The Pope in France: As France and Europe grow more secular, the pontiff pushes back
October 8, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit spotlights changing role of the Catholic Church in French and European society.
Benedict’s visit to France last month marked the 150th anniversary of the year a 14-year-old French girl, Bernadette Soubirous, reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in a Lourdes grotto. Lourdes has since been a popular pilgrimage site for Catholics in France and around the world. This year a record eight million pilgrims are expected to visit Lourdes.
But the vision the Pope is seeing now in France and Europe is less inspiring. Church attendance and applications for the priesthood continue to drop, as does the influence of the church in everyday life and politics. While many in France still consider the Catholic Church to be a strong moral force in society, many political and cultural initiatives in France and other EU countries are diametrically opposed to church teaching. While in Lourdes, the Pope reminded France of the church’s opposition to same-sex couples, communion for divorced people (the divorce rate in France is even higher than in the US) and euthanasia, which is also legal in some European countries under certain circumstances. The Pope appealed to French Roman Catholics to speak up, as the church doesn’t want European law to conflict so starkly with church teaching.
EU law forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Same-sex marriage became legal in Spain in 2005, following the example of the Netherlands and Belgium. Roman Catholic orphanages in the UK have said they will have to close or make a break with the church if they are forced to place orphans with same-sex couples. On the cultural front, Gay Pride parades in France and across Europe routinely draw more participants than papal events like outdoor Masses. In Paris last month, an estimated quarter-million people turned out to hear the pope celebrate Mass at the Esplanade des Invalides– exactly half the turnout at the Paris Gay Pride parade in June two months earlier. The Pope’s visit spotlights the church’s underdog position in French culture today.
The Pope’s appearance in Lourdes, often disdained as a religious zealot’s Disneyland, where “relics” are sold as souvenirs on the streets and visions or miracle cures are routinely reported, show that the Catholic Church is trying for all the support it can get, even from people sometimes viewed as on the fringe of orthodox church teaching.
France, like the US, has a stongly-held penchant for church-state separation. But if Pope Benedict XVI has his way, French Catholics –at least the ones who are left– will become more vocal and active in the politics of their country and the EU.
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