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rfmcdonaldBertrand Marotte's recent Globe and Mail article examining Brother Andre, a Montreal-based monk from the early 20th century who became Canada's first saint of the new century, highlights
This theme, of Brother Andre as a man of the people and a man whose religion is something modern-day Quebecois could sympathize with, is really being played up.
Mind, whatever Quebecers feel about Brother Andre, and about the province's traditionally close association with Roman Catholic identities of one sort or another, this identity is idiosyncratic. Leaving aside the legality and accepotability of same-sex and common-law relationships, after Cardinal Marc Ouellet condemned abortion even for rape victims, polls revealed that 94% of Quebec's population disagreed with him, newspaper columnists and journalists went after him fiercely, and the National Assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for safe access to abortion for all women. Catholic identity--like religious identity generally--can be elastic.
Still, I suppose the Church is taking what it can get, and if canonizing a man of the people could help ... I wonder if the same phenomenon might be at work in Australia, where Mary Mackillop has become that country's first saint of the 21st century, a woman who foounded and ran her own religious order and was exzcommunicated for a couple of years for exposing and sending off a sex-abuser priest. As in the past, so in the future?
He is of another time, when piety and subservience to the Catholic Church were paramount in average Quebeckers’ lives.
Yet more than 70 years after his death – in a secular age when church attendance is anemic and the institution is under fire for its alleged role in the cover-up of priests’ sexual abuse of children – Brother André’s star is burning bright.
[. . .]
For the Roman Catholic Church and the oratory, it’s an opportunity to get some much-needed good news out, as well as to spread the word about Brother André to the secular world.
“I get the sense that among Quebecois, [Brother André] is viewed as ‘one of our own,’ ” said Father Charles Corso, who heads the pastoral services at the Oratory. “Here is this ordinary Québécois who is now recognized worldwide. Any Québécois with a scintilla of spiritual feeling has to feel a sense of pride, of good pride.”
To attain the status of sainthood, Brother André, whose legend as a miracle worker grew over his long life span, had to have two of his alleged miracles verified and confirmed by the church. The institution insists on keeping the details of the alleged miracles confidential.
The Archbishop of Montreal, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, recently called Brother André – born Alfred Bessette in 1845, an orphan who could barely read and write and became the doorkeeper and janitor at Collège Notre-Dame, across the street from the basilica – a folk hero, akin to hockey great Maurice Richard in the hearts of Quebeckers.
On a radiant, sunny fall day, Esther Lemay stands in front of the massive Oratory and muses about the significance for ordinary Quebeckers of Brother André’s canonization. “He was someone close to the people, he was a man of the people, devoted to them,” said Ms. Lemay, 75, who lives in Shawinigan.
The oratory is playing up Brother André’s common touch with a major advertising campaign that includes television spots and radio ads and even a website. Its public-relations team will post updates, live from the ceremony in Rome, to social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The ad campaign’s tagline is “Brother André, a Friend, a Brother, a Saint.”
This theme, of Brother Andre as a man of the people and a man whose religion is something modern-day Quebecois could sympathize with, is really being played up.
Fr. [Mario] Lachappelle said what interests him most about André’s life is not so much the healings but his unconditional acceptances of others and his ability to speak simply about the love of God. and what he calls his “avant-garde” ecumenism. “What is fascinating about Brother André is that he was so much ahead of his time,” he said. “He was a father figure, and did not have an image of God as a dispenser of justice.”
André, he said, was “avant-garde” in the sense that he was unusually liberal for his time. For example, he befriended non-Catholics and non-Christians, a rarity for devout men of the Church in that era. One of his closest friends was George H. Ham, the Protestant newspaperman who published the first biography of Andre, “The Miracle Man of Montreal,” in 1921.
Mind, whatever Quebecers feel about Brother Andre, and about the province's traditionally close association with Roman Catholic identities of one sort or another, this identity is idiosyncratic. Leaving aside the legality and accepotability of same-sex and common-law relationships, after Cardinal Marc Ouellet condemned abortion even for rape victims, polls revealed that 94% of Quebec's population disagreed with him, newspaper columnists and journalists went after him fiercely, and the National Assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for safe access to abortion for all women. Catholic identity--like religious identity generally--can be elastic.
Still, I suppose the Church is taking what it can get, and if canonizing a man of the people could help ... I wonder if the same phenomenon might be at work in Australia, where Mary Mackillop has become that country's first saint of the 21st century, a woman who foounded and ran her own religious order and was exzcommunicated for a couple of years for exposing and sending off a sex-abuser priest. As in the past, so in the future?
