Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
I disagree with rural Ontario.
Having been raised in SWO {admittedly in much more liberal London for much of it} I have been to all areas of SWO. I can say that I never say any place that I would say is Bible Belt. Socially Conservative definitely but not Bible Belt.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by niwell
The most conservative place I know from experience is actually the Ottawa valley. It has plenty of the evangelical types, and I know people who went to some pretty intense churches.
That being said I don't think it pervades the local psyche anywhere in Canada. Some of the most left-wing people I know are also from the valley.
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I grew up as a Catholic in Southwestern Ontario, and while I didn't really notice it until I moved, Catholics are far more conservative in Eastern Ontario than in the Southwest. The reality hit me less than three months after I moved to Kingston: there were actually discussions about how modestly Catholic women should dress, something you'd
never hear about in a church in London, or Toronto. The format of the services was also much different; whereas in London the priest might tell a joke or two in the sermon or mention the previous night's hockey game, the priests in Kingston droned on and on about theoretical philosophical stuff that the average Christian (or anyone for that matter) wouldn't even understand. Not surprisingly, the two churches I used to go to in Kingston were routinely at least half empty. (One of them, I would not be surprised to see close in the next 10 years; the local archdiocese already closed another church a couple years ago.)
The attitude towards alcohol among Catholics was also vastly different between the two regions. Church social events in London normally included wine or beer in some capacity, while in Kingston that never happened except at the Portuguese church. Abstaining from meat on Fridays - a tradition that was common prior to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s - is still a big thing for Catholics in Kingston, something that had long ago disappeared in SW Ontario.
In some ways I found Catholicism in Ottawa even more conservative than in Kingston, though I only visited it a few times and didn't actually live there. That was where I came across a guy who believed he needed to help end Ottawa's gay pride parade. And Ottawa's archbishop doesn't allow eulogies at funerals, which is a pretty standard part of funerals everywhere. I also met someone there openly talked on Facebook about how the Catholic church needs to become more exclusive and not welcome people with differing viewpoints, and how the lives of the unborn were more important than
any other lives in the world.
Also telling is that Pope Francis - known for being more liberal than his two immediate predecessors - is a lot more controversial among Catholics I've met in Eastern Ontario than in other areas. One has even openly talked about him being an antipope on Facebook, though he did not directly use the term 'antipope'. I haven't heard any opposition to Francis among the Catholics I know in Toronto or London.
As for my own beliefs - there was a time I was heavily committed to going to church, and went every Sunday. I began scaling back as I approached age 30 as I found the church doesn't respond very well to the needs of unmarried young people who aren't university students, and some of the conservative stuff I came across in Kingston and Ottawa was a real turnoff.