CCHA Historical Studies, 52(1985), 51-66
Bishop
Charbonnel: The Beggar Bishop and the Origins of Catholic Social Action
Murray W. NICOLSON
Newmarket, Ont.
Canadian historians
for the most part have ignored or been unsympathetic to the career of Bishop
Armand de Charbonnel. When he is given recognition he is portrayed as a
stubborn and arrogant man because of his stand against Egerton Ryerson in the
battle for separate schools in Upper Canada. However, if one examines his
tenure more closely, Bishop Charbonnel could be looked upon as the father of
the Archdiocese of Toronto, the separate school system and Catholic social
action.1 Through his efforts
the needs of the poor, starving, unhealthy, unskilled immigrants who arrived in
Toronto after the Irish Famine of 1846-47 were met and immediate assistance to
survive and adjust in their new urban milieu was given.
As the second Bishop of the Diocese of
Toronto, Charbonnel adopted the traditional structure of the universal Church.
Personnel, money and ideas were available through its existing, external
communication network, but their application depended upon the development of
an internal diocesan structure which could absorb those external elements to
assist the laity. The models Charbonnel chose to form his internal
communication linkage were French. The religious orders he selected had been
affected by the devotional, moral and social renewal of Alphonsus de Liguori
and included nuns who combined cloistered life with service to the poor.
Through them, Charbonnel planned to reach out to the sick and the poor, to
establish schools and seminaries, and to serve the spiritual needs of the
laity.2
Armand François-Marie, Comte de Charbonnel,
was born of privileged parents at Monistrol sur-Loire in southern France on 1
December, 1802. He was the second son of John Baptist Comte de Charbonnel,
Baron of Soussor, Lord of Bets, Flachots and Comblaire. His mother, Mary
Claudine di Pradier, was the daughter of the marquis D’Agrain, first President
of the Parliament of Dijon during the French revolutionary war.3 The young
Charbonnel acquired the rudiments of knowledge in the primary school and at a
college at Montbrison. At age ten he was sent to the newly founded College of
Annonay where he was educated by a group of secular priests who, a few years
prior, had formed an association for educational work. The priests, known as
the Basilians from the parish of that same name, were the founders of the
Congregation of St. Basil. Members of that order later developed St. Michael’s
College in Toronto on the lines of Annonay with emphasis on the teaching of
classics, philosophy, science, discipline and obedience, with the presentation
of awards for good conduct and medals for excellence,4 standards which
under Bishop Charbonnel became an element in the separate schools of Ontario.
Despite his father's wish that he enter the
military, Charbonnel at age seventeen was admitted to the Sulpician Seminary at
Issy and was ordained to the priesthood on 19 December, 1825. For fifteen years
Charbonnel taught dogma and Holy Scripture in the Sulpician seminaries of
Versailles, Lyons, Bordeaux and Marseilles. During that time he was approached
frequently for promotion – Vicar-General or coadjutor by the Bishops of Puiy,
Autun, Limoges and Bordeaux, as well as Superior of the Seminary of Grenoble –-
all of which he declined. During the riots at Lyons in 1834, Charbonnel was
instrumental in saving the city from pillage and, in recognition, was offered
the Cross of the Legion of Honour by King Louis Philippe, which he refused. To
escape promotion, Charbonnel offered himself as a missionary to Canada.5
It is uncertain whether Charbonnel went first
to Montreal and then to Baltimore in the United States, returning to Montreal,
or whether he went directly to Baltimore and then to Montreal. Nonetheless, he
learned English in Baltimore and worked among the Irish in Montreal from 1840
to 1847. While Charbonnel was in Montreal, Archbishop Blanc of New Orleans
sought him as coadjutor and Governor-General Sydenham wanted Charbonnel to
accept a mitre in one of Great Britain’s colonies.6 But Charbonnel
replied to Sydenham: “If I wished to be a bishop, I would not have left
France.”7 Instead,
Charbonnel continued to work among the Irish and, like Bishop Michael Power in
Toronto, fell ill with typhus contracted from the famine immigrants.8
Recalled by his superiors, Father
Charbonnel returned to France to convalesce. Even then he found it difficult to
evade the offers of honours, such as the seat in the National Assembly left
vacant by the death of Charbonnel’s brother, Felix Louis. When Charbonnel was
fully recovered, he accepted the position of professor of Theology in the
Seminary of Aix in Provence where his humility, charity, humour, courtesy,
embodiment of poverty and religious fervour made him popular with the students.
Meanwhile, the See of Toronto had been left vacant for three years by the
death of Michael Power. It had been offered to Father John Larkin, a Sulpician
of Montreal, who had declined the succession. Subsequently the Canadian
hierarchy, recognizing the attributes of Charbonnel, asked the Propaganda in
Rome to appoint him.9
The Vatican could not permit any further
delay and Father Charbonnel was appointed Bishop of Toronto. Charbonnel hurried
to Rome to plead his incapacity before the Curia. But he could not escape the
will of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, Pio Nono. In order to ensure
Charbonnel’s compliance, Pope Pius IX personally bestowed the episocopal
dignity upon him on 26 May, 1850. Strangely, the episcopate of the reluctant
Charbonnel was influenced greatly by Pio Nono, who has often been looked upon
as an administrative failure. Yet, in retrospect
The pontificate of
Pius IX was one of striking success in its spiritual and ecclesiastical
achievements. The erection of many new dioceses and missionary centres, as well
as the restoration of the hierarchy in England (1850) and Holland (1850) and
the conclusion of concordats with many European and American governments,
testified to a vigorous life within the Church.10
When Bishop
Charbonnel arrived to administer the disorganized Diocese of Toronto on 21
September, 1850, one of his first undertakings was to address the Irish laity
in St. Michael’s Cathedral with a sermon entitled “The Duties of the Good
Shepherd.” The contents of that sermon were summarized in The Mirror:
He began by hoping
that they would excuse his, imperfect English, when he assured them that he
warmly represented to His Holiness the Pope how utterly unfit he was for the
position, that he only accepted it upon the express command of the Holy Father.
He spoke of his labors in Montreal amongst the Irish immigrants. He had caught,
he continued, the fever during that memorable year and was lying upon what was
considered his death-bed. But that providence, whose invisible hand directs
and governs all things, had otherwise decreed; and through its controlling will
he stood then before them as their Chief Pastor, ready at all times to risk
everything, to sacrifice everything, even life itself, if necessary, for the
welfare of the flock committed to his care. In proof of his entire devotion to
their services he assured them that he had made over the whole of his paternal
estate in France to assist in liquidating the debt contracted for the building
of the magnificent Cathedral in which they were, and for such other religious
purposes as the Diocese mostly stood in need of, without so much as reserving a
farthing for his own private use. He concluded by promising to visit them all;
but he wanted especially to see the poor, to cheer, to console, and if possible
to relieve them.11
With that
dedication Charbonnel applied himself to an onerous task, for Toronto’s
Catholic population had increased rapidly to 7940 from what was reported as
3240 in 1842.12 Perhaps the increase was even larger because it is possible that the
Rolph Census of 1842 included all Catholics attached to the single parish of
St. Paul’s, which covered a large, combined urban and hinterland area.
Although there were twenty-eight priests scattered throughout the diocese, in
the city Charbonnel had but two churches, two priests and a few Sisters of
Loretto who had arrived in Toronto in 1847 shortly before the death of Bishop
Power.13
Change was a sine qua non. The
Diocese was in financial trouble, burdened with a pressing debt. Two converts,
John Elmsley and S.G. Lynn, paid $60,000.00 and Charbonnel $10,000.00 to
guarantee the Cathedral, but it was unfinished. Plagued with the spectre of
Michael Power, the laity had to face reality and were told by Charbonnel:
We say we owe
because this debt is ours and not the debt of the first Bishop; Martyrs are in
Heaven, and in Heaven there is no debt.14
Charbonnel attended the Quebec Provincial
Council to consult with his metropolitan and more particularly with Bishop I.
Bourget, a genius in church organization. As well, he visited Baltimore several
times to confer with Bishop M.J. Spalding and attended the Plenary
Çounçil of Catholic Church in America held there in l885. His interaction with
Bishop Spalding, Archbishop John Hughes of New York, Bishop C.F. McKinnon of
Nova Scotia and prelates in Ireland, France and Italy provided Charbonnel with
answers to problems and gained for him financial aid, priests and nuns for his
Diocese.15
To pay off the debt on the unfinished
Cathedral and to create a fund for expansion Charbonnel created the Cathedral
Loan Fund. Money flowed in from Canada East, Canada West and the United States.
Charbonnel’s relatives and friends gave £ 3000; he himself collected £ 200 in
Baltimore and the laity in Toronto collected £ 3000. Donations arrived from
Catholics in Montreal from whom Charbonnel, while he was their pastor, had
never accepted a stipend and to whom he had given £ 100 per month. Some insured
their lives with the church as beneficiary, some gave their life’s savings and
others left land.16
The growth of the Cathedral Loan Fund and
the sequence of new Catholic institutions after 1850 demanded precise accounting
practices. No longer could the Diocese be run from Bishop Power’s simple
bookkeeping methods in a single ledger. Charbonnel demanded strict fiscal
accountability and each parish and institution was required to keep a current
set of books, which grew in complexity as the years passed.17 He also established
the Toronto Savings Bank to remove from church personnel, whom he needed to
advance the spiritual well-being of the laity, the burden of the clerical work
associated with the Loan Fund. That involved keeping track of money loaned to
the Church and the reimbursement of those funds on demand at various interest
rates. Secondly, the Bank was intended to encourage the laity as a means of
self-help: a depository to be used for providing for old-age, the education of
children, for periods of illness and unemployment, or a seminal thrust towards
housing.18 Priests, urban and rural, were expected to submit records of bazaars,
picnics, pew rents and door collections so that Charbonnel received the
Cathedraticum, one tenth of parish revenue, a tithe he established to support
diocesan expenses. Adopting the life-style of a beggar in regards to his
personal use of food and clothing, Charbonnel expected a similar charitable
commitment from the priests and laity:
You laity, give us
liberally for our support and the good work we have to attend to, and we
clergymen, let us continue to live economically, not to indulge our kindred
which is one of the curses of a family.19
In 1852 Charbonnel made a visitation throughout
the vast Diocese of Toronto to gain first-hand knowledge of its spiritual
needs. Subsequently he called the priests into the city for seven days to
attend an ecclesiastical retreat which concluded with a synod. The priests were
to bring their books to be audited, records of marriages and baptisms, and to
be prepared to discuss separate schools, mixed marriages, heretical books and
the absorption of the city’s orphans into homes in country parishes. As a step
towards decentralization, Charbonnel reinstituted the system of deaneries which
had begun under the administration of Bishop Power but had ceased to function
in the interregnum after Power’s death. The Deans submitted reports to
Charbonnel on the parishes far removed from Toronto.20
Charbonnel realized the Diocese was far too
large to be controlled effectively from one centre. He proposed that it be
divided into three separate Sees: Toronto with 6 counties and 40,000
Catholics; Hamilton with 8 counties and 22,000 Catholics; and London with 9
counties and 10,000 Catholics.21 Concerned that “wandering or vagabond priests
are increasing like a disease” and that “mixed schools are the burial place of
children,”22 Charbonnel warned the future Cardinal Taschereau that, overall, twenty
additional priests, churches and presbyteries and forty schools were needed
urgently.23 In his appeal to Rome, Charbonnel concluded: “Thank God our Irish know
only how to believe in the Church and Protestants make less noise than we could
fear.”24 But it was in his direct appeal for division at the Second Council of
Quebec in 1855 that one discerns the difficulties Charbonnel and his laity
faced in trying to establish themselves as Catholics:
Also Protestantism
reigns supreme in the Diocese of Toronto, powerful, rich and zealous, it has at
its beck and call landed property, business and labour and numerous clergy,
well endowed, teaching in schools of every branch and degree, churches and
magnificent schools in abundance, elections and all the seats in Parliament,
almost all public employment, houses of charity, the press and secret
societies. The Bishop of Toronto is insulted in the streets of this city and in
several counties there have been different attempts on the life of the
missionaries. However, the presence of the Bishop, his visits and his
insipient institutions have produced a certain betterment which will be much
better with two new Sees and the action of their bishops.25
Charbonnel succeeded and the Diocese of Toronto
was divided in 1856. He was then able to tighten his span of control and
concentrate his efforts on a reduced area.26 It was
Charbonnel’s foresight that predetermined the future creation of an
Ecclesiastical Province in Upper Canada, under the direction of an archbishop
with suffragans. Although Charbonnel was not the metropolitan of the newly
divided dioceses, he still spoke with authority for the Church in their area.27
Having developed an internal communication
linkage to tie the Diocese together, Charbonnel needed the support of the
laity to establish institutions and schools which would broaden it. Long gone
was the security of Bishop Alexander Macdonell’s show of loyalty to the Crown
and association with powerful Compact friends that gained advantages for the
mission Church. With the erosion of the old Compact power in the 1840’s, Bishop
Power found himself in a vacuum and his laissez faire approach to politics28 led him to inadvertently
stamp episcopal sanction on the public school system when he became Chairman of
the Board of Education for Upper Canada. Charbonnel, burdened with the debts
and decisions of his predecessors, realized that in Toronto the Irish were the
Catholics and his power-base lay among them, not among the Scots.
The Protestant majority in Toronto viewed
the Famine Irish as an alien group, deserving such retribution because of their
Catholic faith. As one man put it:
God has destroyed
the Roman Catholics in the South and West of Ireland with famine and disease...
God gave them a final overthrow in the distant towns and other parts of North
America.29
By the time Charbonnel arrived, the Irish were
stereotyped in a most unsympathetic manner and, because of it, it was difficult
to obtain assistance to overcome their social and physical ills. George Brown
of The Globe waged a persistent attack against them and his abusive
comments contributed to their peripheral position in the city:
Irish beggars are
to be met everywhere, and they are as ignorant and vicious as they are poor.
They are lazy, improvident and unthankful; they fill our poor-houses and our
prisons, and are as brutish in their superstition as Hindoos.30
Charbonnel, victim, with his priests, of the
biting remarks of George Brown and the overt attacks of violence in the
streets, decided to build a separate society for all Catholics in his Diocese.
The obvious growth of Catholic institutions, churches and solidarity made the
Protestant majority uneasy and antagonism towards the Church and laity
intensified. But Charbonnel stood firm. When the mayor of Toronto asked for a
contribution to the Patriotic Fund in 1855, Charbonnel replied:
I beg to inform
your Lordship that I am unable to give anything towards the patriotic fund
because the thousands of children who, in Toronto and still more in the
Diocese, are intellectually starving and perishing through want of religious
education and of the means necessary for it, and the thousands of immigrants
whom the most unjust tyranny sends here every year in a condition worse than
that of the unfortunate victims of the Eastern War, have a privilege right in
all my savings, hence France far from expecting anything from me sends me
assistance.31
However, in expecting the clergy and laity to
employ the same dedication to fulfilling his commitment of providing separate
educational and social institutions, Charbonnel’s approach was not always
popular with the Catholic community.
Charbonnel assessed the needs of the Church
and the people as one. The organizational forms that would institutionalize
Catholic social action and Catholic education were predetermined models that
had originated in France to serve the needs of the poor. The religious orders and
associations that had evolved had been constituted to perform a combination of
charitable, social or educational functions and had tested methodologies to
deal with various social problems. The religious orders of women were not bound
to a strictly cloistered life and were free to interact on a limited personal
level in society. The lay institutes were based on voluntarism and tolerated
no social class distinction.32
The Sisters of Loretto had come to Toronto
at the time of Bishop Power’s death and had begun work in the two Catholic
schools of the city. They were excellent teachers but their numbers were few
and Charbonnel needed more versatility to accomplish his task. In 1851 the
Sisters of St. Joseph arrived to take over the orphanage that John Elmsley had
established to protect the religious rights of Famine Irish infants. In
addition, they began a program of outdoor relief and visitations to the homes
of the poor, sick and dying.33 In 1855 Bishop Charbonnel opened the House of
Providence and it was to become a crucible for social action under the
administration of that dynamic group of nuns. It was a home for the orphaned,
sick, aged and destitute, run on a voluntary basis with the Sisters begging in
the city and hinterland for its maintenance. From that single institution begun
by Bishop Charbonnel there evolved, under the Sisters of St. Joseph, Providence
Villa for the aged, three hospitals (St. Michael’s, St. Joseph’s and Our Lady of
Mercy), three orphanages, St. Nicholas Home for street boys and Notre Dame Des
Anges for working girls.34
At Charbonnel’s invitation the Christian
Brothers also arrived in 1851 to open St. Michael’s College in the Bishop’s
Palace and to assist the Sisters of Loretto with teaching in the primary
grades. They later expanded their work to establish De La Salle High School and
St. John’s Training School. The teaching methods employed by the Christian
Brothers were widely acclaimed and, in Toronto, succeeded in the development of
rehabilitated, skilled and educated young Irishmen.35
The Basilian Fathers arrived in 1852,
responding to Charbonnel’s plea to establish a seminary to train priests for
Canada West. Like the Christian Brothers, they had minimal success initially,
both being plagued with internal financial problems. Charbonnel assigned the
Christian Brothers to the charge of the Catholic boys’ schools in the city and
gave the Basilian Fathers the responsibility of administering the newly
constructed St. Basil’s Church and St. Michael’s College, built on a donation
of land from John Elmsley. They served in dual roles of priests and educators
of priests and young laymen.36
The fact that church personnel were
subjected to the same prejudiced bias as the Irish population helped to draw
the Catholic community in Toronto closer together. Raids against the St.
Joseph’s, orphanage on Nelson Street stirred Catholic ire. Those nuns were
dear to the beggar bishop’s heart. Working fourteen to sixteen hours a day,
living in cramped quarters where they shared beds with orphaned children and
had barely enough to eat,37 the Sisters proved to the people that they
lived at the same economic level and prompted feelings of charity that led to
voluntarism. And witnessing the manner in which Charbonnel and his priests
responded to physical attack and abusive insults, the Catholic laity began to
adopt a similar attitude of Christian forbearance which alleviated some of the
old tensions.38
To supplement the work of the religious
orders Charbonnel required a lay institution to function in a voluntary manner
and found it in the St. Vincent de Paul Society. The Society was formed in
France in 1833 through the conceptualization of Alfred de Mun and Frederick
Ozanam. It was commissioned in the words of Ozanam to
Go to the poor, go
to the worker. Go not with empty hands. And what is more, go live among the
poor and the workers. Like St. Vincent de Paul become in effect one of them.39
Like its French
parent, the St. Vincent de Paul Society established in Toronto in 1850 was
governed by rules and membership was granted on virtue and integrity. The
members were obliged to visit the homes of the poor in pairs to avoid any cause
for embarrassment; their commitment was personal and could not be delegated.
Unlike the Protestant workers of the 1890’s who developed the movement known as
the Social Gospel, the members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society did not act
as social investigators but, rather, as friends. Poverty was not considered a
sin, just a human condition that had to be overcome.40 Charbonnel often
accompanied the members on their visits. Saying “God loves the poor,”
Charbonnel would lift his outer robe, the gift of a Toronto merchant, to reveal
his tattered garments beneath,41 a gesture that uplifted the spirits of the
beholders and filled them with feelings of self-worth and group dignity.
The men in the St. Vincent de Paul Society
supplied outdoor relief, food, fuel, furniture and clothing. They found living
accommodations, paid rents, furnished tools for workers and loans to start
small business ventures. They visited the sick, consoled the dying, and
attended wakes. They set up the Toronto Savings Bank with Charbonnel, acted as
truant officers, and initiated libraries to spread the faith and educate the
poor. Motivated by the spirit of the beggar bishop, the Society of St. Vincent
de Paul expanded its work and membership after his tenure. It influenced the
formation of many benevolent and insurance societies and in the 1890’s
established the St. Vincent de Paul Children’s Aid Society which was to become
the Catholic Children’s Aid Society.42 Modelled along the
lines of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, there arose a number of Catholic
female associations who supplied food and clothing to school children, visited
women inmates in the jails and patients in the hospital, assisted the nuns with
outdoor relief, and organized bazaars to raise money for the religious orders.43 Although each
society and order was independent, none duplicated the work of the other and
all fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop.
Even before he arrived in Toronto, Bishop
Charbonnel knew he was expected to commit himself to the pursuit of
religiously-oriented education. During the period that followed Power’s death,
the Diocese had been administered first by Archdeacon John Hay and then by
Vicar-General John Carroll, with John Elmsley acting as secretary. At Carroll’s
request Elmsley had advised Charbonnel:
But whenever you
come, we all feel convinced that your arrival will be the commencement of a new
era: that religion and religious education will soon be planted upon the best
possible footing.44
Therefore, it is
not surprising that one of Charbonnel’s major goals was to secure Catholic schools
for his flock. The fact that they became Irish Catholic schools was an
evolutionary consequence. What Charbonnel wanted to attain for the Irish
children in Canada West was parity with the minority rights of Protestants in
Canada East,45 a goal which pitted him against Egerton Ryerson. Charbonnel concluded
that only through a form of separate education which encompassed a Catholic
philosophy could the deprived children of the faithful be socialized and
retained as a practising Catholic laity.
Charbonnel was determined to make the
Catholic system of education independent from the common one. He did not want
it to become a peripheral segment in a larger unit, relegated to secondary
importance. Nor did he want the Catholic system subjected to a program that, in
his opinion, was oriented to Protestantism, a duplicate of various elements in
the American, Swedish, Irish National and Prussian models, which he believed
was responsible for the immorality and infidelity in those countries.46 Catholic schools
were to be institutional elements in the whole planned program to implement
social change and religious reform. Like the other social institutions,
separate schools were components of a vastly interlocking system organized to
protect Irish Catholics from proselytism and differential treatment. They
ultimately guaranteed the survival of the group.47
When Charbonnel arrived in the city there
were only two separate schools. Concerned with the behaviour of neglected
Catholic children who were allowed to run wild in the eastern portion of the
city, Charbonnel immediately asked for financial assistance to set up a school
to accommodate those youths. In his judgement, he offered a compromise. It was
to be staffed by the sisters, which would reduce the cost and would regenerate
a class of citizens who might otherwise become criminals or depraved individuals.
But the city was not open to compromise and denied the request. Ryerson and
Charbonel became embroiled in a bitter conflict and Charbonnel used the
legislation in every way he could to advance his position in the attainment of
a legally protected separate school system. In 1860, at the end of Charbonnel’s
tenure, Toronto had five separate schools with 716 pupils under the direction
of the Christian Brothers. The Loretto Sisters were teaching 25 boarders, 25
select pupils and 100 free pupils. The St. Joseph’s Order taught 500 pupils in
eight institutions which included the girls’ section of the five separate
schools shared with the Christian Brothers, the House of Providence and their
convent school, as well as 40 students in night school. The total number of
students receiving Catholic education in the city that year was 1505.48
So convinced was Charbonnel of the
necessity for Catholic education that he coerced dissenting laity, under pain
of sin, to support the schools.49 He utilized the Catholic Institute to spread
the concept of Catholic education as, similarly, his successor John Lynch used
the Catholic League to promote political equality. Catholics began to support
Charbonnel’s stand more forcefully when they realized the implications against
them in the various Ryerson pronouncements, particularly as they applied to
Catholic teachers employed in common schools.
In December 1855, Charbonnel issued a
pastoral letter. In it he outlined a course the laity were to follow to attain
separate schools equitable to those in Canada East. Charbonnel also included a
statement which expressed his support for the feminizing of the teaching
profession, albeit for economic advantage:
To select good
teachers, and principally females, who, though not read in the stars, nor
understanding Newton’s Theorem, are generally more economical and better able
to attend even young boys and teach them prayers, Catechism, piety, modesty,
good manners, reading, writing, cyphering, etc.50
That portion of the pastoral letter was
directed more specifically to rural areas. Catholic schools in Toronto were run
by members of the religious orders, none of whom were paid individual
salaries. Instead, the religious order received a bulk payment for teaching
services rendered. Through those arrangements education on a par with that
offered in the public schools became financially feasible for the poorer laity.
Critics accused Charbonnel of compelling
his flock to accept a school system it did not want. The basis for their
argument apparently derived from a strongly worded, religiously coercive,
Lenten Pastoral written by Charbonnel in 1857. In it, Charbonnel warned:
Catholic electors
in the County, who do not use their electoral power in behalf of Separate
Schools are also guilty of mortal sin. Likewise parents not making the
sacrifices necessary to secure such schools, or sending their children to mixed
schools.
Moreover the
Confessor who would give absolution to such parents, electors, or legislators
as support mixed schools to the prejudice of separate schools would be guilty
of a mortal sin.51
The thrust of that
pastoral letter was also directed primarily to the laity and priests in the
hinterland where, by example, nonsupport of separate schools threatened their
existence in all areas of the province. Charbonnel’s coercive methods were
intended to counterbalance or neutralize the secular pressure influencing his
Irish Catholic laity in the rural areas. Minority Irish Catholics were almost
powerless in the face of a strongly organized Orange order and other nativistic
groups like the Blazers. Voting was open and the few Irish politicians elected
to office followed the party line.
Furthermore, the leading Catholic
politician in the province, the Scottish John Sandfield Macdonald, was not in
favour of separate education and on occasion spoke out against what he
considered an unnecessary system. As a result, most Irish Catholics in rural
areas compromised their religious principles and sent their children to mixed
schools. In Charbonnel’s opinion that unacceptable situation could be changed
by meeting pressure with counter-pressure.
The use of that particular pastoral as an
indication that Catholics, generally, were forced to accept a separate system
seems an irrelevant application. In the urban centres of Canada West, Toronto
particularly, the Church was hard-pressed to meet the demands of its growing
laity for separate schools. Irish newspapers in Toronto were a good indicator
of urban support, for they upheld the concept of Catholic schools throughout
Charbonnel’s tenure and well beyond. An example would be the Mirror’s editor,
Donlevy’s, being the first Chairman of the Board of Separate Schools. In the
latter decades of the century, some of the Irish laity disagreed with the
clergy about the administrative control of the schools, or the amount or nature
of Irish nationalism taught in them, but never over their being Catholic.
Like Charbonnel, albeit for different
purposes, Egerton Ryerson used the legislation to advance his goal. It took
several decades before Catholics received an equitable portion of the school
grant and therefore the major problem in the operation and expansion of
separate schools was financial. In 1854 governmental funds were received for
two of the seven existing diocesan parochial schools, scarcely enough to allay
expenses. The grant totalled £ 249.3.2, Catholic taxes collected were £ 252.12.1½,
fees paid were £ 82.7½ and Charbonnel made up £ 1267.17.9, or 69%, from his own
pocket, which was the residue of his personal estate from France.52 The laity found
many ways to make up revenues to fund their growing school system. Picnics,
bazaars and concerts were organized to support the schools which were lacking
in resources and accoutrements. The bulk sum paid to religious orders for
teaching services reduced administrative costs. The religious orders were
allowed to apply profits gained from the operation of private schools to
balance the budget of partially funded elementary institutions under their
control. The introduction of sound cost-accounting practices performed by
efficient unpaid laymen achieved tight fiscal control over meagre resources.
In that way separate schools survived.53
One year after Charbonnel’s departure,
Egerton Ryerson admitted:
The good Sisters of
St. Joseph and the Christian Brothers deserve our gratitude for the manner in
which they are educating our Catholic youth. They are a blessing to the city of
Toronto. They are pointing out to the youthful mind the way of virtue,
religion, morality and useful knowledge.54
Regardless, the city utilized the Catholics as
a scapegoat for its current social ills. When the census of 1861 showed 2500
of the 11,500 children between the ages of 5 and 16 in the city not attending
school, the assumption was that Catholics formed by far the majority of that
group of ‘street arabs’. The census of 1863 proved otherwise. Of the Catholic
children enumerated, 1999 attended school and 467, or 18.9%, did not. Of the
5877 Protestant children enumerated, 1165 or 16.5% did not attend school.
Catholics formed 28.6% of the children out of school, which meant the problem
was shared by both Catholics and Protestants alike.55
While Charbonnel was in Europe in 1856, he
wrote:
Venio de Toronto
Apud Lacum Ontario
In populo Barbaro
Benedicamus Domino.56
Four years later he resigned as Bishop of
Toronto and entered the Capuchin Order. Possibly his resignation stemmed from
the abuse heaped upon him and his Basilian priests because of their French
accents and backgrounds. Although the abuse came primarily from a fraction of
the urban Irish and others urged on by an anti-Catholic element in the city,57 it may have served
as a signal to Charbonnel of a need for change. Charbonnel’s final gift to the
Diocese of Toronto was John Joseph Lynch, chosen because he was
English-speaking, and who, therefore, could be more successful in expanding
the church, its educational programs and social work among the laity. Having
been made Titular Bishop of Sozopolis in 1869, Charbonnel escorted Bishop Lynch
to a place among the Archbishops at the Vatican Council in 1870. Charbonnel,
who had divided the large Diocese of Toronto, witnessed its reorganization
into a unit under the jurisdiction of a metropolitan.58
In 1880 Charbonnel was made Archbishop of Sozopolis and died in 1891 at Crest, France. Armand de Charbonnel has never been canonized; no choir has sung “Beatae Armandus Oro Pro Nobis.” Look not for memorials to the beggar bishop, but look to the institutions, the schools, the churches themselves in the Archdiocese of Toronto – they are memorial enough.
1Murray W. Nicolson,
“Ecclesiastical Metropolitanism and the Evolution of the Catholic Archdiocese
of Toronto,” Histoire Sociale, vol. XV, no. 29 (Mai 1982), pp. 129-156.
2Nicolson, “The
Irish Catholics and Social Action in Toronto,” Études d’Histoire de Politique; Journal des Sciences
Historiques/Politique, vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1980), 30-35.
3R.P. Candide
Cause, Évêque d’Or, Crosse de Bois: Vie de Monseigneur de Charbonnel
(Paris, 1930), pp. 1-20, passim.
4Brother Alfred,
“Most Rev. Armand-François Marie, Comte de Charbonnel, D.D., Second Bishop of
Toronto (1802-1891),” unnumbered MS in the Archdiocese of Toronto Archives
(hereafter ARCAT).
5Ibid.
6John R. Teefy, “The
Life and Times of The Right Reverent Armand Francis Maris Comte de Charbonnel,
Second Bishop of Toronto,” J.R. Teefy, ed., Jubilee Volume, The Archdiocese
of Toronto and Archbishop Walsh (George T. Dixon: Toronto, 1892), pp.
143-168.
7Brother Alfred,
“The Most Rev. Armand-François Marie.”
8Teffy, “The Life
and Times,” passim.
9Ibid., pp. 145-47.
10F.L. Cross, ed.,
“Pius IX,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford
University Press: London, 1957), p. 1079.
11The Mirror, 27 September
1850.
12The Census of The
Canadas 1851-52, 1, 30-31
13ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers. See church statistics for 1850.
14ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, pastoral letter 1850.
15ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers. General correspondence.
16ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers. List of notes, Insurance Premiums, autobiographical sketch, etc. 1855.
17ARCAT, Various
Record Books and Ledgers 1842 to 1860.
18ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Records of the Toronto Savings Bank.
19ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers. Notes for a circular, no date.
20ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Circular to the Clergy, 18 July 1852.
21ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Charbonnel to Father Taschereau, 26 June 1854.
22Ibid.
23Ibid.
24ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Charbonnel to the Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda, 25 Maqy
1855.
25ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Charbonnel to all Bishops at
the Second Council of Quebec, 20 October 1855.
26ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Circular on the subdivision of the Diocese, 1856.
27For evidence of
Charbonnel’s leadership see the various issues of the Toronto Mirror and
The Canadian Freeman, 1850-1860.
28Nicolson,
“Ecclesiastical Metropolitanism,” passim.
29ARCAT, Bishop Power
Papers, “A Christian” to Rev. Mr. Carroll, no date.
30The Globe, 11 February 1858.
31ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Charbonnel to his Worship the Mayor, 2 March 1855.
32The Manual of the
Society of St. Vincent of Paul (London, 1851); Constitutions and Rules of
the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in the Archdiocese of Toronto
(Toronto, 1884), passim.
33Sisters of the
Community of St. Joseph of Toronto Archives (hereafter CSJTA), Annals.
34Ibid. See as well the
Records of the House of Providence.
35Christian Brothers
Archives, Records.
36ARCAT, Education
Papers.
37CSJTA, Annals.
38Nicolson, “The
Catholic Church and the Irish in Victorian Toronto,” Ph.D. Thesis, University
of Guelph, 1981.
39P.A. Boyle, “The
Apostolate of Catholic Charity,” B. L. Masse, ed., The Catholic Mind Through
Fifty Years, 1903-1953 (New York, 1952), p. 228.
40Manual of the
Society of St. Vincent of Paul, passim.
41 CSJTA, “A Great
Charity Organization for Laymen,” unpublished manuscript.
42ARCAT, Record Books
of the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
43Nicolson, “The
Irish Catholics and Social Action,” passim.
44ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, John Elmsley to Bishop Charbonnel, 21 June 1850.
45ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, letter to City Superintendant of Common School, 14 October 1850.
46ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Correspondence in general including pastoral letters.
47Nicholson, “The
Irish Catholics and Social Action,” passim.
48Dunegan’s American
Catholic Almanac and List of Clergy (New York, 1859), p. 251.
49ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, various Pastorals, particularly the Lenten Pastoral of 1857.
50ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Pastoral Letter, 1855.
51ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers, Lenton Pastoral, 1857.
52ARCAT, Education
Papers, Separate School Report, 1854; S.G. Lynn to Charbonnel, 14 April 1855.
53ARCAT, Education
Papers. In addition, see the advertisements in the Catholic press in the period
1850-1890.
54The Journal of
Education for Upper Canada, 14, no. 9, (September 1861), p. 144.
55ARCAT, Education
Papers, Copy of the Annual Report for 1863, p. 43. See as well the
Toronto newspapers, particularly The Globe, 1861-1864.
56W. Perkins Bull, From
Macdonell to McGuigan (Toronto, 1939), p. 278.
57ARCAT, Charbonnel
Papers. See the various Broadsheets.
58The Globe, 1 December 1869;
21 January 1870.