Le providentialisme d’hier à aujourd’hui

Abstract

The Army of Mary is a Quebec-based, conservative Roman Catholic organization that centres its religious worldview on pious devotions to the Virgin Mary, Catholic tradition and the infallibility of the Pope. In 2007, the Army of Mary was excommunicated for the heterodox doctrine of its foundress, Marie-Paule Giguère, who claims to be the incarnation of the Virgin Mary. This paper outlines how Giguère and the Army of Mary negotiate the complexities of orthodoxy and heterodoxy by basing their institutional identity on the 19th-century, clerico-conservative historiography. I argue that these religio-nationalistic constructions of French Canadian identity as morally superior offer Giguère and the Army of Mary the justification needed to forge a parallel organization to the Roman Catholic Church within a strictly eschatological paradigm.