Religion

Unlike many who left in England and France for North America at the opening of the seventeenth century, carrying in their minds strongly sectarian visions of the Christian faith, those who settled in Acadia had considerable toleration for differing religions. While Catholicism was the faith of most Acadians, the first expedition to the colony was led by a Huguenot and in later years the population definitely included Protestants.

The Catholic Church was a weak institution in Acadia. Most priests who came to the colony before 1686 were primarily concerned with missionary activity among the Micmac. When the Treaty of Utrecht was promulgated in 1713, there was a letter of understanding attached to it that granted the Acadians religious freedom and the right to have priests sent to them by France. Resident priests were uncommon in most of the Acadian settlements before 1755, however, and in their absence the maintenance of the Catholic faith was left to the family. In 1748, excluding the Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre, whose activities were peripatetic and centred upon the Micmac, there were only five priests in all the Acadian settlements, from those on the south shore to those north of the Chignecto Isthmus. Essentially, most Acadians had to be content with an annual visit by a priest; the three main regions of Acadian life – the Annapolis valley, the Minas Basin, and Beaubassin – had a priest somewhere in the region most years. Weekly Mass was the privilege only of those within an hour or so journey of the major parish churches, and priestly blessing of weddings and baptisms took place only on those rare occasions when a priest came to a particular neighbourhood. In these circumstances, Acadian Catholicism before 1755 was based far more upon individual faith sustained by practice in the home than upon clerically imposed discipline. This proved to be a source of strength during the years of exile, when Acadians found themselves living in the overwhelmingly Protestant colonies of the British Empire.

Though the majority of Acadians have always been firmly Catholic in their religious life, their relations with the institutions of the Church have often been less than completely cordial. Even before the deportation a report of the archdiocese of Quebec suggested that the Acadians had as much interest in drinking on Sunday as in going to Mass. In the years after 1764 those Quebec priests who worked among the Acadians in New Brunswick complained bitterly of their behaviour. In the words of one such worker in the vineyard, the Acadians “boasted ... of having abandoned all for their faith and ... a great number ignore ... the fact that faith is worth nothing without works.” During the last years of the eighteenth century, the Acadians never hesitated to argue with their spiritual advisers over moral, doctrinal, and such practical matters as the times of Mass. Exacerbating such conflicts was ethnic tension. Between 1816 and 1912, none of the nineteen bishops and archbishops appointed to Maritime dioceses were French-speaking or of Acadian descent. Furthermore, the priesthood itself was overwhelmingly English-speaking until well into the nineteenth century, and, as a result, disputes between Acadian congregations and their Scottish and Irish priests were constant. The opening of the Collège Saint-Joseph in 1865 led to the ordination of many Acadians, but such Acadian priests were often sent by Scots and Irish bishops to English-speaking parishes rather than Acadian ones.

Demands for francophone representation within the Maritime episcopacy began in the late 1880s and were a natural outcome of the proliferation of Catholic sees in the region, the emergence of a strong sense of Acadian identity, and the growth in the number of francophone clergy. Eventually, in 1912, an Acadian priest, Edouard Leblanc, was made bishop of Saint John, but the pressure for a stronger Acadian presence in the hierarchy continued. Though the Quebec bishops were supportive, the anglophone Catholics of the Maritimes were not. Undeterred, in 1917 a small group of clerical and lay people, including the New Brunswick educator Albert Sormany and with the backing of the bishop of Saint John, presented a petition to the Vatican in 1917, with copies going to all francophone bishops in Canada as well as the then bishop of Chatham, Thomas Barry. It pointed out that, of the 80,926 Catholics in that diocese, 64,604 were francophones; of the 71 priests, 51 were francophone; and of the 250 members of religious orders, 201 were francophone. These facts made an impression. When the diocese of Chatham became vacant in 1919, Monseigneur Patrice Chiasson was consecrated as its bishop. The next goal for Acadian religious activists was the transformation of Moncton into an archbishopric. Although this was opposed strongly by the anglophone priests of the Saint John diocese, Rome acceded to Acadian demands in 1936, naming the Acadian Monseigneur Louis-Joseph-Arthur Melanson to the new archbishopric of Moncton. The final bishopric created in New Brunswick was that of Edmundston, on 25 December 1944. Nova Scotia had to wait until 1953 for Yarmouth to be carved out of the archdiocese of Halifax. Its first bishop was Albert Lemenager, formerly of the Moncton diocese.

Until the mid-1970s, religious orders played a crucial role in the provision of education and health services for Acadians. All the male orders were branches of foundations established either in Quebec or in France. Of these, the most important were the Eudiste fathers and the Holy Cross fathers. While some women’s orders, such as Filles de la Sagesse as well as the Congrégation du Sacre-Coeur, came from France, Quebec, and the United States, Acadian women also founded their own orders. The Petites Soeurs de la Sainte Famille were in existence in Memramcook by 1873. In 1922 the Congrégation des Filles de Marie de l’Assomption came into being in Campbelltown, and two years later the Congrégation des Religieuses de Notre-Dame du Sacre Coeur was established. The Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate was founded in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, in 1952 and now has more than 1,000 members across Canada. The fact that Acadian women have established their own religious orders is not surprising. The interpretation of Catholicism among the Acadians has always has always attached much importance to the role of women. Parishes are frequently dedicated to women patron saints and the major cathedrals are dedicated either to Mary or to Mary’s Mother, Saint Anne.

The Catholic Church and Acadian identity have always gone hand in hand; indeed, until the late 1940s, a significant proportion of the Acadian elite were either members of the clergy or had been educated in Catholic colleges. Nevertheless, while religious belief is still important to Acadians, the Catholic Church is as much in crisis among them as it is elsewhere. In the archdiocese of Moncton, the average age of the 35 francophone priests was 59 in 1991. That year 11 of the parishes in the diocese were without a resident priest. Similarly, between 1956 and 1991 the number of priests in the diocese of Edmundston fell from 135 to 35. What this means for the importance of religion in the lives of individual Acadians is hard to determine. Yet the link between Catholicism and Acadian identity in the future is clearly going to be a much different matter than it was in the past.