I have lately been reading a most remarkable
book: Henri Bourassa’s La Langue,
gardienne de la Foi, published in 1918 and long since out of print. It was
George Grant who switched me on to it — he quotes Bourassa at a key point in Lament for a Nation. Bourassa was a
French-Canadian politician and founder of the newspaper Le Devoir. Rather than attempt to characterize his general stance I
will let him speak for himself.
The physical book, and the difficulty of getting
hands on it, gives me the impression that nobody has read it in a hundred years
except perhaps biographers of Bourassa. I could not find any online text
either, and since the book is quite flimsy (it is basically a pamphlet) I worry
that it will simply break down and be lost forever in a matter of decades, and
all that will remain for posterity is the paragraph quoted by George Grant. And
this is a book that should not be lost. To me, it is a revelation. It speaks
directly to my heart, I feel a thrill run through me every time I pick it up to
read. In fact it comes to me as an answer I have been seeking for a long time:
how to be a patriotic Canadian Catholic? Bourassa gives the gift of a vision,
an inspiring, beautiful vision, of what a Catholic Canada could be and is
called to be.
I realize there are probably very few people who
are seeking in this specific way for a Canadian identity, for whom Bourassa
could be a help. But to me it would seem a tragedy if this book were lost. And
I find it so rich and clear and penetrating in its Catholic political thought,
that I believe it should be accessible even outside the French Catholic world. For
preservation I can and will scan and digitize it. But I also feel a strong pull
to translate the whole into English. The book is not long, less than fifty
pages. Since I have a job, and a great many other commitments, even fifty pages
is probably a matter of years for me — but I shall make a start and get however
far I get.
***
Table of Contents
II. The Church, protector of national languages
The Miracle of Pentecost
Pagan Rome, Christian Rome
The Miracle of Pentecost
Pagan Rome, Christian Rome
III. The
Gospel preached in every language
Saint Francis Xavier, model of missionaries
Saint Francis Xavier and the idioms of Asia
The Canadian missionaries and the aboriginal languages
Saint Francis Xavier, model of missionaries
Saint Francis Xavier and the idioms of Asia
The Canadian missionaries and the aboriginal languages
IV.
Catholicism and the national languages in America
Msgr Langevin and the Ukrainians
Msgr Langevin and the Ukrainians
V. Protestant
languages, Catholic languages
The example of the Irish
The example of the Irish
VI. The
French language, vehicle of Catholicism
“Canadian French” and “Parisian French”
“Canadian French” and “Parisian French”
VII. French
Canadians, their civilising task
Let us speak and live our faith
Let us speak and live our faith
***
National
and religious traditions of French Canadians
“More French than Catholic,” they
used to say readily about French Canadians before the war — those
English-speaking Catholics who conducted the campaign of ostracisation against
the French language in church and in school. “Slaves of the Pope of Rome and of
the hierarchy,” proclaimed the
Orangists and their allies. “Too French and not British enough,” added the
Anglicisers preoccupied above all with political assimilation and imperial
unity. With the war and the refusal of French Canadians to forget the demands
of their own national defense in order to run to the aid of the ‘little
nationalities’ across the sea — a pretext whose fallacious hypocrisy was only too
evident to French Canadians, coming from the lips of their persecutors — these
refrains have somewhat changed. Anglicising Catholics, antipapists,
imperialists have toned down their old clamours and brought their voices into
harmony. “Traitors to the Empire, ingrates towards France,” such was the
familiar theme during the whole of the war. All these types — a good number are
sincere — appear to ignore the essential elements of the French-Canadian
nationality, the duties which flow from this nationality for French Canadians,
the traditional sentiments which it inspires in them. Let us recall these
briefly.
In the order of national duties, most
French Canadians, exclusively Canadian for almost two centuries, subordinate
the vague and distant ‘obligations’ that one wants to impose on them towards
their two ‘mother-countries’ — appelations equally false in law and in fact —
to their certain duties towards their unique homeland, Canada. In the order of
natural rights, they are attached to their language, which is the common idiom
of all groups of the French race across the world, and to their French traditions,
more than to the material power of France. In the moral order, they belong
heart and soul to the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church; and it is from the
Church herself that they have learned that patriotism is not contrary to
religion, and that Catholicism, because
it is catholic, ought not to be, nor ever can be, in America or elsewhere,
an instrument of assimilation for the profit of one race or a factor of
unification and of political hegemony in service to the British Empire or
American Democracy. If one is quite willing to go to the trouble of
contemplating the situation and the sentiments of French Canadians under this
triple aspect, many prejudices and misunderstandings will not be slow to
dissipate.
Of these false or unreliable
estimations, I want, for the time being, to linger only on the first. Are we
more French than Catholic? Are we more attached to our language than to our
faith? Permit me to repeat here the summary response which I made to the same
question, at the vigil of the struggle for French schooling in Ontario:
“One is surprised sometimes that of
all privileges, the one which we demand with most insistance and which is for
us the most contested, is that of language. It is so much so that people
criticize us, at times, for showing ourselves to be more French than Catholic.
“If he were to judge by certain
outward expressions, the superficial observer could indeed come to believe that
it is so.
“The explanation is very simple. First,
we believe that our language — its preservation and its development — are for
us the most necessary human element for the preservation of our faith; and
second, in the simplicity of our minds and of our hearts — having preserved the
Catholic faith in our ‘medieval’ province just as that faith was taught in the
past — we believe that the Church holds the promises of eternal life. What is
more, we think that in all the claims of the Church, the first steps, as also
the general direction, ought to come from those in whom we see concentrated the
authority bequeathed by Jesus Christ to his apostles and handed on by them to
the bishops and clergy of the following centuries; but our language, that is
our own property peculiar to ourselves, and if we do not defend it, no one will
rescue it for us.
“Our language has not received a
divine promise of preservation, except that which God has made to all peoples
and all men who have enough heart and spirit to defend their soul and their
body, their national patrimony and that of their family; but that promise does
not reserve anything to those whose soul is base enough to barter their
birthright for a mess of pottage, and to beg as a favour what ought to be
claimed as a right.”[1]
Persuaded that in spite of, or
perhaps because of, the ‘triumph of Democracy’ — which is, all in all, the
right of majorities to oppress minorities — the assaults against our language
and our faith are going to resume more forcefully and more numerously than
ever, it seems to me opportune to treat the question more thoroughly and to
contemplate to its full extent this important problem of national language
according to religious faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment