivre-ensemble in French), common public culture and sharing the underlying principles may seem at first glance like expressions that bring children together and encourage them to develop a feeling of belonging to Quebec. In the next sentence, however, the program’s designers specify that they base this belonging on “basic rules of sociability” — which ones? — and on the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Hence, it becomes clear that the conception of Québécitude that children will develop is strictly civic. Children are being told that they are all Québécois — and that being Québécois simply means respecting the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms! You might as well tell all the tourists who don’t violate the Charter during their stay that they are Québécois too! Seeing this reference to the Charter, we can better understand the meaning the program’s designers attach to the terms they use to present its objectives. When they invoke Quebec’s “common public culture,” they are not thinking of culture in the anthropological sense of the term. In this sense, culture is a set of customs, codes, practices and ways of being — the culture of a people. The ERC course’s designers consider this form of culture too exclusive, and therefore illegitimate. As formulated in the ERC program, the “common public culture” is really only a legal culture, a way of resolving conflicts between individuals. And the term vivre-ensemble, literally “living together,” used constantly both in the ERC program itself and by its defenders, has been brilliantly analyzed by Le Devoir columnist Christian Rioux. The term, Rioux wrote, allows its users to “avoid talking about that which really makes it possible to live together” — a shared language and culture.[3] In short, on the pretext of bringing students together by teaching them the foundations of our common culture, the ERC course enshrines a conception of Quebec as a strictly civic nation. This nation is defined only by its Charter of Rights, and not by its history and cultural specificities. The competencies The competencies that the program aims to develop are also part of this normative framework. The same three competencies apply to all grades, both primary and secondary. By looking at the definitions of these competencies and the arguments used to justify them, we can gain a better understanding of the ERC program’s ideological objectives. The first competency, Reflects on ethical questions, invites students to “examine the significance of various types of conduct, as well as the values and norms that guide members of a society with respect to community life [vivre-ensemble].” Developing this competency is considered essential in “a pluralist society such as ours” where “diverse values and norms coexist.” Starting in elementary cycle one — that is, in Grades 1 and 2 — students are invited to “examine several cultural, moral, religious, scientific or social references” that can guide individuals’ actions. They are asked to “find several references present in different points of view”, “look for the role played by these references” and “consider other references.”[4] While parents try to inculcate a set of values in their children, six- to eight-year-olds will learn in school that these values are relative and that they are free to develop their own ethical approach to life. All conceptions of life are considered valid. The only thing that cannot be challenged is a particular way of dealing with this ethical diversity — that’s where relativism ends. Children will have to “choose actions to promote that foster community life [vivre-ensemble],”[5] or in other words, behave in conformity with pluralist doctrine. This is what Georges Leroux, one of the program’s designers, calls “encouraging a critical and rational approach to a problem by discussing it on the basis of principles.” These principles, inscribed in charters and elevated to the status of dogmas, provide the program’s supporters with their defence against the charge of relativism. They point out that the diversity they celebrate exists within the framework of fundamental values contained in the charters.[6] But then, what do the charters protect? Individual rights! So, we are united by our “collective” defence of individual rights! That this would be enough to “live together” — vivre ensemble — leaves room for doubt. The second competency, Demonstrates an understanding of the phenomenon of religion, appears to be the one that is most conducive to acquiring knowledge. However, the description of this competency provided in the program is almost identical to the description of the first one. In the religious culture component, students are invited to “study various ways of thinking, being and acting that stem from different contexts, regardless of whether they are religious or not.” The second competency thus looks like a replica of the first, with the added detail that the different value systems being studied could have a religious origin. Georges Leroux sees the second competency as aiming essentially to “develop mutual respect and openness to difference.” For Dany Rondeau, “Competency 2 is an essential condition for the ethic of a pluralist society.” The second competency is chosen on the same basis as the first: “Québec society is a pluralist society with regard to beliefs.”[7] Hence, this competency, like the program as a whole, finds its ultimate justification in “pluralism” — a term used strategically by Quebec multiculturalists to avoid association with the unpopular Canadian policy of multiculturalism. All the controversial elements of the program are thus justified by a “pluralism” that, though never defined, is presented as an established fact or even a moral imperative. The third competency, Engages in dialogue, is also based on the premise that “a pluralist society in which there is a profusion of ethical questions and where diverse beliefs and ways of thinking, being and acting coexist needs to define itself as open and tolerant.” Hence, “in this program, the practice of dialogue entails adopting attitudes and behaviours that foster community life [vivre-ensemble].”[8] The wording could not be clearer: the goal is to get students to develop specific attitudes and behaviours. Hence, course content will consist of teaching students what the proper attitudes and behaviours are in relation to diversity. They will be evaluated by determining to what extent they can show that they have adopted these attitudes and behaviours and are putting them into practice. The third competency is placed at the heart of the program: all courses, exercises and examinations — rechristened “learning and evaluation situations” in the jargon of Quebec’s educational reform — must be directed toward this competency. Whatever content is being taught, whatever activity is being offered, teachers must “always call on the dialogue competency, which develops in conjunction with one or both of the other two competencies.”[9] As the program is formulated, no factual information on religion can be presented to students unless it is accompanied by “engaging in dialogue.” The third competency, the most ideological of all, must be front and centre in all circumstances. Knowledge (ethical or religious) is subordinated to the inculcation of attitudes and behaviours in conformity with the principles of pluralism. Quérin goes on to review the knowledge transmitted in the course, the role of teachers in it and the educational activities it contains, before describing the protests and criticism that the course has elicited. She looks at two organizations that have been prominent in the opposition to the course. The Comité pour la Liberté en Éducation (Committee for Freedom in Education) has argued for a resumption of parents’ right to choose their children’s religious education. On the other hand, the Mouvement Laïque du Québec (Quebec Secular Movement) has opposed all religious education in schools. Quérin considers both of these critiques valuable but incomplete. Some people, however, have offered a fuller critique of the ERC course and its ideological foundations. In particular, Mario Dumont, when he was leader of the Action Démocratique du Québec, criticized the course for “trivializing Quebec’s religious heritage,” as well as “denying the reality of who we are, in addition to encouraging the acculturation of our children.” Dumont’s stance was diametrically opposed to the position the government has taken in the last few years, which has consisted of declaring that the diversification of society involves ever-increasing openness on the part of the majority toward minority cultures and religions. Dumont emphasized the dangers of this vision, which “confuses having an open mind with uprooting our children with regard to our religious heritage.”[10] Through this emphasis on the heritage and identity dimensions of Quebec Catholicism, Dumont put forward his vision of Quebec as heir to a history rather than as a collection of cultural communities. His position was different from that of Catholic parents who are asking the school to take charge of transmitting their faith to children in religious instruction classes. His priority was to transmit a collective heritage to the children of Quebec, and especially to minorities: It is our collective duty to ensure that the children of new Quebecers have adequate knowledge and understanding of the religious heritage of the majority. They have the right to understand fully why Christmas and Thanksgiving are holidays in Quebec, while Guru Nanak’s birthday is not.[11]Dumont criticized the political project behind the ERC program, which “is trying to drown our identity in a mosaic with no points of reference.” The ADQ leader noted ironically that in introducing this course, his Liberal and PQ political opponents were “getting ready to do what even the worst federal Liberal governments have never managed to achieve: the ‘Trudeauization’ of our schools.”[12] Louis O’Neill also criticized the program’s ideological orientation. He wrote that the ERC course proposes “a kind of universal religion devoted to tolerance and improved vivre-ensemble” and “promotes an ethical system drawn from the charters of rights.” Mathieu Bock-Côté’s critique was along the same lines. He saw the ERC course as consecrating “the multicultural ideology that will transform society into one big open-air laboratory set up for the amusement of social engineers who will use children as their guinea pigs.” By indoctrinating children, the ERC course will “neutralize national consciousness with the virus of a guilt-inducing powerlessness that dissuades the majority from wanting to present its culture as a norm of common existence.” Charles-Philippe Courtois also shared this interpretation. He saw the ERC course as aiming at “ideological reeducation for political correctness, with the intention of normalizing the minds of Quebec citizens of tomorrow on the basis of the criteria of Canadian multiculturalism.”[13] This critique of the ERC course can be termed national. It is a critique of the very foundations of the course, focusing on its collective consequences. Some people have cast doubt on the pertinence of such a critique, pointing out that the program gives a preponderant place to Quebec’s Catholic heritage, which will henceforth be taught to all students and not just to those who are enrolled in denominational education.[14] However, the content of the program, the way it has been implemented since it was introduced in September 2008 and the public declarations of its supporters have been anything but reassuring. The ERC course’s supporters have denied that this course involves the imposition of multiculturalist education à la Trudeau; they prefer to talk about interculturalism and pluralism. However, as Gérard Bouchard himself has written, if multiculturalism is understood as “a general formula for structuring ethnic diversity,” then “in practical terms, [it] overlaps with many of the fundamental elements of Quebec’s interculturalism.” Above and beyond the legislation he spearheaded, Trudeau, as an intellectual and as a politican, was first and foremost a supporter of this philosophy of multiculturalism based on “the preservation and cohabitation of cultures or ethnic groups.”[15] This philosophy accords to different minorities the right “to be explicitly taken into account institutionally, to be recognized and represented within the institutions of the dominant society.”[16] Without a doubt, the primary objective of the ERC course is to inculcate this multiculturalist philosophy in Quebec students. The ERC course aims to convince young people of the virtues of pluralism. While some of its supporters have limited themselves to hoping that the course will contribute to “increasing young people’s tolerance” — with the subtext that previous generations were not tolerant enough — others have gone much further. In Georges Leroux’s estimation, the role of the school, and especially of the ERC course, consists of “bringing each young person along from acknowledgement of pluralism as a fact to appreciation of pluralism as a norm.” In other words, young people need to be led to the conclusion that the philosophy of multiculturalism is the only possible response to cultural and religious diversity. The columnist Marie-Andrée Chouinard wrote that the course should bring about “the making of tolerant young minds.” The spiritual care and guidance and community involvement animator Dominique MacConaill has described it as an “important work of social construction.” These views are evidence of the accuracy of Mathieu Bock-Côté’s critique. Bock-Côté saw the ERC course as an attempt “to build from scratch ... a new people, who will be more favourably disposed to multiculturalism and more or less strangers to the historical experience of the collectivity.”[17] Within the ERC framework, multiculturalism is promoted through canonization of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the primary instrument that Trudeau put in place to impose his doctrine. The fact that the course is based on the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms rather than the Canadian Charter is only a smokescreen. Whatever charter is being put forward, the objective of the course is to assert that “vivre-ensemble” must be based exclusively on common adherence to the principles contained in the charter in question. In Leroux’s view, the course will encourage “the advent of a common culture,” contained within the “framework that is the subject of our charters of rights.”[18] In speaking of the “advent” of a common culture, Leroux is well aware that the common culture with which Quebecers currently identify does not yet correspond to the one he would like to see develop. Hence, he entrusts the school with the mission of deleting from current representations of Quebec’s common culture any elements that are considered overly exclusive. This will ensure that the representation of the Quebec of tomorrow will be in conformity with multiculturalism. Also, while some people use the expression “common values” to designate the content of the charters, others prefer to talk about a “common framework of values” to indicate clearly that what is involved is not a “‘heritage’ culture,” which would be unacceptable “in a pluralist society.”[19] Hence, the objective of the ERC course is not only to teach the content of the charters but also to present this content as the only common denominator for all Quebecers, since the “heritage” culture is too exclusive to be transmitted in school. There is only one reason why this course is promoted: to use students to transform society. Justified in the name of the school’s “mission of socialziation,” the ERC course is based on the realization that a population that has already been socialized within a national framework will not adhere to multiculturalist ideology. Since we can’t convince the adults, let’s socialize the children before they are impregnated with a toxic national consciousness. The ERC course does not seek to teach children. It has uniquely “social objectives” – that is, its objective is social transformation. ERC is not a course on ethics or religion. It is “education for pluralism,” in which children are led step to step to accept “the recognition of pluralism as a norm for social existence and existence as citizens.”[20] From year to year, “the educational objective is always the same: to train students for dialogue.”[21] From the beginning of children’s schooling to its end, the ERC course is purely ideological. In this way, the school takes on the mission of ensuring that society will have a different perception of itself from the current one, and above all, that children will adopt different behaviours from those of their parents. The nation will no longer determine the orientations it will follow. Rather it is the school, as represented by specialists in education as an academic discipline, that will decide. It will ensure that children will internalize these new norms of existence — the ones that their parents have clearly rejected. The designers of the ERC program find the population guilty of turning in on itself, in a manner described by Georges Leroux as “nostalgic” and by Dany Rondeau as “identity-based and nationalist.” They believe that there is only “one possible therapy” for preventing a repeat of the reasonable accommodation controversy: indoctrinating youth.[22] Society is ill with the disease of nonadherence to multiculturalism: let’s vaccinate the children before it’s too late. André Beauregard, a supporter of the ERC program and an inveterate writer of letters to the editor of the Granby newspaper La Voix de l’Est, wrote that “if you take account of what is currently being said, it is urgent to begin this work of national education.”[23] Faced with massive popular rejection of their ideology, the multiculturalists have concluded that what they need is not to step back, but rather to go even further ahead. Unable to convince, they have chosen to impose their ideology through the school. |
Joëlle Quérin is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the author of numerous articles on multiculturalism and reasonable accommodation in Quebec. This is an abridged version of a research paper originally published in French by the Institut de Recherche sur le Québec, where Mme Quérin is a researcher. It was translated by Bob Chodos.  Notes
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The nationalist critique: A misreading of the ERC program
Since the new compulsory Ethics and Religious Culture course was developed and implemented in primary and secondary schools in September 2008, three main currents of opposition to the course have appeared. Their arguments are very different, but circumstance or convenience has sometimes drawn them together. The first of these currents consists of Catholic parents who are demanding the right to have their children exempted from the course. The Mouvement Laïque Québécois, which is opposed to having any religion at all in the school curriculum, represents a second current. Now these have been joined by a third critique, this time from some nationalist intellectuals who are worried that the identity of Quebecers of French-Canadian descent, Quebec’s majority, may become marginalized. Their recent targets have included Quebec’s educational reform, reform of the history curriculum and some of the orientations of the Bouchard-Taylor Report. Joëlle Quérin’s study follows this third approach. Mme Quérin is a student attached to the Institut de Recherche sur le Québec, a private nationalist think tank that is close to the Mouvement National des Québécoises et Québécois [a federation of 19 nationalist organizations that, among other things, is responsible for coordinating the celebration of Quebec’s national holiday]. Parti Québécois MNA Pierre Curzi’s endorsement of this study is surprising, in that it breaks with the PQ’s support for a secular school system, which has been consistent since the report of the Task Force on the Place of Religion in the Schools in Quebec (the Proulx Report) was issued in 1999. This endorsement is based on erroneous premises, and we consider it urgent to correct these premises. “Multiculturalism,” pluralism and a common ethical foundation The ease with which Mme Quérin assimilates pluralism with “multiculturalism” is nothing short of disconcerting, but her aim in doing so is clear: in attaching the label of “multiculturalism” to pluralism, which is a social fact as well as an attitude involving respect for diversity, she is demonizing the political philosophy she seeks to discredit. In asserting that the ERC program is “multiculturalist,” she is in effect denouncing it for serving “Canadian” ideology and being “chartist” and “Trudeauist.” But is Mme Quérin’s rhapsody of accusations of indoctrination a fair reading of the program? The opposite is true. In the ministerial directions for 2005, in which recognition of others and pursuit of the common good were identified as key goals, legislators expressly determined that the course was directed at promoting citizenship. The Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms is at the heart of our identity, which has nothing to do with the religious or inward-looking community-based multiculturalism promoted in the rest of Canada. In fact, in opposition to multiculturalism, which supports the promotion of difference for its own sake, the new program promotes the common building of “vivre-ensemble” — a way of living together — within a shared culture. This is why the program makes the dialogue competency complementary to ethical reflection and understanding of the phenomenon of religion. In thinking about Quebec as a nation, why should the promotion of dialogue and the building of a common culture be a source of worry? In a world threatened on all sides by reflexes that close people off, toward what end should we abolish a program of education for pluralism that is open to diversity and concerned first and foremost with promoting ways to live together? Education for pluralism is an effort in which all Western democracies are currently engaged. Quebec is no exception, and it would be a major backward step if Quebec were to give up on this effort. Quebec’s religious history and heritage What should we make of the argument that the ERC program uproots young people with regard to Quebec’s religious heritage, and especially the legacy of Catholicism in our identity? Contrary to what Mme Quérin suggests, access to historical knowledge of Quebec’s religious heritage is an important priority of the new program. Here Mme Quérin rehashes an argument of Mario Dumont’s that had already been beaten to death. This argument defies the reality of the priorities of the religious culture component of the course and the knowledge that is to be transmitted to students. The Ministry of Education’s intention is clear and has been restated several times. The course is to be taught in a way that gives priority to the religious traditions that have contributed to shaping Quebec’s history and culture: Catholicism and Protestantism, First Nations traditions and Judaism. More specifically, Christianity, as the majority tradition, has to be addressed at each new stage of the program. By contrast, students will only need to learn some of the essential characteristics of traditions that have arrived more recently. All this constitutes a very solid body of knowledge, which is clearly prescribed in the relevant chapters of the program. The program allows secondary school students to raise questions about beliefs that form part of our heritage, in relation to such existential concerns as the meaning of life and death, the concept of the human being and the existence of the divine. The approach to these beliefs always aims to discover them as objectively as possible as historical facts and to understand them as such. This quick rundown will no doubt be enough to dissipate the image of a program that aims to “uproot our children with regard to our religious heritage.” Is this indoctrination? Discussion of the ERC program may continue, but it will have to be from an angle of attack other than “multiculturalism” or uprooting our children. We believe that national identity is a legitimate concern, deserving of sustained critical attention in regard to government decisions. However, we believe equally that, when applied to the ERC program, this criticism is not well founded. Through this program, young Quebecers will engage in reflection on their common culture. Far from practising a divisive “multiculturalism,” they will have access to the major social and cultural references that have contributed to shaping Quebec’s national identity. All Western countries complain that transmission of the memory of their religious heritage has been completely lost. In this light, a bold Quebec response in the form of a cultural education program that will only be improved with time should be a source of satisfaction. Why, then, are people accusing the course of being indoctrination? What interests are they pursuing? The sovereigntist Parti Québécois has always promoted the civic objectives of the program, recognition of others and pursuit of the common good. It has always supported a secular school system. It would be very unfortunate if it were now to come out as a closed-minded party that edges dangerously close to the positions of the Action Démocratique du Québec. Identifying pluralism, which is a fact, with multiculturalism, which is an approach that the ERC course was specifically designed to counter, is very pernicious, and amounts to burying one’s head in the sand. |
Jean-Marc Larouche is Professor in the department of sociology, Georges Leroux is Professor Emeritus in the department of philosophy and Louis Rousseau is Professor in the department of religious studies, all at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Jean-Pierre Proulx is a retired Professor in the faculty of education at the Université de Montréal. This article originally appeared in Le Devoir on December 16, 2009. It was translated by Bob Chodos. |
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The empty pillar
Joëlle Quérin’s attack on Quebec’s new compulsory Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) course takes aim at a whole series of public enemies without explaining why her fellow Québécois should hate them so much. These enemies, at the very mention of whose names we are expected to shudder with loathing, are as follows: Multiculturalism (= Trudeauesque = Canadian);There is, of course, historical justification for a certain suspicion among Quebecers as regards multiculturalism, but to consider any variation of it a dirty word per se at best closes off many possibilities as to how Quebec should integrate what is after all a multitude of cultures, and at worst translates into punishing the diverse ethnic groups who have been invited to settle in Quebec for crimes they never committed. While Quérin is clear about her ideologicial enemies, she is silent about her ideological friends, taking for granted that her readers all share a common culture that is not to be compromised. One of the problems in the discussion is that a yawning gap has appeared in the discussion about Quebec values and identity now that ethnic nationalism is no longer acceptable, and Quérin’s piece is an example of this. Our everyday language reflects this gap. I am a Québécoise, my family has been here for eight generations, I speak French passably and I am even a Catholic — but everyone knows that I do not belong to the dominant majority. I am still an Anglaise, and my neighbours are still Canadiens français — but these terms are no longer de rigueur. How do we talk about our differences now that the old distinctions are no longer meant to be part of our Quebec identity? Perhaps ethnic identity will soon be irrelevant, because there is so much intermarriage and métissage, but I’m not sure people are able to give these allegiances up so easily. We can talk of sharing language, territory and the valuing of charters of rights and freedoms, but is that enough? If we talk of sharing a history, we’re on tricky ground, because the question arises as to whose history. So there is a lot we can’t talk about, and what we can talk about seems somehow unsatisfying. What has stepped in to fill the yawning gap in the discussion is Catholicism. Quérin’s piece illustrates this new and interesting turn of events. It’s getting more and more okay to be a Catholic in Quebec, especially the kind of Catholic who stands up to “multiculturalists” and “relativists.” Hence she admires the coalition of Catholic parents who mounted a massive publicity and legal campaign against the Minister of Education, and defends them against the charge of being “a group of stubborn retrogrades.” Quérin’s only complaint is that they played identity politics by calling themselves the Coalition for Freedom in Education (see Chartism, above) and by taking to the courts to argue that the new course violates the right to freedom of religion. She much prefers Mario Dumont’s use of religion in his attack on the course, an attack which instead emphasized “the heritage and identity dimensions of Quebec Catholicism.” This is the same dimension of Catholicism that caused an uproar when the Reasonable Accommodation (Bouchard-Taylor) Commission suggested the cross should be taken down from the walls of the National Assembly. It was not taken down. The symbolism of the cross had mutated from representing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to representing a certain form of patrimoine, i.e. Quebec’s French-Canadian Catholic heritage. Is this new allegiance to the cross a return to Lionel Groulx’s original “pillar of survival” for the French-Canadian people, la foi? Perhaps. This pillar will take some rebuilding, however, because very few people go to church any more, and most of Quebec’s monasteries and churches are on a state-sponsored life-support system called the Conseil de la patrimoine religieux. For Quérin, however, this is beside the point. The pillar (i.e. religion) may be empty of content (i.e. faith), but all it really has to do is hold up. In fact, to her, the most authentic and trustworthy Catholics are atheists. Among examples of what can happen in an ERC class, she writes, the most appalling was recorded by a columnist in Le Journal de Montréal, Richard Martineau, who saw children engaged in an exercise of redrawing the Quebec flag to include a symbol that was more inclusive than the cross. The fact that Martineau is an atheist apparently made his observation all the more credible, showing that “you don’t have to be a believer to denounce the relativism of the ERC course.” She writes that “presenting the national flag as an outdated and discriminatory symbol is not so much an insult to Catholicism as an insult to the Quebec people.” The religious heritage of Quebec has thus become the holy of holies, without actually being holy. As a believing Catholic in Quebec, I find that this development gives me pause. Do I really want to identify with this église musée (museum-church)? This church will include Catholic atheists who are genuinely worried about the crumbling of the Catholic Church in Quebec but don’t want to get involved in its internal debates, and would like us believers to become the “docile guardians of a petrified transcendance nationale.”[1] I’m no more enamoured of the main alternative to the église musée, which is a growing neo-ultramontane movement in the Quebec church, an église forteresse (fortress church) that seems to have given up on the Second Vatican Council’s injunction to “read and interpret the signs of the times” and wants to rehabilitate the Quebec church’s glorious past in its entirety — with the faith part intact, of course. Either of these options adds up to what Fernand Dumont called une église en vacance de la société (a church on holiday from society).[2] Perhaps the new espousal of Catholic-heritage-as-identity will have an impact on Quebec’s immigration policy which, as it is independent of federal policy, has enabled it to pick people whom it hopes will integrate best into our society, i.e. French speakers. But unlike most Quebecers, first-generation immigrants appear to feel a much stronger sense of identity with their religion than with their language. In my experience of the Central Africans in Quebec City, for example, those who were Pentecostals have started their own churches and separated themselves very deliberately from modern Quebec culture, while the Catholics have integrated better thanks to going to church, where the few remaining elderly parishioners have welcomed them with open arms. Perhaps choosing immigrants on the basis of their religion might result in better integration — but the thought is scandalous in this secular age, and of course this would go down worst of all with the pur et dur secularists who want a republican state more like France. Perhaps the visa agents in embassies abroad could require that immigrants be atheist Catholics. The debate about how to integrate immigrants, and what values to ask them to adhere to, continues to swirl in Quebec, first around the Reasonable Accommodation Commission and now around the Ethics and Religious Culture course. We hear nationalist-conservative voices like Quérin’s, pluralists, pur et dur secularists (laïcistes), proponents of public religious education, and pluraliste-souverainistes like philosopher Michel Seymour who see Canada’s recognition of Quebec’s own identity as a necessary condition for a more open attitude to the pluralist position among Quebecers.[3] As new bedfellows, many of these different groups are making new concessions and, dare I say it, accommodations, and perhaps working toward some kind of consensus. If this new consensus about Quebec’s identity is based on ideal vision of a common past and a common set of values that never existed, no one will be well served. Like it or not, Quebec’s history has been about compromise and accommodation, whether between Protestants and Catholics, anglophones and francophones, federalists and sovereigntists, or conservatives and socialists. The very fact that these diverse groups are able to publicly debate questions of identity at all means that pluralism is already fact in Quebec, as it has been since its founding. How did we do it before? How did French immigrants integrate into Aboriginal society? How did British immigrants integrate into French/Aboriginal society? How did Jewish immigrants integrate into British/French/Aboriginal society? And how have Muslim (and Sikh, and Hindu) immigrants integrated into Jewish/British/French/Aboriginal society? With varying degrees of accommodation, respect, submission and bullying at various times in history. In spite of our competing visions of society, competing religious truths and competing interests, we have all done a fair bit of accommodating. Much of the urgency of today’s debate seems to derive from a concern over the integration of Muslims, who — like British immigrants to Quebec in the 18th century — will not restrict their religious values to the private sphere. In one form or another, their “acculturation” is already going ahead. About one fifth of Canada’s Muslims, or more than 100,000, are in Quebec, and they will probably outnumber Jews by the time the next census results are out. They are already busy finding ways to fit in, establishing self-contained communities, or something in between. The French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy points out that the more the state excludes religion from its consensus about what values we ask immigrants to adhere to, the more fundamentalist groups such as Pentecostal Christians or Salafi Muslims will define themselves as distinct from public life. The strictly secular state provokes religious extremism, as the very fact of keeping religion at arm’s length forces it into a form that is alien to society, creating a myth of a “pure” religion detached from cultural roots. The voice of religion, excluded from the public sphere, becomes an expression of resistance against the modern democratic state. Ready and waiting to welcome it into the stratosphere, cut off from local or cultural allegiances, are the forces of globalization and the Internet.[4] The content of this very public debate about Quebec’s identity easily slips into ideology and even theology. Is the concept of the modern democratic state of Quebec indissolubly linked to its Catholic past? Is Islam compatible with Quebec values? These are “clash of civilizations” questions after the fact. As President Nicolas Sarkozy said when he was France’s Minister of the Interior, if we conclude that Islam is incompatible with democracy, what are we going to do with the millions of Muslim French citizens? The question in Quebec now is how, not if. The ERC course has addressed the reality of pluralism with an approach that favours respect and dialogue. But it has an agenda, as does every course on the social sciences. The much-vilified État dictateur is after all the body that sets the curriculum. In the meantime the question needs to be pursued on a very practical level, too, or else the course will certainly fail to meet its objectives. How can teachers with three hours of training[5] teach this complex and nuanced course? The Ministry of Education should have established an institute to train competent ERC teachers long before it made the course obligatory. Unfortunately most of the children I know who take it are either bored, or confused, or both. Whether our national identity as Quebecers remains a purely civic one or not, the identity questions need to be discussed in a spirit of civility, a point made eloquently by Georges Leroux and his colleagues in Manifeste pour un Québec pluraliste, their response to Quérin’s conservative nationalism. Content and style are intimately linked, to say the least, and when the discussion descends into polemic and vitriol, it only reinforces the argument that today’s children need to learn how to dialogue respectfully from a plurality of perspectives. Having said all that, I do not believe that these competing perspectives must exclude religious truths. There is a growing belief that if religious people would only stop speaking about truth and acknowledge that they are simply expressing opinions and conditional loyalties, we would be spared the risk of social conflict and even violence. Social harmony is a worthy goal, but in spite of Quérin’s assumptions about a whole raft of shared values, social harmony has no universal self-evident definition, so it is bound to be defined by those who happen to hold power at any given time. That implies that power is more important than truth. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, argued in discussing interfaith dialogue, “to be concerned about truth is at least to recognise that there are things about humanity and the world that can't be destroyed by oppression and injustice, things that no power can dismantle. If we give up talking about truth the cost is very high: it means admitting that power has the last word.” |
Louisa Blair is a Quebec City writer and translator and author of The Anglos: The Hidden Face of Quebec City (2 vols., 2005). Notes
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