Ouellet’s impact on Quebec is still in progress
By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian
Catholic News
OTTAWA (CCN) — History has yet to determine the legacy Cardinal
Marc Ouellet has left Quebec and will leave in his new role as Prefect
of the Congregation for Bishops, say those who know him.
But his longtime friends reveal a much different picture than the mainstream
media’s depiction of a man ambitious for the papacy, a hardliner
out of touch with Quebec, and a harsh “ayatollah” who will
be remembered for opposing abortion.
When Ouellet became Archbishop of Quebec in 2002, people initially viewed
him as an outsider, as “the man from Rome” sent to straighten
things out, said Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast.
McGill University historian John Zucchi described Ouellet, 66, as an
insider who not only lived through the Quiet Revolution — he was
at the Grand Seminary in Montreal during its “cusp” —
but as someone who deeply felt its impact upon his immediate family.
Of eight children only he and his 88-year-old mother still practise
the Catholic faith.
Ouellet’s years as a Sulpician missionary in South America and
his studies in Rome under the great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthazar
exposed Ouellet to different perspectives, Zucchi said. When he returned
to Quebec in the late 1980s to teach at Montreal’s Grand Seminary,
he “came back with a new objectivity on the situation in the church,”
making him both an insider and an outsider.
Zucchi said Ouellet’s return as archbishop was not that of a “hit
man to fix everything,” but a recognition that there are “no
quick fixes in the church,” that draconian measures could not
change things, only humility and paying the price of a long, arduous
path to restore the place of religious faith.
“He never managed to carry the majority of the Quebec bishops,
or he didn’t manage to do that on some key issues,” said
McGill University theologian Douglas Farrow. “Of course, he is
a bishop of a quite different stripe.”
Many of the Quebec episcopacy he described as “still deeply mired
in the aftermath of the Quiet Revolution” that required the church
to adjust to the new laicism and agnosticism of Quebec society.
“(Ouellet) wasn’t of that sort,” Farrow said. “He
pointed out that Quebec society cannot flourish — not for long
— without recovering its roots and its attachment to the Christian
Gospel and he was unafraid to make that claim even on very controversial
matters.”
He was not against Quebec’s desires, Zucchi stressed, but believed
that she was missing the salvation she longed for, the true fulfilment
that could only be found in Christ.
Both Zucchi and Farrow say the Quiet Revolution did not reverse the
coziness Catholic religious leaders had with government during the Duplessis
era.
The church had been the right hand of government under Duplessis, Farrow
said, but this “hand in glove” relationship after the Quiet
Revolution changed so “the government was the leading hand now
and the church was going to go along with the government.”
In Ouellet’s criticism of the relativist Ethics and Religious
Culture (ERC) the province imposed on even private schools, Ouellet
pioneered a new attitude toward the relationship of church and state,
Farrow said.
“He may not always have gone about it in the most diplomatic ways,
but he certainly has gone about it with courage and comprehension of
the situation,” Farrow said.
Ouellet’s stance recalled the courageous and tenacious battle
of Quebec’s first bishop, Bishop Laval with Governor General Frontenac
over the liquor trade that was destroying the lives of Native people,
Farrow said.
History will judge whether his stature is comparable to Laval’s,
Farrow said. Three previous generations of bishops, however, have provided
many “counter-examples,” he noted.
Ouellet also paid a price for his uncompromising defence of human life.
Zucchi said he has never seen any church leader attacked so derisively
and viciously.
“The silence of the hierarchy in Quebec spoke volumes,”
Zucchi said, who questioned why none came forward publicly to show solidarity
with him.
The attacks against Ouellet, who had no power, pointed to a fear in
Quebec society of “anyone who has the courage to speak the truth,”
the historian said.
One bishop who did stand publicly with him was Prendergast who travelled
to Quebec City in late May to face the Quebec media at a joint news
conference.
“Given that many bishops prefer to lay low on controversial topics,
he appears harsh for simply speaking the truths of our faith without
compromise,” Prendergast said. “Dealing pastorally with
people who find themselves conflicted happens at the individual and
parochial level, but a bishop should proclaim the truth fearlessly and
unequivocally and I admire him for that.”
Prendergast, who has known Ouellet since the days they were both young
priests who never expected to become bishops, dismissed claims the cardinal
is a “moralist” or an ayatollah. He described him as a shepherd.
“He believes that only those who are evangelized, (who) have had
an encounter with Christ personally or through contact with his church,
will be able to accept his teaching on the life issues.”
“But given that Quebecers have fled the church, he needs to get
their attention so that they will come to inquire of Christ and one
way is that of his counter-cultural preaching pointing out to people
that having the highest suicide rates, broken marriages and wounded
families are not indicators of the ‘good life’ people thought
they were acquiring when they bought into the secularist agenda,”
Prendergast said.
Farrow said those who dismiss Ouellet’s pro-life stance may assume
the argument has been settled in favour of abortion, at least in Quebec.
The pro-abortion “curve is being modified” even in Quebec,
he said, adding in North America, the tide is moving in the other direction.”
Zucchi stressed Ouellet was not an ideologue. Instead, he wants people
to have an encounter with Christ, an encounter with the eucharist.
Ouellet will be remembered for the impact of the 2008 Eucharistic Congress
and for his reaching out to youth, through the Montee Jeunesse /Youth
Summits, Zucchi said.
“It’s not a massive group of young people, but a significant
following, whose fruits we will see in the future,” he said.
Though the cardinal was attacked constantly for being retrograde and
conservative, Zucchi said there is a silent world out there of thousands
of people who knew him, who followed him, who genuinely admired him
and loved him. Prendergast agreed that the faithful in Quebec love him.
He predicted the Congress would leave a lasting legacy.
While Ouellet was accused of taking a hard line stance to curry favour
in the Vatican, Zucchi, who has known him since the late 1980s when
he taught at Montreal’s Grand Seminary, said Ouellet in fact suffered
for his orthodoxy. Some observers viewed his 1994 transfer to a smaller
seminary in Edmonton as a demotion. Zucchi dismissed criticisms of Ouellet
as ambitious for power.
“He was a nobody until 1999. He had no ambitions,” Zucchi
said, describing him as a “nobody institutionally” with
“no pretensions to be anybody.”
In 1999, Pope John Paul II appointed him secretary of the Council for
Christian Unity and made him bishop. In 2002, Ouellet was “completely
shocked” to be named Archbishop of Quebec, Zucchi said.
In the next two to four years, half of Quebec’s dioceses will
become vacant due to bishops’ reaching retirement age. In his
new role, Ouellet will play a key role in finding bishops to form a
“united episcopate that is capable of taking on the challenges
that now have to be faced,” Farrow said.
Rosica sees Ouellet’s impact going far beyond Quebec.
“He is a professor of theology and has worked in the formation
of priests. He brings pastoral experience of a bishop of a residential
see,” Rosica wrote on the Salt + Light TV blog. “He knows
the challenges of secularism, quietism, religious indifference and atheism.”
“He also knows the deep longings, hopes and pains of human hearts,
especially the hearts of priests and bishops,” he wrote.
Rosica noted the importance of Ouellet’s being both North American
but not Anglo-Saxon, making him a “bridge to Latin America and
to Europe.”
He’ll be remembered for being the first of the major episcopal
voices to challenge the status quo, and call Quebec to repentance and
to recover its lost heritage in the faith,” said Farrow. “I
think a voice in Quebec was needed and he was it.”
As Archbishop of Quebec and primate of all of Canada, it was “only
appropriate that he would have a national voice.”
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