r The Catholic Democracy of America,64 - Digital Repository Services

6 Romani Catholicism in America.
Mass. At Quebec, the most nobly planted city of the western
hemisphere, all is different. The Church is omnipresent. The
view of the grey buildings seen from one's windows takes one
back to the beginning of the last century, and the sight of a
daily newspaper scarcely removes the illusion, for the little
French journal under its " Faits divers " announces a miracle
which took place last week in a neighboring village, and in an
official column advertises the sentence of excommunication read
on Sunday by the curé of St. Joseph at Lévis upon a luckless
couple who have been defying Divine law and human conventionality.
Even the pastimes of the faithful are fashioned according to
the ancien régime, or, at all events, certain modern forms of
amusement are strictly banned. The Governor-General is in
residence at his summer quarters, and the maidens of Quebec
implore for a dispensation for a ball at the Citadel. All in
vain : they are sternly referred to the official manual on Les
danses et les bals, a grim little tract which commences with the
severe proposition that " La danse et les bals, comme ils se font
ordinairement, sont un scandale et un danger," and under the
heading of "Les danses immodestes" they may read "sont
réputées telles les danses modernes connues sous les noms de
Yalse, Polka, Galop, Cancan et autres semblables." It must
not from this be imagined that the last named of these "danses
vives " is a usual feature of the programmes of viceregal or
other polite festivities in Canada, and why the good curé of
N.D. de Quebec should have bracketed it with the other less
volatile measures is a mystery. Perhaps the Highland reel
was danced in Lord Lome's time, and was mistaken for
it ; but this is only conjecture. At all events the maidens of
Quebec refuse to be consoled with the historical fact that
Madame de Maintenon never danced the polka.
The Church in Lower Canada not only regulates the lives
and occupations of the people, but it directs the politics of the
province. That it represents no mere faction is shown by the
attitude of the Federal Parliament at Ottawa whenever the