Visiting International Jesuit Fellow at Holy Cross to Give Talk on Quebec’s ‘Quiet Revolution’

WORCESTER, Mass. – Jacques Monet, S.J., visiting international Jesuit fellow at the College of the Holy Cross, will give a talk titled "The Catholic Church in Quebec: The Quieter Revolution" on April 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the College’s Rehm Library. The talk is free and open to the public.

In the early 1960s, the province of Quebec went through a period of rapid change and reform often referred to as the "Quiet Revolution." In politics, business, commerce, cultural affairs, education and social services, Canada’s French and Catholic province, which was characterized by conservative ideology and traditional values became a modern, liberal society, secular, efficient, planned and well organized.

The increased role of the government touched each one of the Catholic Church’s institutions. The reactions of both clergy and laity — a quieter revolution — led to years of reassessment which some found to be generalized confusion, and others a most welcome renewal.

Fr. Monet is a specialist in Canadian constitutional and social history, as well as 19th-century French-Canadian nationalism, and Church history. He has been the director of the Canadian Institute of Jesuit Studies since 1988, and the director of the Archives of the Jesuit Fathers of Upper Canada since 1999. He served as president of Regis College, the theological college on the Upper Canadian Province of the Society of Jesus, and was a founding member of the Toronto School of Theology in the University of Toronto. He has published many scholarly articles in both official languages, and has also contributed to many books, including the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and The Canadian Encyclopedia. His books include The Last Cannon Shot: A Study in French Canadian Nationalism (1969) and The Union of the Canadas (1985).

The talk is sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.