Au nom du père?Rethinking the History of Fatherhood in Quebec

Saint Brother André of Montréal and the Performance of Catholic Masculinity

“…A final theme will enrich our discussion and add to our understanding of Brother André’s ministry: that of “spiritual paternity,” discussed by Gauvreau (2005) and elaborated upon by Gossage (2014: 56–57). Though these scholars speak generally of the post-war Québec context, and more specifically of a renewed emphasis on the domestic role of the father in childrearing, the concept of spiritual paternity is, I would argue, both elastic enough to warrant multiple meanings and particularly germane to the question at hand.…”

“…Tom Inglis, in his important study on the overwhelming influence of the Catholic Church in modern Ireland, argued that Irish priests, by virtue of their close association with Irish mothers, were able to exercise a determining role as civilizing agents and moral arbiters in Irish society (Inglis, 1998), and they were often mistrusted by other men. The role of the Catholic Church and its clergy (both priests and brothers) in Québec society was really not that markedly different from the Irish context, as is confirmed by Québécois scholarship (Gauvreau, 2009;Gossage, 2014). Though clergy may have held a great deal of moral suasion, their ambivalent sexuality-a sexuality freely given up, and therefore subject to a great deal of suspicion-kept them in a subordinate, even decidedly inferior, position vis-à-vis other married heterosexual men, especially those with children.…”

“…In recent decades, there has been a prodigious and significant outpouring of scholarly research on men and masculinities in Québec (Bienvenue and Hudon, 2005a, 2005b; Hudon and Bienvenue, 2004; Bienvenue, Hubert and Hudon, 2014; Duhaime, 2004; Gossage, 2014, 2016; Roussel, 2003; Schwartzwald, 1993; Vacante, 2017). This is due, in large part, to the “turn to gender” in the humanities and the social sciences.…”