Fire sale of Churches in Canada
TheStar.com Canada Quebec's churches need miracle
It might be quite beautiful, with its golden cross next to the steeple, its triumphal arches inside, its extraordinary Casavant organ presiding, but that hasn't stopped Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours from steadily becoming abandoned. Barely 100 seats in its pews built for 1,000 are taken on Sundays, and that's on a good day.
"We take in maybe $100 or $125 during the collection," says Father Pierre Charbot, shrugging. Not nearly enough to even pay the heating.
As a result, the church is for sale. But the west-end edifice has been on the market for more than a year, and so far, no one's buying.
Officials are still hopeful, but as of now, the majestic grey-stone church is a white elephant.
The fire sale of Catholic churches in Quebec continues unabated; they are victims of a population that, more than elsewhere in Canada, has turned its back on organized religion.
Fewer than 10 per cent actually attend mass.
It might be quite beautiful, with its golden cross next to the steeple, its triumphal arches inside, its extraordinary Casavant organ presiding, but that hasn't stopped Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours from steadily becoming abandoned. Barely 100 seats in its pews built for 1,000 are taken on Sundays, and that's on a good day.
"We take in maybe $100 or $125 during the collection," says Father Pierre Charbot, shrugging. Not nearly enough to even pay the heating.
As a result, the church is for sale. But the west-end edifice has been on the market for more than a year, and so far, no one's buying.
Officials are still hopeful, but as of now, the majestic grey-stone church is a white elephant.
The fire sale of Catholic churches in Quebec continues unabated; they are victims of a population that, more than elsewhere in Canada, has turned its back on organized religion.
Fewer than 10 per cent actually attend mass.
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From an American perspective, this sentence is as ironic as it is sad. After Parliament passed the Quebec Act (1774), it was quickly dubbed one of the Intolerable Acts by Patriot (pro-independence) leaders in the Thirteen Colonies. The primary "intolerable" fact was the act's assertion of the crown's control of the recently acquired Canadian territory (the colonists rightly took this as the first step in a renewed assault on local authority). However, the act's granting of official toleration to the Catholic faith in Canada and of the right of Catholics to practice their faith openly—a right most Catholics in England and the colonies still lacked—also outraged many colonists, especially in Puritan New England.
Who could have thought then that in the early twenty-first century it would come to pass that, in the long run, the New England Puritans had nothing to fear?