CCHA, Report, 11 (1943-44), 117-128
A Critical Period in St. Patrick’s Parish,
Montreal – 1866-74
BY
THE REV. GERALD BERRY, S.T.L, M.Sc.
The 25th of
November, 1866, the Catholic congregation in St. Patrick’s Church, Montreal,
heard a pastoral letter read to them from the pulpit by the Reverend Patrick
Dowd. With that letter Bishop Ignace Bourget also decreed as follows:
“We erect
canonically the territory hereinafter designated, as a separate parish under
the title of St. Patrick for spiritual matters alone. This parish will be
limited by the middle of Sherbrooke Street, Bleary, Craig, St. Antoine and
Mountain Streets, and will continue to remain a part of the civil parish of Notre
Dame, and we decree that the Church of St. Patrick’s already erected on the
territory above mentioned, will be the parish Church of the said canonical
parish of St. Patrick’s which Church will remain in civil matters as a
succursale of Notre Dame.” Thus was touched off for the approximately 30,000
English Catholics residing within the limits of Montreal a period of
disturbances and controversy and some bitterness. The Church which had been
erected by the Fabrique of Notre Dame, and to which they had contributed over
$40,000 within a few years previous to 1866, that Church was to become a parish
Church and serve for the needs of all people residing within the very
restricted territory mentioned above.
Before we examine the events that followed
this first decree of November 1866, we should review the back-ground of the
whole problem. The census figures of 1871 show that in the territory known as
Montreal proper, and which was all a part of Notre Dame parish, there were
85,480 Catholics, and of these 28,440 were English-speaking. The total
population of this district was 118,065. In what was described as the suburbs
and comprising St. Henry, Mile End, Notre Dame de Grace and Hochelaga, there
was an additional population of 23,341, of whom 19,778 were Catholic.1
To our
modern minds it seems incredible that nearly 30,000 people were served by St.
Patrick’s Church. There was also one Mass at which an English sermon was
preached at the Jesu Church on Bleury St. and St. Ann’s Church, but one has to
advert to the fact that the Seminary and the gentlemen of St. Sulpice had
served the population of Montreal since 1657, had owned the whole Island and
been its seigneurs for most of the French regime and also one must remember
that they had devised this system of the succursale or branch Church in which
all the functions of an ordinary parish Church were carried out, including the
keeping of Registers. Bishop Bourget, on becoming Bishop of Montreal in 1840,
was more than aware that a large part of the population of his diocese was
being cared for on this basis. Twenty-five years later, on the request of the
Bishop, the Congregation de Propaganda Fide examined the situation and at the
end of 1865 the Apostolic Decree approved by Pope Pius IX was sent to Montreal
authorizing the Bishop to proceed to the divisions of the parish of Notre Dame
when the spiritual necessities of the faithful would require it.
Certain conditions were to be fulfilled, as
stated in Canon Law. The old parish was to retain a certain portion of its
population and was given the dignity of “Mother” Church and in setting up the
new parishes the Bishop was to utilize the succursale Churches already attached
to Notre Dame. There had been considerable controversy between the gentlemen of
St. Sulpice and the Bishop before the congregation in Rome, and accompanying
the decree was a letter from the Prefect of the congregation, Cardinal Barnabo,
exhorting both sides “to put aside any feelings of discord and diffidence, if
such should now remain,” and that they should seek to proceed with harmonious
minds to the execution of the decree “keeping before their minds exclusively
the good of religion and abstaining specifically from any appearance of
controversy in regard to the temporal possessions of the seminary or the
parish.”2
This
decision of Rome had been awaited for some time by the Bishop and accordingly
after some correspondence with the Superior of the Sulpicians he proceeded to
carry out the Decree. He began by the succursale Church of St. Jacques on St.
Denis Street and in September issued his Decree making that a parish Church.
The Sulpicians protested and so did the parishioners but their protests were
over-ruled. In December, St. Patrick’s turn came in the Decree which we have
cited at the beginning of this paper. It should be noted that the Seminary of
St. Sulpice and its parish Fabrique of Notre Dame being the only civilly
incorporated bodies were responsible for the debt and at the time the Bishop
began proceedings, this debt amounted to $360,000.00. They no doubt had the
title of the seigneuries and the properties were vested in them and these had
been continued in the English regime and sanctioned by a law in 1840, but there
were still some doubts and the example of the Jesuits and the Recollets, whose
possessions had been, seized by the English Government after 1763,
was before their minds.
Perhaps one
should not limit one’s self to the objective factors and skip over the other
important element of the personalities of those involved in this controversy.
On the one hand you have Bishop Bourget, a man of acknowledged piety but also
of tremendous determination to make his diocese walk along the path laid out by
the Universal Canon Law of the Church. That he was stern and unbending would
seem to be a fair enough statement. The other main party to the controversy was
the superior of St. Sulpice, Rev. Jos. Baile. Of him it has been said “that
certainly on occasions he was not amiable. Perhaps, indeed, he could have added
to the expression of his benevolence more readiness and more cordiality. To him
it is also granted that he had the energy and tenacity of an unbending will
whenever he conceived that a matter of conscience was involved. Everybody
recognized that his intentions were upright, his zeal was pure, and there was a
complete forgetfulness of himself in all these dealings.”3 He
felt as superior of the seminary that he had its interests to defend, and
defend them he did.
A third
personality cannot be omitted from any mention of St. Patrick’s. Of course,
Father Dowd at this time had been nearly 20 years in Montreal. His congregation
was solidly behind any lead that he offered them. He was, in addition a
Sulpician, and as such he was very much of the mind of his superior, and when
the events of this controversy took place he fought for the interests of his
congregation and also for the interests of St. Sulpice. He had a trenchant pen
and his observations were delivered with a vigor and a clearness that left no
doubt in the minds of his hearers as to what he meant and what he wanted.
Perhaps we
had better return to this end of the year 1866. Actually before the Decree had
been issued in late November there had been a meeting required by Canon Law at
which the priests and the congregation had been invited to give their views on
the advantages or otherwise of the proposed new parish. Both Father Dowd, in
his own and in the name of his seven assistants, and the laity presented
their views. The views of the laity were signed by 6,000 of its adult members.
They were opposed to the new project because they feared they might lose the
Church erected for their own use, because the majority of the original
contributors would be excluded by the narrow limits now proposed. They were
opposed because the parish had not been asked for by any one residing within
the limits assigned or elsewhere; that it would be a direct departure from the
original understanding under which the Church was erected. It would bring
injury and suffering to the institutions of charity that had grown up about the
Church. Such protests, on the part of the laity, were reinforced by a strongly
worded brief presented by Father Dowd in which he examines most carefully the
merits of the proposal. He accurately foresaw what could take place and his
protest was printed and apparently carried to Rome, because in all this
controversy, it is his observations and his claim that the thousands of Irish
Catholics resident within the civil limits of Notre Dame should be allowed to
remain as one congregation in a national parish instead of being divided into
three parishes where they would be exposed to the system of mixed languages in
a double language church. That claim is the only point on which Rome made any
major exception or deviation from the original Decree, as we shall see later.
Father Dowd
examined the system of the mixed populations elsewhere. He cites the example of
Toledo. He comes closer to home and points out the experience of the Archbishop
of Quebec who had lately separated his English-speaking Catholics and put them
all under one jurisdiction of St. Patrick’s Church in that city. He cites
Ottawa where you have a mixed system in the Cathedral and yet in several places
in the city you have separate parishes, a separate system being set up. The
disadvantages of such a two-language parish are brought out by the example of
the Jesuits close to home. He cites the position of English-speaking Catholics
in that Church and, disclaiming any blame on the Jesuit fathers, he merely
points out the facts of the situation and says they are inevitable where you
have two congregations. The English people being the minority must naturally
take second place in the pre-occupations of the fathers and all that can be
offered them at present is a short instruction at a low mass on Sunday morning
and a sermon in the evening at an hour so late that it is neither safe nor
suitable for ladies, who are unaccompanied, to go through the streets to their
homes afterwards. “I say this expressly not to blame or to give pain, all that
is far from my intention, but I say it first because the dangers to which I
make reference have already presented themselves and under the most revolting
form. I say it secondly because it shows the inconvenience of the mixed system
under the most favourable circumstances.”
He then goes
on to argue that societies which meet at St. Patrick’s on Sunday nights will
have to share the limited premises they already have, with other societies
proper to the French people who would be coming into the parish under the new
limits proposed. He says further that under these conditions religion has to
battle to save its life but it can never flourish because it lacks suitable
husbanding. There can be no peace or union of hearts and minds. Here is Father
Dowd declaring that within the limited territory offered to him more than half
of its space is occupied almost exclusively by protestants. “In the rest of it
there are also many protestants, so that I think I am not far from the truth in
affirming that the whole Catholic population of the proposed parish, men, women
and children, including those who speak English and those who speak French all
gathered together would not fill St. Patrick’s Church as it is filled now on
Sunday morning at the 8 o’clock Mass alone.” In discussing what in effect is
going to take place Father Dowd lists his reasons in short vigorous sentences.
“I have another
objection to make against the erection of the proposed parish and that is that
the undivided immense majority of Catholics of the English language who form
the actual congregation of St. Patrick’s Church have a grave injustice done
them. They have a strict right to use St. Patrick’s Church:
"First because the
Fabrique which owns the Church built it for their use.
Second because after
declaring such intention and the purpose of this Church, the Fabrique of Notre
Dame asked for subscriptions from St. Patrick’s congregation for help in
building it and did receive such subscriptions.
Third because
the seminary with the same intention has furnished for its construction the sum
of $40,000, and has not indicated its intention of changing the destiny of this
Church.
Fourth
because the congregation of St. Patrick’s in these later years has spent more
than $30,000. to finish and decorate the Church which sum must be added to the
subscriptions paid for its erection.
Fifth because
with the blessing of the Bishop, this Church was blessed and dedicated to
worship for the Catholics of the English language of this city.
Sixth because
with the consent of his Lordship, that of the Fabrique and that of the Seminary
and of all those who are concerned, the said Catholics have enjoyed peaceful
possession of St. Patrick’s Church without interruption from the day of its
opening until the present day – a period of 20 years.4
So far we have touched upon the events leading up to
November twenty-fifth when the congregation heard the pastoral letter of four
days previous read at the mass in St. Patrick’s. It is from the decree accompanying
this letter that we chose our opening quotation. Let us consider these two
documents for a moment. The storm of protest had already assumed some fair
proportions by this time and Bishop Bourget set himself the task of trying to
allay the feelings of the congregation. In the decree itself he inserted a
clause (No. 8) whereby sacred worship and the sermons would be continued as
before, with the instructions to be given in the English language. It was
further provided that the priests engaged in the ministry of the new parish
would be authorized to administer the sacrements to all the faithful of the
English language wherever they resided within the limits of the former Parish of
Notre Dame. To this extent, the Bishop was making the new Parish a double-duty
one, that is, a territorial one and also a national parish for those residing
outside of the new limits but within the old. Undoubtedly in Canon Law he was
justified in his action, but it is curious to see his right to so derogate from
the law challenged and questioned.
We venture the opinion that Bishop Bourget
might have succeeded in his action, if he was dealing with St. Patrick’s alone
and not with the whole problem of suitably dividing Notre Dame at the same
time; but, in order to win the people over to his plan, he added to the
Pastoral Decree a Pastoral Letter of the same date. Herein he proceeded to
recall his affection for the congregation and to enumerate the instances in
which he had some part where the Irish emigrants of 1847 and subsequent years
had received the help of their French-speaking brethren. Notice the key word
“unfortunate” in the paragraph I now quote from this Pastoral:
“Count if you are able, all the works undertaken for
the Irish people of which we have been the life and the promoter. When the
ravages of the typhus left the children of your unfortunate countrymen by
hundreds, orphans on our shores, did we not make an appeal to all our Diocese,
to obtain for them other fathers and mothers, who as you know, reared them and
cherished them as their own ?”
“But this was not enough. What then did charity oblige
us to do more for these children, the sight of whose sufferings affected our
paternal heart! Did we not interest in their behalf the Seminaries, Colleges,
Convents and charitable institutions? Was it not under our care that St. Jerome
Emilian’s Hospital was opened, which gave these poor children shelter until
they could be properly provided for elsewhere? Is it not also to our pastoral
solicitude that you owe the establishment of St. Patrick’s Hospital, when the
Priests by whom you were attended, complained of your sufferings at the
Protestant General Hospital of this city and of the difficulty of administering
to you there the consolations of religion? When the need of a journal to defend
your interests was keenly felt, was it not to us that your principal fellow
countryman, with the Rev. Mr. Connolly, then chaplain of St. Patrick’s at their
head, addressed themselves for the object, and that journal was founded which
has since so nobly fulfilled its task.”
This
Pastoral Letter drew from a Committee of English-speaking Catholics who had
been appointed at a large meeting held in the grounds of the Orphanage on
December 2nd such a reply as would be considered unique in such controversy.
Disclaiming their right to touch upon the matters of law, they limit themselves
to certain facts alleged in the Bishop’s letter. Only a deeply hurt national
pride could have elicited this paragraph:5
“Your Lordship, referring to the sad events of 1847,
is pleased to call us an “unfortunate” people; we admit it, we were “unfortunate”
– in 1847 through the inscrutable ways of God, who, however, often chastises in
love. In 1866 we are still “unfortunate”, – for your Lordship will not allow us
to forget our sad destinies. The memory of all past afflictions must be kept
fresh; and all the charities of which we have been the sad recipients, must be
turned into an argument to force us to surrender, in silence, all the
advantages of our present altered condition, and which we owe to our own
efforts, under the blessing of God, and the generous sympathy of our immediate
Pastors. Certainly we are a peculiar “unfortunate” people.
“Thousands of our fellow countrymen left their native land in 1847 in order to seek a home in Canada. They did not come here to live on charity. They were for the most part in the prime of life. Their intention was to repay the hospitality promised them in this new country by the riches of their labor, of their enterprise and of their virtue. God willed it otherwise. . . Your Lordship was ,our benefactor; we always knew it and never failed to acknowledge our obligations. And we now cheerfully again declare our conviction that all that a zealous and charitable Bishop could do, was done by your Lordship on that occasion. Our gratitude has not been confined to mere passing words.”
There
follows a reference to the response received by the Bishop himself when he
conducted a personal canvas to gather donations for the erection of his
projected Cathedral and the annual collections approved by the Bishop for the
religious congregations of the city.
Clearly the
efforts of the good Bishop had gone for nought and had even roused the spirits
of the people to a higher pitch. In the meantime this Committee had been
charged to bring the matter to appeal and a letter was drawn up and addressed
to the Archbishop of Quebec; this latter wisely sensed that he could not
intervene at this point and forwarded the communication to Rome and the
Congregation of the Propaganda. Bishop Bourget refused to receive the letter
addressed to him containing the above. cited paragraph and stated in a letter
through his secretary, Canon J. A. Paré, that he would conduct himself in these
circumstances along the same lines as certain Bishops of the United States had
adopted a few years previously when some Catholics engaged in censuring the
Pastoral Letters and Mandates of such Bishops. “Furthermore,” the letter
continues, “I am instructed to inform you that his Lordship does not recognize
that your Committee has any reason for its existence and denies to it any right
to judge his actions.”
Nothing daunted, Bishop Bourget addressed a
second Pastoral Letter on Christmas Day to what must have seemed to him his
rebellious children and the tone of this letter indicated the piety of the man.
He answers rather calmly and point by point the resolutions adopted at the
Congregation’s meeting and insists that he is carrying out the decree of the
Holy See allowing him to subdivide Notre Dame Parish. One rather telling
paragraph comes in answer to the allegation that the Bishop had not
sufficiently weighed the objections that had been made to his project:
“However it is a fact that nobody can deny that, by order of the Sovereign Pontiff, there exists between the Bishop and the Seminary (of St. Sulpice) an arrangement by virtue of which and in the terms of one of its articles, the Parish of Notre Dame may be divided at the discretion of the Bishop and that this arrangement has received the Pontifical Sanction. Now it is easy to see by the terms of the above-mentioned protests that these have been directed rather more against the proposed division than against the mode of the division, and it must also be remarked that the objections presented at Rome against the publication of the Apostolic Decree which bears as its title this act of arrangement have been reproduced here in the said protests in order to impede the execution of the decree. These objections, after being weighed carefully during a whole year have been found insufficient by the highest Ecclesiastical tribunal of the world. How then can one pretend that they should have more weight before the tribunal of the Bishop?”6
By the
time this Pastoral was written, the Bishop was faced with two appeals to Rome:
that of the congregation mentioned above and a new one taken by the Superior of
the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Father Jos. Baile. In a private letter addressed
to the Superior on receiving notification of the appeal, Bishop Bourget takes
the stand that he kept to throughout the difficulties:
“If,” he
says, “and this cannot be doubted, I have conformed to the letter of the said
Apostolic Decree (that of Dec. 22, 1865) in erecting canonically St. Jacques’
and St. Patrick’s, you cannot appeal to Rome against these divisions without
appealing against the Decree itself, that is to say, without appealing from the
Pope badly informed to the Pope better informed. . . I stand therefore by the
Apostolic Decree of Dec. 22, 1865; because I consider it as a definite judgment
and without appeal – ‘Roma locuta est causa finita est’.”7
From this
point onward, the matter of dealing with the Roman Congregation was handled by
the Seminary and very little appears in the records of the attitude or the
actions of the laity of St. Patrick’s congregation, with the exception of the
protest carried to Rome itself at their own expense by the Hon. Thomas D’Arcy
McGee and the Hou. Thomas Ryan, both of whom were publicly thanked by Father
Dowd (Mr. McGee posthumously) at the time of his golden jubilee in the holy
Priesthood, May 19th, 1887.8
It was not
until the year 1873, and, appropriately enough, on the 17th of March, that the
intervention of Rome fixed the new limits of St. Patrick’s and made them to coincide
with the old limits of Notre Dame. Before citing such Decree however, we should
state what was happening in the meantime in the new canonical Parish.
The Sulpician Fathers and specifically the
Fabrique of Notre Dame were legally responsible for the debts they had
contracted for the erection of these various succursale churches now being set
up into proper canonical parishes by the Bishop. They had the only civil
incorporation. Being unable to forsee that the new parishes would be able to
assume the debt immediately, the Bishop left them as succursales of Notre Dame
Parish in the civil sphere. (For the benefit of those readers who know only the
American system of corporation sole wherein all the Church properties in a
diocese are vested in the Bishop and his is the only civil corporation, it
should be stated here that in Quebec law, each Parish is a separate corporation
and the Bishop exercises certain controls over each of them.) As has been
already stated, these debts formed the large amount of $360,000. The ground of
battle at home shifted partly to the civil law and as Rome had forbidden law
suits on these temporal matters, it was a battle of legal briefs that went on.
The Sulpicians had as their lawyers, Sir Geo. Etienne Cartier and his associates
and also Judge Beaudry, the author of a Code des Curés, which supported the
views favorable to the Seminary. The Bishop used the services of Messrs. Jetté
and Cherrier and their associates. There is in the Archives of the Archdiocese
of Montreal one consultation by Mr. A. C. Papineau dated August 27th, 1867,
which was printed in pamphlet form and which states that “the dowry or rather
the dowries of the Seminary are ecclesiastical and therefore that they have
been given to the present owners for the spread of the lights of the Gospel,
the exercise of the priestly ministry in favor of the Indians and the French on
the island of Montreal, and more specially at the time of the law of 1840 for
the service (religious) of the Parish of Montreal as it then existed.” It seems
safe to presume that this printed opinion was sent to Rome for the views quoted
above were followed later in the decrees of Rome to order the Sulpicians to
divest themselves of the ownership of various Church properties or rather to
allow to the Bishop the use of such for the purposes of public worship. A
proviso was added that if there should at any time arise a circumstance wherein
the buildings were no longer used for these purposes they are to revert to the
Seminary. With regard to St. Patrick’s, the same Decree provides that the
Parish will at a suitable time assume the debt incurred for the construction of
the Church. The time was just previous to Fr. Dowd’s Jubilee, for he refers to
it in his address at that time, as amounting to $124,000. This provision was
made because St. Patrick’s had been erected on a very large scale and was at
the time the second largest Church in the City, second only to Notre Dame
itself.9
One other
item was most important in law and that was the civil registers. The
Sulpicians’ lawyers thought it would be illegal to have a canonical Parish
which would at the same time be civilly a succursale of Notre Dame. Perhaps we
should more correctly say that the Bishop having made these canonical parishes,
it was the opinion of these lawyers that civil status should be granted them
without delay. Failing this, no subdivision at all should take place. In any
case the opinion followed by the Seminary was that these succursales like St.
Patrick’s had been keeping registers of marriages, baptisms and funerals
insofar as the Priest in charge was acting as a delegate of the Pastor of Notre
Dame. Sir Geo. E. Cartier gave it as his opinion that “The Curé of Notre Dame
may be constrained by a judgment to perform baptisms, marriages and burials
throughout the length and breadth of his parish and so any parishioner of the
parish of Notre Dame of Montreal,
residing in the
territory included in the canonical parish, has grounds for an action against
the curé of the parish of Notre Dame of Montreal, if this latter refuses his
ministrations.”10
Clear
indication that the Seminary was using this legal opinion to further its
objections to the division of Notre Dame is supplied in the correspondence
between Fr. Dowd and Bishop Bourget in December, 1866. In October of that year
Sir Geo. Etienne Cartier in a legal consultation for
the Fabrique of
Notre Dame stated: “Church wardens are obliged to superintend (“veiller à la
tenue”) the keeping of the registers of civil status and
to see that the entries of baptisms, marriages and
burials that are made therein conform to the dispositions of the law.”11
On December
12th Fr. Dowd writes to the Bishop that his wardens challenge the legality of
his entries in the registers and the Bishop replies that it is for “"curés
and not the Church wardens to perform marriages, etc., and to answer for the
authenticity of the acts they draw up in the registers.”12
Nine days
later Fr. Dowd returns to tell the Bishop by letter that he has information
purporting to be that the civil authorities will refuse him new registers for
the year 1867 when he applies for these. Bishop Bourget’s answer on Dec. 22nd
is that “the decree which makes of St. Patrick’s a parish-succursale of Notre
Dame does not deprive it (St. Patrick’s) of any of the civil rights to keep
registers. This is the thought of men of the law who have a well-deserved
reputation in our Bar.”13
Here the
battle of legal consultations is out in the open. As a matter of fact, the new
registers for 1867 were refused and from December, 1866, until November, 1872,
no registers were kept at St. Patrick's and all entries are to be found in the
registers of Notre Dame.
The
restoration of registers to St. Patrick's in 1872 came as the result of a
second intervention of Rome, for a decree of July 30th ordered the Sulpicians
to recognize the parishes erected by the Bishop since December, 1865, as proper
“succursales” with defined territorial limits and proper Rectors. With, a
slight treatment of this and the two subsequent decrees we bring this paper to
its end. It is perhaps not unimportant, however, to point out that all of the
senior Sulpicians, except Father Dowd, had received their theological training
in France, during the first half of the 19th Century, when Gallicanism was
still very much alive. Now one of the tenets of Gallicanism was “that the papal
primacy was limited by the canons and customs of particular churches, which the
Pope was bound to take into account when he exercised his authority.” There was
also a parliamentary form of Gallicanism “which tended to augment the rights of
the State more and more, to the prejudice of those of the Church, on the
grounds of what they called ‘The Liberties of the Gallican Church.’” Now
Gallicanism, it is true, was on the wane in the XIX Century, but the
condemnation of Proposition 24 of the Syllabus by Pius IX and various
encyclical letters of Leo XIII show that it still had left traces in the
Church. It was the Vatican Council which struck the death blow to this doctrine
as a free opinion from that date it could only survive as a heresy.14
The Vatican
Council took place in 1870. The decree to which we have alluded as the second
intervention of Rome came in 1872 and certainly the Roman congregation was very
clear in its direction as to the properties owned by the Fabrique of Notre
Dame, and clearly marked out a method of administering such property and other
assets as the succursale Churches might acquire. It must have been somewhat of
a shock to the Seminary when it was declared in article 6 of this decree that
the fathers of the Company of St. Sulpice are “to be strenuously exorted in the
name of the Holy See that when they are unable to assume the care of souls in
the new parishes, they are to hand over the property of such Churches, with all
their furnishings and the presbyteries, for the use of such parishes. If in the
future there are to be more succursales established, and if an agreement of
suitable compensation for the Churches and presbyteries cannot be made,
recourse is to be had to the Apostolic See in each case.” Even supposing that
there were no slightest trace of Gallican feeling among the fathers of the
seminary, it may very well have been a bitter thing for them to accept such an
order. This first intervention, after the permissive decree of December, 1865,
dealt expressly with the English-speaking Catholics of St. Patrick’s and St.
Ann’s as then established by the Bishop.
It was decreed in the 3rd article that the
Church of St. Patrick’s and that of St. Ann’s were to be used exclusively for
the parochial services to the “Angli” or the “Hibernienses” and similarly that
the Canadians or the faithful of the French language included within the limits
of these two parishes were to belong to the other succursales or parishes
exclusively. This was a first denial of the arrangements made by Bishop
Bourget, and it came as a result of a form of compromise arrived at by
Archbishop, later Cardinal Taschereau of Quebec, who had been appointed by the
Holy See in April, 1871 to come to Montreal and attempt to find some form of
settlement between the two parties. One sees in the decree that there is in
article 8 an order to the Archbishop of Quebec to transmit to the Bishop of
Montreal, and to the Superior of the Seminary, a copy of this decree and also
the order to watch over its execution. Two other decrees were to follow. Both
of them were transmitted through the same channel to Montreal and in each case
a letter accompanied the decree and some times explained it. The first of these
two was issued on a most appropriate date, the 17th of March, 1873, and it is
there provided that each and every parish of which there was question in
dividing Notre Dame is to be considered as a true and proper parish and will
cease to be described by the name of “succursale.” The Bishop is ordered to
issue new decrees and set the parishes up along the lines prescribed by the
present Roman decision.
Now that seems one step forward, but in the
letter that accompanied this decree, a letter dated March 29th, 1873, Cardinal
Bernabo makes it clear to the Archbishop of Quebec that in so far as the
parishes of Notre Dame and St. Patrick’s are concerned, the Bishop must, in the
new decree, clearly explain that they cover one and the same territory in such
a way that the French-speaking or Canadian Catholics, living in the territory
of these two parishes, are subject to the parish priest of the “Mother” Church
Notre Dame. The “Angli” or “Hibernenses” living in this same territory are
subject to the pastor of St. Patrick’s. Exactly the same regime was applied to
the St. Joseph and St. Ann parishes so that another step forward is contained
in this decree in that the limits of St. Patrick’s as newly set up by the
Bishop in 1865, are now extended to include the whole territory of Notre Dame
and not just the part assigned in 1866, which caused so much discussion.
Perhaps it should be pointed out here that his dealings with the English.
speaking Catholics and the system that was proposed – the mixed system in many
congregations – are the only major point on which Rome disagreed with the
proposals of Bishop Bourget. Sufficient has been said to show that the
gentlemen of St. Sulpice were listened to with respect but nevertheless were
refused repeatedly the request that they made to keep Montreal in statu quo.
The final decree came as a result of
further difficulties between the parties. Its date is July 4th, 1874. The terms
of the decree would indicate that the civil law was being called upon as a
further stumbling block in the matter of these parishes. This last decree takes
seven paragraphs and all even paragraphs deal with the establishment of a
Fabrique in the various parishes erected canonically – which would be
considered a final severing of their ties with Notre Dame – and with other temporal
matters of that kind. The only item of considerable interest to us comes in
paragraph 3, where it is stated that the Fabrique of St. Patrick’s if and when
such is erected, will assume the debt that was contracted for the erection of
the said St. Patrick’s Church, or such part of it as still remains. With this
decree the threat to the very life of St. Patrick’s parish is finally removed
and the system of separate Churches for the English-speaking people solidly
established by the choice of the Roman congregation with the approval of Pope
Pius IX. Since those days growth in French Catholic Montreal has been nothing
short of phenomenal.
In the territory that counted in 1871 a
total of 105,000 Catholics there are now over 700,000. The 30,000 English-speaking
Catholics of that day have now become approximately 70,000 but the 75,000
French Catholics of 1871 are now considerably more than 500,000 Catholics.
Obviously the division of these Catholics had to come and it might be
considered providential that there was to be found in Bishop Bourget, and the
priests of the seminary, men of vigorous views who yet proved their obedience
to the Apostolic See in no uncertain way. It was a doughty battle and it left
some scars on the participants, but all are agreed today that strenuous and
bitter and prolonged as it was, there was little other way of settling so
involved, so large and so far-reaching a dispute. ”Roma locuta est”:
"causa finite est”; peace has settled down these many years for all
those who live in the parish of Montreal. It is a well earned peace.
1S. Pagnuelo, Liberté Religieuse En
Canada, page 375.
2Letter of
December 22, 1865 in Archives of Seminary of St. Sulpice.
3Fr. Yelle, S.S., in Annuaire du Grand Seminaire
1931-32, p. 100.
4Protest of Father
Dowd-Authentic translation into French (The original in English not available):
Archives of Seminary of St. Sulpice 1866.
5Pp.
12 et seq. of the Pamphlet called The Case of St. Patrick's Congregation,
printed by John Lovell 1866.
6Letters
of Bishop Bourget – 1866 (Manuscript copy of the Letter in the Archives of
Seminary of St. Sulpice for 1866.)
7Letters of Bishop Bourget, Dec. 5th, 1866 – Archives
of Archd. of Montreal.
8P. 63 in the Book of the Golden Jubilees of Rev.
Fathers Dowd and Toupin.
9Decree of S.C. de Propaganda, July 4, 1874 – Archives
of the Seminary of St. Sulpice.
10Quoted from Opinions
of Sir E. Cartier in Archives of Seminaire of St. Sulpice. Liberté Religieuse, by S. Pagnuelo p. 347.
11S. Pagnuelo, op. cit., p. 369.
12Letters of Bishop
Bourget, Dec. 13, 1866: Archives of Archbishopric of Montreal.
13Letters of Bishop Bourget – Dec. 22, 1866.
14Cath. Ency. “Gallicanism,” Vol. VI, pp. 354 & 355.