Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (continue II. ITS FEAR OF THE ENGLISH PROTESTANT INFLUENCE All the old beliefs have been preserved as it were in ice among the French of Canada, and it would seem that the great stream of modern thought has as yet failed, with them, to shake the rock of Catholic belief. It is rare to find a body of the faithful so submissive in their attitude ; and it is not merely the country folk who are to be found rallying round their priests, but also the townsfolk and the industrial population generally. Indifference is to be met with, of course, here as everywhere, but it hardly ever takes on the form of disrespect. We are far indeed from modern France. In a bilingual country peopled by two races it is natural that the limits of religious jurisdiction should be very clearly drawn ; this is the normal result of historical conditions, no less than of a very consistent and resolute line of policy followed by the Roman clergy since the first days of the conquest—the policy of isolation. Dispersion and absorption are the two dangers which menace unceasingly the unity of our race in Canada. Therefore it was that the Church, profoundly convinced that to keep the race French was to keep it Catholic, came to look upon isolation as the chief safeguard for a THE RACE QUESTION IN CANADA 21 racial individuality threatened on all sides by the advances of the New World. Therefore it is that it has put out all its efforts to segregate its flock from the rest of America. Instead of attempting the difficult and ungrateful task of making converts in the enemy's camp, it has devoted all its energies to retaining its hold over the souls belonging to it from the far past. In this work the two influences it has most to fear are those of Protestantism and Free Th...