Roman Catholic Church in Canada

Canada Canada Church Records

The Roman Catholic Church is the mother of most other Christian churches. Until the early 16th century it was the Christian church in western Europe. The Reformation, a movement begun to reform or renew the church, eventually caused a series of schisms or breaks which resulted in new churches or denominations being formed. Since the 16th century, theologians or religious thinkers have arisen in many countries whose writings have inspired new denominations, and this process continued in the 20th century. The earliest of these (Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli) created groups which then had their own internal differences, or nationalistic leanings, and so they split into further divisions.

The Roman Catholic Church reacted to the Reformation by holding the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which dealt with the questions raised by the reformers to the church’s satisfaction and formed the basis for Catholic practice for the next four centuries. Roman Catholicism was the earliest European religion brought to Canada, by the French who founded their colonies in Québec and Acadia. It has remained here, a firm presence in every province and territory, ever since. As each area of the country has been opened for new settlement, there have been Catholic missionaries (priests and nuns) to establish churches, schools and hospitals.

The tradition of record-keeping established in Europe was brought to Canada and has resulted in very fine registers which are available to researchers depending on local attitudes. In the early days of LDS microfilming in the 1950s, there was considerable emphasis on obtaining Roman Catholic records for the collection in Salt Lake City. Theological differences curtailed this filming somewhat later. However, many bishops and priests have been encouraging to genealogical work and in Québec, in particular, have made possible the extensive publication of records in book form. Some dioceses, such as Hamilton (Ontario), have a policy of restricting access to the records, but these attitudes are largely the result of the bishop of the time and may change with a new administrator; at any rate, local priests or parish secretaries often have different ideas about the registers. It is always best to enquire locally.

In Ontario, the majority of Catholic dioceses, in agreement with the LDS Church microfilming program, have since allowed their parish registers to be filmed. The cut-off date was 1910. Each diocesan archives, as well as the Family History Library, has filmed copies of these 18th-19th century registers. As mentioned above, there are still some holdouts among them. An overall history of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada would be too general to be of use to the family historian, but most dioceses have published histories of one sort or another, and there are a great many supplementary historical publications which can be profitably used by researchers.