Whose fault is that, then?

From Catholic World News:

Quebec's loss of faith seen triggering social problems

Quebec, Oct. 31, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The people of Quebec "really need to rediscover their religious identity," Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City told a public commission on October 30.

Speaking at hearings on the challenges that immigration has posed to Quebec French-speaking culture, Cardinal Ouellet said that the problem of cultural identity can be traced back to "the malaise of the Catholic majority, which needs to find a religious reference point."

The cardinal said that the secularizing trends of the past generation have deprived Quebec of its cultural heritage, leading to a general breakdown in traditional society. Cardinal Ouellet pointed to the rise in divorce, the drop in births, and the frequency of abortion and suicide as indications of this social breakdown.

"Quebec is ripe for a profound new evangelization," the cardinal concluded.

So, as the title of this post asks, whose fault is that then? Whom may we arraign for the secularisation of Quebec, which before the effects of the Second Vatican Council was one of the most Catholic parts of the world?

Could the Canadian bishops possibly be to blame, might we ask? Cardinal Ouellet might more profitably address himself to his brothers in the episcopate than to a public commission, which is an arm of the secular power in any case.

Canada is so completely secularized and so dominated by the left anyway that Melancholicus is surprised that Cardinal Ouellet could publicly make the connection between the collapse of religious faith and the rise of severe social problems without being hanged, drawn and quartered, or at the very least shouted down by howls of protest. To read the last despairing posts of this refugee before she fled abroad seeking asylum in Britain is a sobering reminder of how far from civilization Canada has slipped in the past forty years.

And Quebec, which was the most Catholic part of Canada before the asteroid hit, has now become a sewer of social decay.