184 THEISLAND ACADIANS 
     
    
   
   
    
     Church in Canada was not restricted to New Brunswick. Similar battles 
     
     took place both in Ontario and in the west where the ecclesiastical 
     
     hierarchy had been, up until then, French-Canadian. Language was 
     
     the main bone of contention. On the one hand the French Canadians 
     
     maintained that language was the guardian of the faith: anyone who 
     
     became anglicized risked losing the Catholic faith. On the other hand, 
     
     the anglophone clergy, particularly of Irish descent, was convinced 
     
     that English would sooner or later become the dominant language of 
     
     the country: consequently it should be favoured to ensure the expan- 
     
     sion and the unity of the Catholic Church. Besides, how could one 
     
     attract Anglo-Protestants to Catholicism if, influenced by their anti- 
     
     French heritage, they identified the Catholic Church with French 
     
     Canada*?? 
     
    

    
     Even in the absence of overt struggles, the will to anglicize on 
     
     the part of the English-speaking clergy became evident on Prince 
     
     Edward Island, especially during and after the 1920s. The Acadians 
     
     began to lose ground with regard to the use of French in their religious 
     
     life. Parishes where a high percentage of the faithful were French-Aca- 
     
     dian thus fell into the hands of almost exclusively English-speaking 
     
     priests who were unable to respect either the language or the culture 
     
     of a large proportion of their congregation. Some members of the 
     
     clergy actually opposed the Acadian cause. This was serious to the 
     
     extent that it hampered the efforts to promote and preserve the 
     
     French language and Acadian identity. We have already seen the influen- 
     
     tial role played by Acadian priests in that area. A visitor from New 
     
     Brunswick wrote in 1924: “Wherever French is still intact, there is a 
     
     zealous Acadian priest who, with the support of his obedient parishion- 
     
     ers, is upholding the respect for the ancestral language (TR)°°”. 
     
    

    
     The Acadians were not particularly receptive to this form of 
     
     anglicization which the clergy was fostering. Having been told for so 
     
     many years that they must preserve French, the guardian of their 
     
     faith, they now found the clergy depriving them of their right to listen 
     
     to a sermon in their mother tongue and even to learn their catechism 
     
     in French. 
     
    

    
     The scarcity of Acadian or bilingual priests rarely justified this 
     
     situation. The clergy in the Diocese of Charlottetown was, in 1937, 
     
     comprised of seventy priests, eight of whom were Acadian. Only four 
     
     of them served on the Island: the others were assigned to the Magdalen