Is Quebec Still a Catholically Distinct Society within Canada? An Examination of Catholic Affiliation and Mass Attendance

Abstract

French

Since the Quiet Revolution, Quebec has significantly transformed its relationship to Catholicism. Some commentators have even gone as far as discussing an increasingly important secularization within the province. Yet, an examination of the main indicators of religiosity in Quebec provides evidence for the permanence of a certain cultural Catholicism. However, this cultural Catholicism is tending to gradually fade over time, giving place to the reconfiguration of the regime of religiosity. Meanwhile, in the rest of Canada, Catholicism tends to grow, primarily due to the immigrant population in recent years. In this general context, is Quebec still a “Catholically distinct” society? To answer this question, the authors use a series of logistic models to examine the main determinants of Catholic affiliation and Mass attendance. Age, place of birth and mother tongue emerge as principal determinants of religious affiliation and practice. Based on the findings from these models, the authors show that Quebec remains a Catholically distinct society in comparison with other Canadian regions. However, the gap between this province and the rest of Canada seems to have been increasingly fading, at least over the last thirty years.

Keywords

Catholicism Quebec religiosity catholicisme Québec religiosité

Introduction

Analyses of Catholicism in Canada have too often been restricted to the Quebec context, the said “priest-ridden province” where, until the 1960s, the proportion of members of the clergy in relation to the general population resembled those in Ireland and Poland. Within Quebec, this rate per 1000 inhabitants increased from 5.86 in 1890 to 13.07 in 1930 – remaining unchanged until 1961 (Langlois and Gagné, 2011). With Catholic affiliation reaching nearly 83% among the province’s population at the turn of the twenty-first century, Quebec remains without a doubt Canada’s most Catholic province – two to three times more so than any other province by the affiliation measure (Meunier and Nault, 2014). However, since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, with the secularization of social support institutions and the loss of the hold that the clergy held on Quebec society, there has been a rapid decrease in regular attendance at Catholic religious services – a decrease so sudden, rapid and considerable that many observers were led to believe Quebec was on track to becoming the most secularized province in Canada. A common belief came to prevail in the Canadian landscape, depicting Quebec as the North American model of a secular nation, leaving the world of organized religion to the Americans and English Canadians. Moreover, the speed and extent of these changes led many observers, ideologists and even social scientists to also adopt this view (see, among others: Parti Pris, 1967; Rioux, 1969; Moreux, 1969).

Without directly contradicting this view of a secular Quebec, sociologist of religion Raymond Lemieux suggests that Catholicism’s anchoring nevertheless remained strong in the province, despite the secularization of many practices and institutions (Lemieux, 1974, 1990). Lemieux suggested that an environment of cultural Catholicism existed in which, while participating less and less in religious services and continuing to keep their distance from the clergy, the majority of Quebecers still adhered to the principal beliefs of the Christian corpus, continued to introduce their children to Catholic culture – notably through baptism and religious education – and continued to draw on Catholic rituals (funerals in particular). For Lemieux, these remnants speak to the impossibility of erasing the mark of Catholicism in so short a time. From the architecture and names of towns and villages to family customs, Quebec still remained in the Catholic fold.

The question of cultural Catholicism in Quebec has been debated by many researchers since the publication of Lemieux’s work (1990). Micheline Milot, for example, extended the topic by analyzing the reasons why parents from the province wished to enroll their children in Catholic denominational classrooms, even if they were not themselves practicing Catholics. Milot (1991) found that, during this highly secularized period, according to parents, the functions of religion had indeed changed but it still performed some important roles, including psycho-sociological support during difficult times.

If the work of Lemieux contributed to moderating the representation of Quebec as the most secularized province in Canada, this view was further undermined by new data on the proportions of individuals identifying with no religion, notably in Canada’s Western provinces (see Table 1). Suddenly, Quebec no longer held the monopoly on secularization. With its meager 12.2% of individuals with no religion (and its 75% of Catholics), in contrast to the nearly 45% of individuals with no religion in British Columbia, Quebec seemed to conserve its status as a distinct society, but no longer for the same reasons. Quebec’s secularism now had to be re-examined in conjunction with the persistence of a certain cultural Catholicism.

Table 1.

Percentage of individuals with no religion, Canada, 1971–2011.

	1971	1991	2001	2011
British Columbia	13.4%	30.1%	36.1%	44.3%
Alberta	6.8%	19.3%	23.9%	31.7%
Saskatchewan	3.5%	10.9%	15.3%	24.7%
Manitoba	4.3%	13.5%	18.3%	26.7%
Ontario	4.6%	12.2%	16.2%	23.4%
Quebec	1.3%	3.9%	5.7%	12.2%
New Brunswick	1.9%	5.5%	8.0%	15.0%
Nova Scotia	2.6%	7.5%	12.0%	22.1%
Prince Edward Island		4.0%	6.8%	14.5%
Newfoundland and Labrador	0.2%	1.8%	2.7%	6.3%

Source: Canadian Census, 1971–2001 PUMF and National Household Survey, 2011 PUMF, Statistics Canada.

Research by Meunier, Laniel and Demers (2010) showed that Catholicism in Quebec maintained its own religiosity regime; that is to say, a particular configuration between Church and State which is shaped by specific cultural and religious practices, and differentiates Quebec from the rest of Canada. Furthermore, for Meunier and Laniel (2012), this configuration may have contributed to ensuring and consolidating a nationalistic identity in the province. Yet, through an analysis of the different religiosity regimes identifiable throughout Canada, Meunier and Wilkins-Laflamme (2011) also discovered that the cultural configuration of Catholicism found in Quebec, inherited from the Quiet Revolution, seemed to be slowly waning. Several indicators, such as the continued decline of Mass attendance, Catholic unions as well as baptisms, seemed to be pointing towards a gradual transformation of Quebec’s relationship to Catholicism – notably since Generation Y has reached adulthood.

Following the work of Danielle Hervieu-Léger (2003), Meunier and Wilkins-Laflamme understand this slow transformation as a form of “exculturation,” that is to say as a progressive unlinking of what history had weaved between Quebec’s culture and Catholicism. More recently, Meunier and Nault (2014) have shown that this exculturation can also be attributed to the pluralization of Quebec’s society. Without seeing as much increase in both religious and ethnic diversity as in Ontario and British Columbia, in Quebec a rise in immigration has, nonetheless, slowly modified the configuration of identity. For instance, as discussed by Louis Rousseau (2012a) in his latest book Le Québec après Bourchard-Taylor, since 1990, the composition of Montreal’s population has slowly changed, welcoming a high rate of ethno-diversity. Other recent works also illustrate the importance of this cultural shift. Among them, François Rocher (2015) links socio-demographical changes to the debates on citizenship and religious identity in Quebec in order to show their complexity. Moreover, Louis Rousseau (2012b) argues that Quebecers must reconsider the ways in which they think of Quebec society as a whole, since it has become increasingly difficult for cultural Catholicism alone to maintain symbolic unity.

This changing reality and ensuing public debate has provoked, since 2007, the establishment of a commission on religious accommodations, an aborted bill seeking to regulate the wearing of ostentatious religious symbols in the public sector, and, more recently, two new draft bills – one on radicalization, and the other on the religious neutrality of the State (see, among others, Bosset et al., 2009; Lefebvre and Beaman, 2014; Meintel, 2014; Lefebvre, Béraud and Meunier, 2015; Meunier, 2016). More recently, Reginald Bibby and Angus Reid (2016) proposed a new reading of Catholicism in Canada, where Quebec plays a less important role in the definition of this religion. The authors argue that the vitality of Catholicism in Canada increasingly relies on a constant flow of immigration and on the support from new ethnic communities.¹ However, could this perspective mask important provincial differences?

This paper seeks to examine the following question: Is Quebec still today a Catholically distinct society? At the very moment when Bibby and Reid (2016) have published a new book titled Canada’s Catholics, does there still exist a marked difference between Catholicism in Quebec and in the rest of Canada? To answer these questions, we develop an in-depth diachronic analysis based on Canadian General Social Survey data from 1991 to 2011. These annual surveys each provide a representative sample of approximately 12,000 to 24,000 respondents across Canada. This paper presents analyses focusing on two main indicators: religious affiliation and attendance at religious services. Moreover, these findings are interpreted in light of broader diocesan level data gathered in the context of previous research.

The Catholic Landscape in Quebec and the Rest of Canada

Beyond Quebec’s linguistic specificity within the Canadian context – it is important to note that Quebec is the only Canadian province with a majority Francophone population – and the fact that in 2011, 45.2% of Catholics in Canada lived in the province of Quebec, it also distinguishes itself from the rest of Canada in terms of the place of birth of its Catholic population. With the exception of Canada’s Atlantic region where only 2.3% of the Catholic population is foreign born, Quebec’s Catholic population – with only 5.4% of individuals born outside of Canada – is far more homogeneous than that of other Canadian regions such as Ontario where more than 30% of Catholics were born abroad (a rate 5.6 times greater than that of Quebec).

Figure 1 presents a general portrait of four central indicators of Catholicism in Quebec and in the rest of Canada² from 1968 to 2011, notably religious affiliation, weekly or more frequent Mass attendance, percentage of baptisms per total births and percentage of Catholic marriages per total marriages. This graph highlights the period of Quebec’s cultural religiosity regime from 1968 to 2001 (Meunier, 2015) where, despite a drop in terms of weekly Mass attendance and Catholic marriages, affiliation to Catholicism and the rate of baptisms per births in Quebec remained high. After 2001, with the arrival of Generation Y into adulthood, the two indicators which best supported the idea of a cultural relationship with Catholicism – affiliation and proportion of baptized births – began to fall.

Figure 1.

Weekly Mass attendance, Catholic affiliation, proportions of religious marriages and proportions of baptized births in Quebec and the rest of Canada, 1968 to 2011.

While there is an overall decline of Catholic indicators in Quebec since 1968, and notably after 2001 for affiliation and proportion of baptized births, these same indicators for the rest of Canada are characterized more by stability. Whereas affiliation to Catholicism dropped 12% in Quebec between 1971 and 2011 – including nearly 11% after 2001 – this same indicator declined by only 3.6% over 40 years in the rest of Canada. In terms of weekly Mass attendance, while these rates dropped 22.2% in Quebec between 1985 and 2011, they declined by only 15.8% over the same period in the rest of Canada. A sharp contrast between Quebec and the rest of Canada can also be observed in regard to the proportion of baptized births and Catholic unions. While the rate of baptized births in Quebec declined 31.4% between 1968 and 2008, this decline was only 13.2% over the same period for the rest of Canada. Similarly, while the rate of Catholic marriages in the rest of Canada declined by 19.4% between 1968 and 2007, it dropped by more than 59% in Quebec over the same period.

Methods

In order to examine the principal determinants of Catholic affiliation and Mass attendance among Canada’s Catholic population, we developed a series of binomial and multinomial logistic models, starting with the 2011 Canadian General Social Survey, and continuing with a diachronic analysis based on the 1991 and 2001 surveys.³ The models for each year and each Canadian region were constructed using the same set of variables, and results are presented in odds ratios in order to allow the comparison of results across models.

Each model includes seven independent socio-demographic variables: age (coded by generation in five categories⁴), gender, income, level of education, place of birth (either born in Canada or born outside of Canada), and mother tongue (examined as two dummy variables – Francophone and “Other” – in relation to the majority Anglophone reference group).⁵

Findings

Among the independent variables examined, age, place of birth and mother tongue stood out as the most important factors to understand both Catholic affiliation among Canadians and Mass attendance among Catholic Canadians.

Catholic Religious Affiliation among Canada’s Population

Table 2 presents key findings for the binomial logistic models of Catholic affiliation for 1991, 2001 and 2011.⁶ Models were tested for Canada as a whole, as well as for each region: the Western provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador).⁷

Table 2.

Key findings from the binomial logistic models for Catholic affiliation, total population, 1991, 2001 and 2011.

			Canada	West	Ontario	Quebec	Atlantic
Age	e^(b)	1991	.89*** (−1.12)	.87*** (−1.14)	.84*** (−1.19)	1.17	.84*** (−1.19)
	e^(b)	2001	1.00	.91*** (−1.10)	.91** (−1.10)	1.53***	.98 (−1.03)
	e^(b)	2011	1.17***	1.06*	1.05	1.84***	.99 (−1.01)
Born outside Canada	e^(b)	1991	.87 (−1.16)	1.06	.85 (−1.17)	.23*** (−4.37)	.54 (−1.86)
	e^(b)	2001	.69*** (−1.44)	.92 (−1.09)	.74** (−1.36)	.20*** (−5.01)	.25*** (−3.96)
	e^(b)	2011	.64*** (−1.57)	.96 (−1.04)	.68*** (−1.47)	.20*** (−5.07)	.65* (−1.54)
Mother tongue French	e^(b)	1991	47.26***	17.01***	20.81***	20.77***	30.75***
	e^(b)	2001	28.55***	13.06***	12.46***	19.08***	19.64***
	e^(b)	2011	13.84***	5.99***	10.48***	9.85***	12.36***

* p≤0.05 ** p≤0.01 *** p≤0.001

Note: Variables included in the model: age, gender, income, education, place of birth and mother tongue.

For odds ratios <1, inverse odds (i.e. odds ratio of the event not occurring (1/e^(b))) are presented in parentheses.

Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey - PUMF, 1991, 2001 and 2011.

In 2011, each increase in an age category increases the chances of identifying as Catholic in Canada as a whole, as well as in the West and in Quebec.⁸ This relationship is most pronounced in Quebec, which has an aging Catholic population and where each unit increment of one generation increases the chances of identifying as a Catholic by 1.84, or 84.4%. This relationship has become stronger in Quebec between 2001 and 2011. The results in Table 2 also show that, across Canada between 1991 and 2011, there has been a reversal in the relationship between age and Catholic affiliation. Whereas in 1991 each unit increment of one generation reduced the odds of identifying as a Catholic by a factor of 0.89, in 2011 the chances of identifying as a Catholic increased rather, by a factor of 1.17. Once again, this reflects the reality of Canada’s aging Catholic population and supports the idea of a generational effect regarding Catholic affiliation.

In contrast to age, being born outside of Canada reduces the odds of identifying as a Catholic across Canada. In 2011 for Canada as a whole, individuals born outside the country had 0.635 times the odds – or a 57.5% lower chance – of self-identifying as Catholic than those born within Canada. Once again, this relationship is strongest in Quebec where first generation immigrants have 0.198 times the odds, or are 5 times less likely, to identify as Catholic than individuals born in Canada. With the exception of the West, this negative relationship is present across Canada for each year of the study. This relationship also seems to be intensifying across the country, with the exception of the Atlantic region. It should, however, be noted that very limited levels of immigration in the Atlantic region overall could in part explain this exception. Taking Quebec as an example, while individuals born outside of Canada were 4.37 times less likely to identify as Catholic in 1991, the rate rose to 5.07 times less likely in 2011. These findings reflect the growing ethnic and religious diversification of immigration across Canada, including in Quebec.

Having French as a mother tongue emerged as the most important factor predicting Catholic affiliation. For each region in 2011, having French as a mother tongue – rather than English – increased the chances of identifying as a Catholic from nearly 6 to over 12 times, depending on the region. This rate stands at over 13.8 times for Canada as a whole. An examination of the results from the models from 1991 to 2011 in turn displays the scale of the transformation of the relationship between mother tongue and Catholic affiliation over the last few decades (see Figure 2). While having French as a mother tongue has the strongest impact of all independent variables on Catholic affiliation in 2011, this relationship has nonetheless considerably diminished since 1991. For Canada as a whole, whereas in 2011 having French as a mother tongue increased one’s chances of identifying as a Catholic by 13.8 times, this rate stood at more than 47 times in 1991. A similar relationship can be observed in each of the Canadian regions. These findings reflect the privileged relationship that still exists in Canada between the French language and Catholicism, but even more so the progressive decomposition – or “exculturation” – of the link between French-Canadian culture and Catholicism between 1991 and 2011.

Figure 2.

Odds ratios of identifying as a Catholic for mother tongue Francophones (in relation to mother tongue Anglophones), regions and Canada, 1991–2011.

Turning briefly to the full results of the binomial logistic models for Catholic affiliation in Canada (see Table A1 in the Appendix), it is possible to see that individuals with a mother tongue other than French or English also have greater odds of identifying as Catholic than Anglophone Canadians, although this relationship is much weaker than that of the influence of French as a mother tongue. For Canada as a whole, in 2011, individuals with a mother tongue other than French or English had 2.2 times higher odds of identifying as Catholic than the English-speaking reference group. Among the Canadian regions, the strongest relationship between Catholic affiliation and “Other” mother tongue can be observed in the province of Quebec. In 2011, individuals from Quebec who had neither French nor English as their mother tongue were 3.439 times more likely to identify as Catholic than Anglophones. It should be noted that this rate, while representing the strongest effect in 2011, nonetheless represents an important decline from the 1991 Quebec figure when those with neither French nor English as a mother tongue had 7.2 times the odds of identifying as Catholic compared with Anglophones.

Controlling for the other variables in the models, women have a higher likelihood than men of identifying as Catholic in Canada as a whole, for each year examined, as well as in each Canadian region. The strongest association for gender can be observed in Quebec where, in 1991, women were 85.3% more likely to identify as Catholic, a relationship that had dropped to 31.6% in 2011. It should be noted that this decrease between 1991 and 2011 in the greater odds of identifying as a Catholic among women is a trend that can be observed across Canada and for all regions, except in Atlantic Canada.

In terms of income, wealthier Canadians have slightly higher odds of identifying as Catholic, a relationship that has marginally intensified across the country as a whole between 1991 and 2011.⁹ For example, among Ontarians in 1991, an increase of one income bracket was linked to an increase in the odds of identifying as Catholic by 10.7% – a rate that had grown to 11.8% by 2011.

In contrast to income, education has had an increasingly negative relationship with Catholic affiliation across Canada, with the strongest negative relationship observed in Quebec. In 1991, in the province of Quebec, for each increase in a level of education, individuals had 0.917 times the odds (or a 9.1% lower chance) of identifying as Catholic. By 2011, these odds had marginally dropped to 0.915 times the odds (or 9.3% less likely) of identifying as Catholic for each increase in an education level.

Mass Attendance among Canada’s Catholic Population

Turning to Mass attendance as an outcome variable, Table 3 presents key findings for the binomial logistic models for monthly or more frequent Mass attendance among Canada’s Catholic population from 1991 to 2011. The outcome variable was coded as a dichotomous variable measuring the odds of attending a religious service at least once a month compared with less than monthly.¹⁰

Table 3.

Key findings from the binomial logistic models for monthly Mass attendance, Catholic population, 1991, 2001 and 2011.

			Canada	West	Ontario	Quebec	Atlantic
Age	e^(b)	1991	1.60***	1.31***	1.25*	1.97***	1.37***
	e^(b)	2001	1.75***	1.33***	1.33***	2.50***	1.75***
	e^(b)	2011	1.58***	1.12*	1.40***	2.38***	2.08***
Mother tongue French	e^(b)	1991	.75*** (−1.34)	1.16	1.35	.98 (−1.02)	1.76***
	e^(b)	2001	.35*** (−2.85)	1.06	.69* (−1.45)	.57* (−1.74)	.92 (−1.08)
	e^(b)	2011	.35*** (−2.87)	1.55	.62* (−1.61)	.43** (−2.32)	1.25

* p≤0.05 ** p≤0.01 ** *p≤0.001

Note: Variables included in the model: age, gender, income, education, place of birth and mother tongue.

For odds ratios <1, inverse odds (i.e. odds ratio of the event not occurring (1/e^(b))) are presented in parentheses.

Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey - PUMF, 1991, 2001 and 2011.

According to the results in Table 3, across Canada and for each year of study age has a significant and positive association with regular Mass attendance. Each unit increase of one generation increases the odds of attending a religious service at least once a month. For 2011, this relationship is strongest in the Atlantic region and in Quebec, which each have more aging Catholic populations. The odds of attending Mass at least once a month in these two regions increase respectively by 2 and 2.4 times with each increase in an age category.

Findings for the independent variable of place of birth have been omitted from Table 3 since many of the results were not significant (there being a restricted number of Catholics born outside of Canada in some of the regions) (see Table A2 in the Appendix). It should, however, be noted that, for Canada as a whole, Catholics born outside of Canada attend religious services more frequently on average than those born within the country (Meunier and Nault, 2014).

Turning to mother tongue, whereas having French as a mother tongue in comparison with English had a significant, positive relationship with Catholic affiliation for Canada as a whole as well as for all regions and for every year, an inverse relationship exists between French as a mother tongue and monthly Mass attendance among Canada’s Catholic population. For the whole of Canada, as well as for Ontario and Quebec, having French as a mother tongue reduces the odds of attending a religious service at least once a month. This speaks to the traces of cultural Catholicism characterized by strong religious affiliation yet low rates of religious practice. For Canada as a whole, while in 1991 Francophone Catholics were 1.34 times less likely than Anglophone Catholics to attend Mass at least monthly, these odds dropped even further to 2.87 times less likely in 2011.

Briefly examining the full results of the binomial logistic models for monthly Mass attendance among Canada’s Catholic population (see Table A2 in the Appendix), for Canada as a whole in 2011 Catholics born outside of Canada were 61.3% more likely to attend Mass at least once a month than Catholics born in Canada. This relationship is strongest in Canada’s Western region as well as in Ontario where Catholic individuals born outside of Canada are, respectively, 82.6% and 74.5% more likely to attend a religious service at least monthly than Catholics born in Canada. Similarly, for Canada as a whole, Catholics with neither French nor English as their mother tongue had a 50.5% greater chance of attending Mass at least once a month than Anglophone Catholics.

In terms of gender, across Canada and over the period from 1991 to 2011, Catholic women have higher odds of attending Mass at least once a month than Catholic men – a gender effect that can be observed for most religions in most Western societies (Pew Research Center, 2016). In Canada as a whole, this gap has narrowed over the 20-year period between 1991 and 2011. While in 1991 Catholic women in Canada had a 37.9% greater chance on average than Catholic men of attending Mass at least once a month, in 2011 this gap had dropped by more than half to 16.7%. Conversely, in the Atlantic region, where the relationship between gender and Catholic Mass attendance is the strongest, the gap in monthly Mass attendance between Catholic women and men has widened slightly. Whereas in 1991 Catholic women from the Atlantic region were 58.1% more likely to attend a religious service at least once a month, in 2011 they were 67.4% more likely.¹¹

Quebec as a Distinct Catholic Landscape?

Returning to our original question as to whether or not Quebec can still be considered a Catholically distinct society, or whether Catholicism in Quebec and in Canada are progressively becoming more similar, we expanded the analysis by developing a series of binomial logistic models to compare variables between the three Canadian regions (West, Ontario, and Atlantic) in relation to Quebec.

As illustrated in Figure 1, it is possible to note a certain narrowing in the gap in Catholic affiliation between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Even if Quebec still remains Canada’s most Catholic province – as well as the province where almost half of Canada’s Catholic population resides – it is nonetheless possible to observe, particularly after 2000, a more pronounced drop in affiliation to Catholicism in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, where affiliation has remained rather stable. The narrowing of the gap between Quebec and the rest of Canada in terms of religious affiliation is also reflected in Table 4 ¹² where, controlling for all other variables in the model, the odds of identifying as Catholic have dropped from -4 times to -2.3 times between the West and Quebec from 1991 to 2011, and from -2.8 times to -1.4 times between Ontario and Quebec for the same period. As for Canada’s Atlantic region, it should be noted that in 2011, the difference between this region and Quebec has even ceased to be statistically significant, at the 95% level. Referring back to Figure 1, it is important to understand that the narrowing of the gap in affiliation to Catholicism between Quebec and the rest of Canada must be attributed not to a rise in affiliation in other parts of Canada, but rather to a decrease in affiliation in Quebec, which is gradually approaching the lower but stable levels found elsewhere in the country.

Table 4.

Results for the binomial logistic models between regions (in relation to Quebec) for Catholic affiliation (total population) and monthly Mass attendance (Catholic population), 1991, 2001 and 2011.

			West	Ontario	Atlantic	Quebec
Catholic affiliation	e^(b)	1991	.25*** (−4.02)	.36*** (−2.80)	.53*** (−1.89)	Reference category
	e^(b)	2001	.31*** (−3.18)	.56*** (−1.79)	.73*** (−1.37)
	e^(b)	2011	.44*** (−2.30)	.74*** (−1.36)	.94 (−1.07)
Monthly Mass attendance	e^(b)	1991	1.13	1.76***	2.65***	Reference category
	e^(b)	2001	2.05***	2.24***	3.13***
	e^(b)	2011	2.14***	2.52***	2.57***

* p≤0.05 ** p≤0.01 *** p≤0.001

Note: Variables included in the model: age, gender, income, education, place of birth and mother tongue.

For odds ratios <1, inverse odds (i.e. odds ratio of the event not occurring (1/e^(b))) are presented in parentheses.

Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey - PUMF, 1991, 2001 and 2011.

While it is possible to observe a narrowing of the gap between Quebec and the rest of Canada in terms of Catholic affiliation between 1991 and 2011, when it comes to Mass attendance, the divide has widened over the same period. As noted in Figure 1, weekly or more frequent Mass attendance in Quebec plummeted between 1968 and the mid-1970s – at the heart of Quebec’s transition to a regime of cultural religiosity – to reach levels lower than the national average. Since then, and particularly since the early 1990s, this gap in Mass attendance between Quebec and other provinces has continued to widen.

As illustrated in Table 4, while there was no statistically significant difference in monthly Mass attendance between Catholics from Quebec and those from Canada’s Western provinces in 1991, 20 years later, Catholics from the West are more than twice as likely to attend a religious service at least once a month than Catholics from Quebec. A similar relationship can be observed in Ontario where, in 2011, Catholics from this province have more than 2.5 times the odds of attending Mass monthly than those from Quebec. Pushing the analysis even further, when running a multinomial logistic model for Mass attendance and examining the two extreme categories of this variable (weekly vs. never),¹³ it is possible to note that Catholics from Ontario and the Atlantic region are respectively 3.7 times and 4.3 times more likely than Catholics from Quebec to attend Mass at least once a week compared with never. Once again, it should be specified that this widening gap is not the result of a rise in regular religious practice in other parts of Canada, but rather of a sustained drop in Quebec.

Conclusion

Following the hypothesis that Quebec currently appears to be in a phase characterized by an exit from a regime of cultural religiosity, Catholicism in Quebec, currently marked by a significant drop in affiliation, could be on the path towards a more pluralist regime of religiosity, as suggested by Meunier and Wilkins-Laflamme (2011). However, having not yet completely broken from its cultural relationship with Catholicism – as illustrated by its rate of affiliation well above the national average and its rate of religious participation below the national average – Quebec would now be in a period of transition between two regimes. Following this logic, Catholicism in Quebec could be considered to be balancing between a culturalistic religious configuration – marked by an attachment to Catholicism which reflects identity more than religiosity – and the progressive transformation of this form of Catholicism into a new one, more modest in numbers but more practicing – resembling that which is found in more polarized, pluralist regimes of religiosity in the West and in Ontario (Meunier and Wilkins-Laflamme, 2011; Wilkins-Laflamme, 2014). The rise in the proportion of individuals identifying with no religion in Quebec, growing from 3.9% to 12.2% in 20 years, would support this hypothesis, as would the higher rates of regular religious practice among Catholics from Quebec who were born abroad.

According to the findings presented above, Catholicism in Quebec could be reaching the final years of its cultural form. It is possible to hold that, after a significant drop in the rate of Catholic marriages and baptized births, and after a drop in the odds of identifying as a Catholic – notably in relation to mother tongue – Quebec has reached a point where Catholic affiliation continues to drop as the number of individuals identifying with no religion continues to rise. Finding themselves in a minority situation, individuals continuing to identity as Catholic will do so no longer in order to support the idea of a cultural differentiation with the rest of Canada, but rather because they truly identify with Catholicism as a religion. Arriving at this threshold, the relationship to religious practice among Catholics from Quebec is likely to change, perhaps becoming similar to that of Catholics in the rest of the country.

On another note, our research on Catholicism in Quebec shows both the significance and limitations of David Martin’s (1978) theory on Catholicism in a secularized world. While it is fair to claim that a religion following the delimitations of political boundaries will tend to become a national religion – particularly when it contributes to building a protective rampart against secularization – it is not as fair to pre-emptively stipulate a religiosity regime based solely on the fact that this religion is Catholic. It is clear, the Catholicism presented here has little to do with conservatism; it is notably the place of Quebec in the Canadian Confederation that modifies the valence and function of its Catholicism, not the opposite. Here, issues surrounding language, nationalism and immigration seem to deeply influence the dominant configuration of Church and State, maybe even more so than the question of generations and, with it, the weight of secularization. Only cross-national comparisons focusing on the fate of Catholicism exiting a phase of cultural religion will be able to tell.¹⁴

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research project has been supported by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counsel (SSHRC).

Notes

Appendix

Table A3.

Results for the binomial logistic models between regions (in relation to Quebec) for Catholic affiliation (total population) and monthly Mass attendance (Catholic population), 1991, 2001 and 2011.

		1991			2001			2011
		b	SE	e^(b)	b	SE	e^(b)	b	SE	e^(b)
Catholic affiliation	W	−1.392***	.106	.249	−1.157***	.073	.314	−.833***	.075	.435
	O	−1.028***	.104	.358	−.583***	.070	.558	−.307***	.071	.736
	A	−.635***	.124	.530	−.316***	.089	.729	−.064	.090	.938
	Q	Reference category
Monthly Mass attendance	W	.119	.126	1.126	.719***	.102	2.053	.761***	.113	2.141
	O	.565***	.110	1.759	.806***	.090	2.238	.926***	.100	2.524
	A	.976***	.139	2.653	1.140***	.115	3.126	.943***	.127	2.568
	Q	Reference category

* p≤0.05 ** p≤0.01 *** p≤0.001

b = regression coefficient SE = standard error e^(b) = odds ratio

C = Canada W = West O = Ontario Q = Quebec A = Atlantic

Note: Variables included in the model: age, gender, income, education, place of birth and mother tongue.

Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey - PUMF, 1991, 2001 and 2011. Calculations by authors.

References

Béraud

Frédéric

Saint-Martin

(2012) Catholicisme en tension. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

Bibby

Reid

(2016) Canada’s Catholics. Vitality and Hope in a New Era. Ottawa: Novalis.

Bosset

Eid

Lebel-Grenier

Milot

(2009) Appartenances religieuses, appartenance citoyenne : Un équilibre en tension. Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval.

Christiano

(2007) The trajectory of Catholicism in twentieth-century Quebec. In: Tentler

(ed.) The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholicism Since 1950 in the United States, Ireland and Quebec. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, pp. 21–61.

Hervieu-Léger

(2003) Catholicisme. La fin d’un monde. Paris: Bayard.

Langlois

Gagné

(2011) Essor et déclin des effectifs du clergé et des communautés religieuses de l’Église catholique québécoise au XX^e siècle. Working paper.

Lefebvre

Beaman

(2014) Religion in the Public Sphere: Canadian Case Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Lefebvre

Béraud

Meunier

(2015) Catholicisme et cultures. Regards croisés Québec–France. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

Lemieux

(1974) Pluralité et sécularité. In: Le pluralisme. Pluralism: Its Meaning Today. Montreal: Fides, pp. 101–125.

10.

Lemieux

(1990) Le catholicisme québécois: Une question de culture. Sociologie et sociétés 22(2): 145–164.

11.

Martin

(1978) A General Theory of Secularization. Oxford: Blackwell.

12.

Meintel

(2014) Religious collectivities in the era of individualization. Social Compass 61(2): 195–206.

13.

Meunier

(2008–2011; 2011–2014) Principal investigator, SSHRC research grant, Vers une sortie de la religion culturelle des québécois? – phase 1 et 2. Analyse quantitative et qualitative des pratiques catholiques d’inscription culturelle au Québec, et Analyse comparative avec le Canada et l’Occident : Appartenance et baptême (1960–2014).

14.

Meunier

(2015) L’ancrage du catholicisme au Québec et sa déliaison progressive : Une sociologie historique de l’exculturation. In: Lefebvre

Béraud

Meunier

(eds) Catholicisme et cultures. Regards croisés Québec–France. Québec and Rennes: Presses de l’Université Laval and Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 21–44.

15.

Meunier

(2016) Le Québec et ses mutations culturelles : Six enjeux pour le devenir d’une société. Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa (Collection Amérique française).

16.

Meunier

Laniel

(2012) Congrès eucharistique international 2008. Nation et catholicisme culturel au Québec. Signification d'une recomposition religio-politique. Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 41(4): 595–617.

17.

Meunier

Laniel

Demers

(2010) Permanence et recomposition de la « religion culturelle ». Aperçu socio-historique du catholicisme québécois (1970–2005). In: Mager

Cantin

(eds) Religion et modernité au Québec. Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, pp. 79–128.

18.

Meunier

Nault

(2014) Vers une sortie de la religion culturelle : Les transformations du catholicisme au Québec et au Canada (1968–2008). In: Mabille

(ed.) La longue transition du catholicisme. Gouvernementalité et influence. Paris: Éditions du Cygne, pp. 27–63.

19.

Meunier

Wilkins-Laflamme

(2011) Sécularisation, catholicisme et transformation du régime de religiosité au Québec. Étude comparative avec le catholicisme au Canada (1968–2007). Recherches sociographiques 52(3): 683–729.

20.

Milot

(1991) Une religion à transmettre ? Le choix des parents. Essai d’analyse culturelle. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval.

21.

Moreux

(1969) Fin d’une religion ? Monographie d’une paroisse canadienne-française. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.

22.

Parti Pris (1967) Manifeste 1965–1966. In: Pris

Parti

, Les Québécois. Paris: Éditions François Maspero, pp. 249–280.

23.

Pérez-Agote

(2012) Portraits du catholicisme. Une comparaison européenne. Rennes: Presses de l’Université de Rennes.

24.

Pew Research Center (2016) The Gender Gap in Religion around the World, 22 March 2016. Available from: http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/22/gender-differences-in-worship-attendance-vary-across-religious-groups/ [accessed 16 September 2016].

25.

Portier

(2011) Les politiques religieuses dans les pays européens de tradition catholiques – deuxième partie. Revue théologique de Louvain 42: 329–351.

26.

Rioux

(1969) La question du Québec. Paris: Seghers.

27.

Rocher

(2015) Sur les dimensions constitutives de la citoyenneté: Perspective des minorités ethnoculturelles et religieuses dans un Québec à l’identité incertaine. Recherches sociographiques 56(1): 139–170.

28.

Rousseau

(2012a) Le Québec après Bouchard-Taylor : Les identités religieuses de l’immigration. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec.

29.

Rousseau

(2012b) La laïcité québécoise en régime de religiosité culturelle. Vivre ensemble 19(65): 6–10.

30.

Wilkins-Laflamme

(2014) Towards religious polarization? Time effects on religious commitment in US, UK and Canadian regions. Sociology of Religion 75(2): 284–308.