Ignace Bourget

The fall of the Papal States

Bourget was concerned not only with politics in Montreal, but also with politics in Italy, which directly affected the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. Between 1849 and 1870, the Italian peninsula underwent dramatic political changes, culminating in the unification of Italy into one nation. This had severe consequences for the Vatican and for the Roman Catholic Church. In 1848 Pope Pius IX was evacuated from Rome, and on September 20, 1870, the Papal States were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, effectively ending their sovereignty. These upheavals were a source of great concern to many Catholics, and they were of particular importance to Bourget, who as an ultramontane believed firmly in the supreme authority of the Pope in all matters both temporal and spiritual.

On October 23, 1854, Bourget travelled to Europe, where he remained until July 29, 1856. He visited Rome to represent the ecclesiastical province at the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1854, and then spent time in Italy and France. While in France he published a book on Roman liturgy entitled Ceremonial des évêques commenté et expliqué par les usages et traditions de la sainte Eglise romaine avec le texte latin, par un évêque suffragant de la province ecclésiastique de Québec, au Canada, anciennement appelé Nouvelle-France, complimentary copies of which he distributed to all the French bishops.

In a series of pastoral letters in 1860, Bourget addressed the ongoing unification of Italy. He argued that the revolution in Italy was attacking the Church "in order next to overthrow unimpeded the rest of the universe", and characterised Canada's liberal books and newspapers as accomplices in this alleged conspiracy. The liberal newspaper Le Pays and its editor Louis-Antoine Dessaulles were often the subjects of Bourget's pastoral letters, particularly seven long letters written by Bourget in February 1862 directly addressed to the newspaper, which the owners of Le Pays refused to publish.

In 1862, Bourget again travelled to Rome, this time with the goal of representing the Province of Quebec at the canonization of the Japanese martyrs. While there he was made a Roman count and Assistant at the Papal Throne.

In 1868 Bourget was instrumental in the recruitment and enlistment of seven detachments of Canadian Papal Zouaves (volunteer infantry regiments), comprising 507 individuals, who were sent to Rome to assist the papacy in the defence of the Papal States at a cost to the church of at least $111,630. They there joined troops from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, but were ultimately unsuccessful in preventing Rome's annexation by the Kingdom of Italy.

New Brunswick Common Schools Act of 1871

On April 5, 1871, a bill was tabled in the parliament of the Province of New Brunswick which provided for the establishment of government-operated "common schools" requiring compulsory attendance of students. On May 17, 1871, the bill was passed into law as the Common Schools Act of 1871. The Common Schools Act replaced the Public Schools Act 1858, and it included provisions forbidding the teaching of catechism courses, prohibiting teachers from wearing religious garb, and requiring teachers to obtain government certification. The provisions effectively abolished the system of religious schooling which had operated in New Brunswick until that time. The enactment resulted from government doubt as to the quality of the religious education being provided, and concerns about attendance rates among enrolled pupils, which by 1871 were as low as 55%.

John Sweeny, bishop of Saint John fought an unsuccessful campaign against the act for several years, both through the auspices of Catholic MPs in the New Brunswick parliament, and via challenge in the courts. However, he was unsuccessful. He also urged Catholics to stop paying the school tax in protest, to which the government responded by imprisoning key priests and seizing property, including Sweeny's carriage.

Finally on May 18, 1873, Sweeny attended the provincial council of the Quebec church, where he invited the bishops of Quebec to intervene in New Brunswick affairs with the goal of supporting the cause of religious schooling. Bourget, who had had a key role in developing Lower Canada's system of religious schooling, accepted the invitation. The act prevented the teaching of Catholicism, regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as one of its key duties. On May 19, Bourget and Bishop Louis-François Laflèche co-authored and released a statement opposing the Common Schools Act, with the effect that several Conservative MPs of New Brunswick hailing from Quebec threatened to break ranks and support a motion of no-confidence against the government. The New Brunswick government responded by offering to pay the church's costs in the ongoing legal action over the act if the no-confidence motion was not passed - a deal which the church accepted.

The legal challenge made its way to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, at that time Canada's highest court of appeal, where the Privy Council rejected the church's case, effectively endorsing the government. However, discontent with the Common Schools Act continued to grow, culminating in 1875 when a protest at the town of Caraquet, New Brunswick devolved into a riot and two people were shot. Following the riots, amendments to the Act were made and the common schools system was eventually abandoned, replaced with a predominantly public schooling system but retaining government-subsidised religious schools.

Although New Brunswick ended up with a primarily secular schooling system, the civil unrest caused by the passage of the Common Schools Act and Bourget's public interference may have deterred the parliament of Quebec from following New Brunswick's lead, as Quebec had no Ministry of Education from 1875 to 1964.

Guibord case

On November 18, 1869, Joseph Guibord, a professed Catholic and member of the Institut Canadien, died. His widow, Henrietta Brown, applied to have Guibord buried in Notre Dame des Neiges, a Catholic cemetery. Due to Bourget's earlier excommunication of the Institut, reinforced by a letter written by Bourget that year, Brown was told that Guibord could not be buried in the sanctified area of the cemetery reserved for Roman Catholics, although the cemetery curate offered to bury Guibord without religious rites in the section used for non-Roman Catholics and unbaptised infants, and without religious rites. Brown did not accept this offer, and Guibord's remains were therefore temporarily deposited in the vault of the local Protestant cemetery.

Prominent lawyers Rodolphe Laflamme and Joseph Doutre commenced legal proceedings on behalf of Guibord's widow and eventually took the case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, which was at that time the court of supreme jurisdiction for Canada. Their argument was that under the civil law of Canada the Church had a legal obligation to afford Guibord a Catholic burial.

In 1874 the Privy Council ruled that Guibord should be buried in a Catholic cemetery, and ordered that Bourget and the Roman Catholic Church pay the costs of the legal proceedings. Following the ruling, Bourget went to the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery and deconsecrated the burial plot where the Privy Council had ordered that Guibord could be buried. Upon arrival at the cemetery, the hearse containing Guibord's body was pelted with rocks by an angry mob. The body was later escorted to the grave plot by soldiers.

Involvement in church politics

Université Laval

In 1852, Bourget was involved with the founding of the Université Laval by the Séminaire de Québec. At the time, Bourget believed that responsibility for the university was to be shared by all bishops within the episcopal province of Quebec. However, the organisation and management of the university were subsequently taken over by the archbishop and seminary of Quebec, with the result that by 1858 none of the local (Montreal) classical colleges were affiliated with the university.

This led Bourget, from 1862, to plan the founding of a new Catholic university in Montreal. This was in part prompted by increasing numbers of Catholic students enrolling at the (secular) McGill College and elsewhere to study law and medicine out of lack of a Catholic alternative. In 1865 Bourget petitioned the Vatican for the establishment of a new Catholic university in Montreal but his application was rejected. In 1870 the Université Laval proposed opening a branch in Montreal but Bourget rejected this proposition as it did not accept his authority over it as bishop. In 1876 the Vatican ordered the establishment of a branch of the Université Laval at Montreal, answering only to Quebec (not Bourget), but Bourget resigned as Bishop shortly thereafter and therefore was never required to enact the order.

Division of Notre-Dame parish

By 1863, the Montreal parish of Notre-Dame had grown in size to a population of around 100,000, with its parish priest by tradition being the Sulpician superior of the Grand Séminaire de Montréal. Following an application by the Superior General of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, Bourget was asked by the Holy See to comment on the situation of Notre-Dame parish. Bourget commented that he was happy with the current situation, providing that the parish priest was wholly subordinated to Bourget as bishop, meaning that Bourget would have the power to dismiss them from the position.

The Sulpicians disputed Bourget's proposed hierarchy and both Bourget and the Superior General of Saint-Sulpice were summoned to Rome. The Sulpicians refused to allow Bourget to have authority to dismiss the parish priest and threatened to withdraw their entire religious community of 57 priests from Montreal, which would have created a crippling shortage of clergy in the diocese. Negotiations were held with the result that in 1865 Bourget was given authority to divide the parish of Notre-Dame on the condition that the new parishes would be offered first to the Sulpicians, that the Sulpicians would name their own priests to the parishes but would require them to be invested by the Bishop, and that the new parish priests could be dismissed by either the Bishop or the Superior of the Sulpicians.

Between September 1866 and December 1867, Bourget divided Notre-Dame into ten new canonical parishes. However, in order to invest the parishes with legal existence they were required to be incorporated. The Sulpicians advised the government not to recognise the new parishes, claiming that they were merely succursal chapels of the parish of Notre-Dame. This resulted in a series of protracted legal and political battles between Bourget and the Sulpicians which ended with Bourget's victory in 1873, when all the parishes obtained their civil registration.