French American - Religion

Religion

Most Franco Americans have a Roman Catholic heritage (which includes most French Canadians and Cajuns). Besides the Protestant Huguenots who fled from France in the colonial era, there were some Protestants from Switzerland who came in the 19th century.

There was tension between the English-speaking Irish Catholics, who controlled the Church in New England, and the French immigrants, who wanted their language taught in the parochial schools. The Irish controlled all the Catholic colleges in New England, except for Assumption College in Massachusetts, controlled by the French, and one school in New Hampshire controlled by Germans. Tension reached a breaking point during the Sentinelle affair of the 1920s, in which Franco-American Catholics of Providence, Rhode Island, challenged their bishop over control of parish funds in an unsuccessful bid to wrest power from the Irish American episcopate.

Marie Rose Ferron was a mystic stigmatic; she was born in Quebec and lived in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Between about 1925 and 1936, she was a popular "victim soul" who suffered physically to redeem the sins of her community. Father Onésime Boyer, promoted her cult.

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Famous quotes containing the word religion:

    You say there is no religion now. ‘Tis like saying in rainy weather, there is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of his superlative effects.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
    Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)

    A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)