{"id":16,"date":"2021-05-05T19:22:51","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T19:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/mrp\/catholicisminquebec\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2021-05-15T01:51:31","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T01:51:31","slug":"chapter-4","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/mrp\/catholicisminquebec\/chapter-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Quebec’s weakening Catholic adherence<\/span><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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“In Canada we notice that there is a decline in practice, a decline in recruiting.”<\/span><\/p>\u2014 Ignace Ndongala<\/span><\/strong>
Adjunct professor at the Institute of Religious Studies at the University of Montreal<\/span><\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Slowly but surely, Christian denominations are fading out in Canada. People are distancing themselves from church, they go to mass less or not at all, “until at one point [they] decide not to baptise their kids, they don’t get married religiously,” said Martin Meunier, professor of sociology of religion at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Quebec, only about 10 per cent of couples who are living together long term choose to be married in a church, said Jean-Paul Durocher, archbishop of the Gatineau diocese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meunier explained that this gradual abandonment of religious practice is slowly leading to a generation of Canadians without  religion.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the 1990s, \u201ceach parish had a presbytery, had people that worked in the presbytery, each church was autonomous, there were a lot of people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a sharp contrast from what is going on today. “There’s one council for five parishes, there\u2019s one or two people working for five [parishes],\u201d Meunier said. “We\u2019re no longer rolling on gold.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t limited parishes \u2013 it\u2019s also changing the fabric of Canadian society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe’re looking at some of our other social institutions disengaging from more explicitly religious and specifically Christian frameworks for things like medical assistance and dying, certainly abortion, access to reproductive technologies and so on,\u201d said Lori Beaman, professor and Canada Research Chair of Religious Diversity and Social Change at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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