The Church that grew out of crayons

By Michael Coren in Catholic Herald.
16 October 2009

Michael Coren's heart sank when he first encountered Canadian Catholicism. But today he is proud of the country's vibrant Catholic life


It was 1986. The great brown crayon disaster of Holy Name church in Toronto, Canada's largest city. I'd been received into the Church two years earlier in London's sumptuous Spanish Place and convinced of the Catholic argument by Chesterton, Belloc, Knox and Newman.

It was because I was writing a biography of the former than I'd been invited to Canada to give a lecture at a G K Chesterton 50th anniversary conference (he died in 1936). I met a woman at the post-conference cocktail party who told me I "was amazing". Convinced this would never happen again, I would marry her the following year.

During the transatlantic courting visits I attended a large weekend Catholic gathering held by an influential and charismatic priest where we were lectured by a middle-aged woman psychiatrist with an eastern European accent straight out of central casting. She asked us to pick up a crayon from the middle of the room and colour in a picture. Bemused, almost incredulous, I grabbed the closet crayon and coloured away, assuming that my wife to be was somehow a follower of all this. She now, by the way, pretends not to have been present.

The lady professor from middle Europe looked through the 40 or 50 papers and then stopped at one in particular. I knew. Just knew.

"Who is Michael" - awful pronunciation - "Coren?" Seven years old again, I owned up.

"Agh", she said, all Freud and tweed, "so why did you only use the colour brown?"

"Because," I almost shouted, "it was the only bloody crayon left!"

Thus was my welcome to the Canadian Roman Catholic Church.

Canada is one of those geopolitical mysteries. Like Costa Rica's peacefulness or the beauty of Bruges. People just don't usually know. Thirty million people, incredibly wealthy, absurdly large, enormously successful, culturally and artistically fertile and often a predictor of what the United States will become 10 years later. But because it's a former British colony and on top of the world's only superpower it's often forgotten, ignored.

And it rather likes it that way.

Similarly with the Canadian Church. There are more than 13 million Catholics in Canada, 44 per cent of the population. There are eight million Protestants of various denominations, the largest claiming to be the United Church, at around half a million members. It's the most liberal of the churches and is haemorrhaging adherents. As are the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. Unlike the US, Evangelicals, at around 11 per cent, they are not a major force. Immigration has, of course, enormously increased the Hindu, Sikh and, in particular, Muslim communities.

There is an extensive, publicly funded Catholic education system in the country, a small Catholic television station and in the past two generations it's been unusual to have a prime minister who is not Catholic. Of a sort. Liberals Pierre Trudeau, Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien and John Turner and conservatives Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark were all nominal Catholics, with one or two of them claiming to attend Mass and perhaps even sometimes doing so. They also governed a country that is unique in the western world in having no abortion laws at all - publicly funded up to the ninth month and all sorts of laws to prevent protests outside abortion clinics. Canada was also the fourth country to introduce full same-sex marriage and had led the world in same-sex adoption and hate crime prosecutions of people who criticise the gay community just a little too much. Not that these issues are exclusively Catholic or the only issues facing the Church, but they are fairly reliable guide as to the social and political influence of Catholics within any state. Briefly, there are lots of people calling themselves Catholic in Canada, lots of people in Catholic churches in Sunday but still a crisis within Catholic Canada. Or at least there was.

At around the time when brown crayons were causing such a fuss, orthodox Catholics were considered eccentric and often regarded themselves, not altogether inaccurately, as victims. Perhaps the most influential Church newspaper was something called The Catholic New Times, referred to by those who knew it best as "Sandinista Update". The usual stuff - social justice, a preferential option for the poor, Liberation Theology and female ordination. The Church was wrong before Vatican II and John Paul didn't understand its true meaning. I demonstrate therefore I am, and a devotion to Marx rather than Mary. Or no, not Marx at all really. These were the middle class at play and prayer, frightened of leaving the Church and too timid to describe themselves as socialist. This may be Canada rather than the US but socialism is still considered extreme.

Vocations were rare, convents evaporated as feminist nuns positively dissuaded young women by example and even by argument from joining, and unions in Catholic schools made it virtually impossible for headmasters to ask potential teachers about their faith. It was a bleak time and many serious believers left for the Society of Pius X, Eastern Orthodoxy or evangelicalism. The best and the bravest stuck at it, argued that there had been worse in the past, that God would not abandon His Church.

Twenty years later it has not all been resolved but every change and reform is positive and every indication is that the worst has gone and that, while the detritus of what was still causes problems, it's going to be OK. Some of the reasons are obvious; most importantly, two popes who changed everything. While some of the Canadian bishops acted as if Rome did not exist, there was only so much denial that they could hide behind. They were also men of the Sixties and in their 60s and most of them have now retired. It must be deeply painful for them to watch as new bishops are appointed who are younger, often better educated and invariably far more conservative.

These new leaders were formed under John Paul and the Catholic counter-culture that developed during his reign, arguably more vehemently in North America than anywhere else. They were allowed to be thus formed because - important this - there was a revolution within Canadian seminary life. Two major causes. First, widespread immigration, in particular from China, Vietnam, Poland and the Philippines, sent waves of young men into seminaries who had often experienced Communism firsthand and were jubilantly orthodox. Very difficult for a bearded suburban liberal in sandals to tell a hardened young refugee from a Marxist paradise about injustice and why there "had to be a new paradigm shift and a new conversation of dialogue between the people of Jesus and the people of socialism".

Second, there was a great cleansing following the infamous abuse scandal. Canada was hit hard by this and the Canadian Church, as opposed to the media, knew exactly what was going on. The extensive and admirably balanced New York University study of the phenomenon concluded that more than 85 per cent of the victims were not so much little boys as young men who had reached puberty. Most of them were aged between 13 and 17. In fact, there were surprisingly few girls or very young boys. This did not suggest that homosexual men were more likely to be abusers, and no serious commentator made that conclusion, but it did suggest that most of the abuse from priests was of a homosexual nature rather than paedophiliac. Entire seminaries lost staff and students. It's no coincidence that in one of the largest, where there were alleged cases of bed-sharing and worse, a seminarian was required to obtain permission to initiate a group rosary. It is now compulsory.

The seminaries are not full but are growing steadily and the quality of the vocations is higher than ever.

In the greater Church two groups in particular engaged in a sort of stealth orthodoxy in those troubled years, Opus Dei and the Oratory. Opus Dei has always had its centre in Quebec, where, although overwhelmingly French and ostensibly Catholic, the Church is probably less popular than in any other Canadian province. The energy and passion of French-Canadians was injected into battles of over language and nationalism and the Church was seen as irrelevant and even an obstacle to change. Opus Dei developed in English Canada in the Seventies and established schools, organisations and a dormitory at the University of Toronto and chaplaincies elsewhere. It became the hub for serious Catholics, lay and religious, whether they were members or not. It gave support to those who felt isolated and marginalised in their parishes and kept a flame burning that had been as good as extinguished elsewhere.

The Oratory, led by a remarkable priest named Fr Jonathan Robinson, moved into a small, old church in the Toronto district of Parkdale, an area known for prostitution, drugs and being used by the authorities as a place to house the mentally ill. The Oratorians flourished in this glorious juxtaposition - intellectual, refined, committed followers of Newman and Neri living and working in some of the most difficult conditions the country faced. Masses for the masses. The church would eventually burn down and in its place the community raised enough money to build a new church that has a monastic, light-on-the-hill, reputation and presence. Yet while they were successful, the priests of the Oratory were obliged to keep a fairly low profile. There was resentment and opposition and little support from bishops and archbishops.

Fast forward to the present and Opus Dei is growing and part of the mainstream. The Oratory has two parishes, a seminary, young priests and probably the finest philosophy school in the country. The new Archbishop of Toronto, the most senior cleric in English Canada, is a visitor to the church and a genuine supporter of the work they do. He sends students to their schools. The appointment of Thomas Collins to the Toronto archbishopric is an inspired move. He a deeply pastoral man but also something of an intellectual, a fine preacher, media-savvy and with an utter commitment to his priests, his flock and to the historic Church.

This new sense of liberation has allowed the Sisters of Life, founded by the late Archbishop of New York John Cardinal O'Connor, to come to Canada for the first time and the Latin Mass in various forms is now celebrated in several parishes. It's not, though, and never should be about the Latin but about the reverence, and this is what is now most apparent in the Canadian Church. While there are still colossal problems within Catholic education in this country, and millions of Catholics who have no idea what they are supposed to believe, the dominant context has shifted and the sacraments, papal authority, the place of the Church in modern society and the importance of Catholic culture have become startlingly immediate.

I suppose they always were, but the perception is different now and the assumptions have been transformed. While orthodoxy varies from diocese to diocese, very few devout and serious Catholics now regard themselves as being alone and in the besieged minority.

As for The Catholic New Times, it folded because nobody was reading it. The poor old brown crayon? The rumour is it became a New Age devotee of internet paganism and left Canada long ago. It will not be missed.

Michael Coren is a television host and columnist in Canada. His website is www.michaelcoren.com