Multiculturalism: Its Advantages and Limits

Heather C. Devine, Associate in Litigation, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP and Director, The Empire Club of Canada; Alan Medri, Student, President of the Student Council, St. Michael's Choir School; Dr. Reginald Stackhouse, MA, LTh, BD, PhD, DD, Principal Emeritus and Research Professor, Wycliffe College and Past President, The Empire Club of Canada; John McGrath, Chancellor, Temporal Affairs, Roman Catholic Diocese of Toronto; The Most Reverend Terence E. Finlay, Archbishop of the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario, Archbishop of the Diocese of Toronto Anglican Church and Honorary Chaplain, The Empire Club of Canada; The Rt. Hon. John Turner, Former Prime Minister of Canada and Partner, Miller Thomson; The Reverend Kimberly Beard, BA, BEd, MDiv, Rector, Christ Church, Brampton and Director, The Empire Club of Canada; W. Frank Morneau, Chairman, Morneau Sobeco; Robert W. Chisholm, Vice-Chair, Domestic Banking, Scotiabank and Member, Finance Council of the Archdiocese of Toronto; Thomas McCarthy, Vice-Chairman, J. J. Barnicke Limited; and The Hon. James K. Bartleman, OOnt, Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario.

Introduction by John Koopman

About 14 centuries ago, after much bloodshed and war, an orphan named Mohammed marched into Mecca and was acknowledged as both a prophet and a prince. As a prophet he decreed that no infidel should enter Mecca. As a prince he subjugated the Arabian Peninsula. Islam developed not wary of political and temporal power but intensely intertwined with it.

In contrast, early Christian history was marked by fierce persecution, and then after Emperor Constantine's conversion, imperial patronage. In 410 AD however, Rome was invaded and the great mistress of the world sacked. Pagans charged that the cause of the city's pillage was Christian impiety to the ancient Roman gods.

St. Augustine defended Christianity from this charge and wrote "The City of God," which examined the link between state power and the church's mission. According to St. Augustine, whether the empire dominated the world or lay in tatters, whether the church was persecuted or proselytized, Christian faith should never be identified with any secular power. St. Augustine gave intellectual depth to Mathew's simple New Testament injunction: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

As St. Augustine saw it, the City of Man could never be the principal means of evangelization. Politics is a secular not scared activity, and politics could not be the principal forum for faith.

In the western democracies there is little danger of the church running the City of Man. Rather the modern state is squeezing all that is sacred from public life and public institutions. It is Christian clergymen who are often told that their voices are not welcome in the public square. The western secular response for decades has been: "Where the City of Man advances, the City of God must recede." Where the state goes, secularism must be imposed in its wake and institutions purged of "religiously biased views."

Contrast this with the Islamic world where the Cities of God and Man are often intensely linked and query whether we in the West have artificially and unreasonably tried to force these two cities into separate solitudes.

There are religious matters on which civil law must be silent. The Apostles Creed is not the constitution. But as Pope John Paul II said: "Morality cannot be banished from the public arena in the name of political realism."

Tommy Douglas openly said that his religious faith was the principal factor animating his belief in public health care. To have told Tommy Douglas to separate his religious faith from his political programs would have struck him as absurd. Is it really possible to separate one's religious faith from one's legislative views?

About these issues, I only have questions. Our guest speaker today has answers.

His Eminence completed high school at a displaced person's camp in post-war Austria. He came to Canada with his family in 1948, fleeing war-torn Europe. He was ordained a priest in 1955. In March 1990 he was made Archbishop of Toronto. He was named a Cardinal by Pope John Paul 11 in January 1998. His writings are widely published.

The Empire Club of Canada is proud to be able to offer its podium to a Prince of the City of God, His Eminence Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic.

Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic

Introduction

First, I must answer the question about what entitles me to speak of multiculturalism. I have made no special study of the phenomenon, nor have I examined the activity of the various government portfolios on multiculturalism and the theories or convictions which underlie it.

I speak instead out of my own experience. I speak as an immigrant, as a naturalized Canadian, as a priest, as a bishop who was responsible for ethnic parishes in the Toronto Archdiocese for some 15 years and as an arch-bishop in whose archdiocese Mass is being celebrated on a daily and weekly basis in some 30 languages. I came to Canada at the age of 18, after finishing at a Slovene high school in a D.P. camp in Austria, and thus was self aware and aware of what was happening about me. May I mention that in 1957 I went to Rome for graduate studies and discovered, in an Italian residence, how Canadian I had become in the course of the nine years which had elapsed, and, at the same time, how European I had remained.

What is Multiculturalism?

It is much easier to say what it is not. It is not a multiplicity of economic systems; nor is it a multiplicity of legal or public administrative systems; nor is it a multiplicity of public educational systems. Even heritage classes in schools follow the pattern accepted in our schools.

The difficulty in defining multiculturalism is compounded by the difficulty in defining or describing the culture we live in. McLuhan's statement that a fish was not the first to analyze water is very applicable here. While we find it easier to describe other cultures, we do it by means of contrasting them with our own customs. Pierre Berton has written a book on being Canadian. I cannot recall the title. I found it insightful, but it too set up a contrast with the Americans. Luigi Barzini's "Italians" comes to mind as about the best description of a culture known to me.

Culture is, most definitely, a reality: an amalgam of attitudes, customs, knowledge, greater or lesser artistic sensibility, habits learned or taken for granted, historically conditioned tendencies and biases, etc. I remember a Korean fellow-student in Germany telling me how difficult it was to look people in the eyes. Looking someone in the face is brazen in Korea; not looking in the eyes is a sign of dishonesty or unease among us. Everyone knows further that some jokes "translate" very poorly. I do not have in mind ethnic jokes; with regard to these, I cannot tell any in Toronto. I ought to mention also that the word "fairness" finds it hard to strike an exact equivalent in many another language.

To the best of my ability I would describe the phenomenon of multiculturalism in Canada as "a benevolent letting be, in religion, language and private customs, in regard to ethnic communities and individuals." The emphasis here is on "benevolent," for ethnic communities have existed and will exist whether the dominant culture likes it or not. l shall return to the importance of the term "benevolent."

A caution ought to be voiced as well: we are not dealing with cultures as such, but with people formed and influenced by various cultures. This formation and influence knows degrees of depth and intensity. Cultures interpenetrate in individuals and communities; in the course of years they change. An immigrant brings his country within him at the stage at which he leaves it. With the passing of years he changes under the influence of the new environment (which becomes less and less new), and his native land, with the language it speaks, changes as well. The immigrant's native tongue thus tends to become somewhat antiquated. E.g., Spaniards going to the ghettos of Bosnia, hearing Jews speak the 16th-century Spanish.

Agents of Multiculturalism

Speaking of the agents of multiculturalism, we must distinguish between purpose and effect. It is the purpose of some of them to make Canada more multicultural--the government and, to a degree, schools come to mind--but most of them do what they do in order to preserve certain values, such as religion, language, morality, family life, etc. brought into the country by the immigrant and thought to be worth holding on to and passing to their children.

Besides the government and schools, there are such agents as the family, of course, ethnic associations of all kinds, ethnic press, etc. Churches and synagogues are, I am convinced, of immense and pivotal importance. Under their aegis, you will find various cultural groups and their performances, choirs and orchestras, dance groups, and above all Saturday schools.

I must admit, to my shame, that I am unfamiliar with the ways in which Muslims and Hindus go about these things.

In connection with the preservation of the ethnic language in the home and Saturday school, I ought to emphasize the need of sacrifice and self-discipline. Sacrifice and self-discipline on the part of the parents, in order to speak the non-English language in as pure a form as possible. Allow me to mention a friend who taught his sons the Slovene names of trees, flowers, grasses and another friend who insisted that his son speak French at the table, and the son replied: "But, Dad, to me everything happens in English." Sacrifice and self-discipline on the part of the children going to Saturday schools as well. On the part of their teachers, furthermore: I think of the young Argentine-born teachers in Slovene schools in Argentina, who sacrifice, for free, some 37 weekends a year.

Benefits of Multiculturalism

Under this heading I mention benefits for Canada in the outside world and benefits to countries other than Canada.

I can think of the ever-wider spread of the knowledge of Canada in other countries. The first time I heard the name Toronto was at the age of 17; Canada in my high school days was the large pink blob to the north of the U.S. on our maps. Now everyone in Slovenia and many other European countries knows of Toronto and Canada. With the familiarity there goes influence--often hardly known to many a Canadian.

We must mention the influence of our ethnic groups, and thus of Canada, on their countries of origin. How important it was, in every field of endeavour, for the countries within the Soviet Empire to have people in free countries speaking for them. Think of Ukrainians, of Baltic peoples, of Poles, Hungarians, etc. Croatians in Canada and Australia must have donated billions of dollars to their country of origin. The help--material and other--given by the immigrants over the 40, 50 or more years was of immense material and psychological help in keeping sparks of freedom, humanity and religion alive. I ought to mention one unintended compliment of Communist authorities to the free ethnic press and its books; they did not allow you to bring these books across the border, and their mails did not deliver them.

Significance of Benevolence

Years ago, I met a young woman of German descent, who mentioned that, as a child, she was never told any fairy tales by her mother, who knew only German ones. Some time ago I met a priest, originally from Cleveland, with a German name. He knew no German; his family refused to speak German at home because of the fear of being thought anti-American. It is also good to remember that, up to WW I, Kitchener was called Berlin.

The fact that the school recognizes the children of ethnic descent, through heritage classes and in various other ways, is of immense psychological significance. The institution, so heavily present in children's lives and consciousness, tells the child that there is no need to be ashamed of the parents' accent, cooking and smells in the house. It is most affirming to be told to be proud of your background. That is ultimately far more significant than the language they may learn in heritage language classes--though that ought not to be minimized.

The result: much better integrated Canadians, more at peace within themselves and with their fellow-citizens, fewer resentments, less xenophobia and more tolerance.

Another result of the public benevolence: there is little, if any, talk of "ethnic ghetto." Now we speak of ethnic communities. It is easy, of course, to distinguish between the ghetto and the community in the abstract--one is said to be closed in upon itself, the other is thought to be open--but in reality the two are often very similar, the term given them depending primarily on the attitude of the outsider. The same is true of the process of assimilation and integration; one is said to be bad, the other good. In practice, however, it is very difficult to distinguish them.

Perils of Multiculturalism

Dangers inherent in the so-called ethnic ghetto are not necessarily avoided by public benevolence. The danger remains that members of the ghetto cease growing intellectually and linguistically with both the country of origin and the country of adoption. Thus the ethnic community becomes their true home--not only the ethnic community as such, but the people of "your vintage," who came to Canada at the same time as "yourself."

In every transplantation there occurs, almost inevitably, a certain loss--the loss of "living with" the country of origin and that of adoption. It is good to remember that most immigrants are not academics or people of high finance; these people have migrated sociologically long before migrating geographically.

The Future of Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism will remain alive as long as there exists sizable immigration. Cultures imported from abroad live in the first and to a degree in the second generation of immigrants; in those, in other words, who come here as grown-ups and their sons and daughters. The people who retain their language--here I am not speaking of the francophone and native Canadians, who are not immigrants in the ordinary sense of the word--beyond the second generation are rare. In my own experience, I have met a few Poles and Lithuanians of the fourth generation who still spoke, however haltingly, the language of their great-grand parents. But such are few and far between.

In this regard I refer to the observations of Will Herberg in "Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology" (Doubleday, 1955). He describes the development of immigrant groups in the U.S. and various ideal images of the American society prevalent during the 19th and the early 20th centuries. There was the ideal image of what Herberg calls multicultural America, which was basically that of an ethnic mosaic, i.e., a reproduction of European national divisions. Opposed to it was the so-called melting-pot ideal which looked forward "to a genuine blending of cultures, to which every ethnic strain would make its own contribution and out of which would emerge a new cultural synthesis, no more English than German or Italian and yet in some sense transcending and embracing them all" (p. 33). The melting-pot ideal did prevail in the American cuisine; but only in the cuisine. In reality, it was neither the multicultural model nor the melting-pot model that prevailed: "the American's image of himself is still the Anglo-American ideal it was at the beginning of our independent existence." (ibid.)

It seems that what will prevail in the English-speaking Canada, what appears in fact to be prevailing right now is the Anglo-Canadian self-image, no matter how imprecise it may be at times.

Myrna Kostash, a second generation Ukrainian-Canadian, would agree with Herberg: "English is our mother tongue. Our understanding of the Ukrainian language is imperfect and our speech even worse. (If we are successful writers, speakers, teachers, actors and editors, it's because we have mastered the English language and excelled as members of an Anglophone community.)" ("All of Baba's Children," Edmonton, Hurtig, 1977, p. 387).

Yet ethnic sensitivity and ways of perceiving reality do not disappear as easily as it would appear and, even if the language is long forgotten or unknown, family traditions, attitudes, humour and other traits persist much longer. The assimilation has not been as thorough as some tend to believe. There are attitudes, which are much too deeply ingrained to disappear in one or two generations, and this despite their having been separated from their natural habitat. They have become anonymous, but they remain real, and as such they enter the Canadian mainstream, thus enriching and diversifying our common heritage (see A.M. Ambrozic, "Some Remarks on Immigrant Experience," Study Sessions 1983, the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, pp. 500-501).

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by The Rt. Hon. John Turner. Former Prime Minister of Canada and Partner, Miller Thonvsoii.

The Hon. James K. Bartleman, OOnt, Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario and His Eminence Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto.