Before the 1789 Revolution, national and religious identity in France were closely linked, and the mutual dependency of the French monarchy and the Catholic Church largely guaranteed religious unity. Following the definitive recognition of Protestantism in the eighteenth century and Napoleon’s Concordat with Pope Pius VII in 1801, Catholicism was confirmed as the religion of the majority of French people but was no longer the official State religion. Then, on 9 December 1905, the promulgation of theloi de séparation des Églises et de l’Étatdesignated France alaïque(or secular) Republic, one where no religion is either publicly recognised...

Laïcité: comment parler de ce qui se dit avec un mot français intraduisible en anglais et, plus généralement dans toutes les langues du monde, à l’exception des langues latines (et du turc) pour lesquelles suffit une simple transcription? Il existe heureusement un précédent: comment parler aux Français de l’humourbritannique? Pourtant, à défaut du mot, la réalité qu’il recouvre est loin d’être étrangère aux autres pays en notre siècle. Il suffit de décomposer cette réalité en ses ingrédients: un esprit national, une évolution sociale, une forme institutionnelle.

Laïc, adjectif ou substantif, est un très vieux mot de culture chrétienne...

A la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, les catholiques quasi unanimement se proclamaient antisémites et leur presse dénonçait les crimes rituels, la filouterie et la puissance économique des juifs. A la fin du vingtième siècle, ces croyances ne sont partagées que par une infime minorité de catholiques irréductiblement antisémites. Entre les deux, le cataclysme de la Shoah a renversé bien des préjugés: l’antisémitisme puis l’antijudaïsme.

Une carte photographique circulant peu de temps après l’affaire Dreyfus représente un prêtre absorbé par la lecture du journal LaLibre Parole,¹ la feuille antisémite d’Édouard Drumont, l’auteur deLa France juive. Comme un grand nombre...

The inter-war years are usually regarded as a watershed in the relationship between the Catholic Church and political life in France. In this period, it is argued, the Church broke its links with the royalistAction française(AF) and at last accepted that it must work within the Republic.² This rapprochement is said to have been encouraged by the unity of Catholics and anti-elericals during the First World War, and by fear of working-class unrest during the troubled post-war years. Whereas politicians became increasingly preoccupied with economic and social issues, the Church shifted its attention from politics to religious matters...

From the viewpoint of an historian of 1930s France, the most important of the three relationships distinguished by Denis Maugenest¹ – those between Church and Communism, between Christians and Marxists and between Catholic faith and Marxism – is undoubtedly that between Church and Communism; and if the Popular Front years (1934–38) were the most important in the decade, this was, from that viewpoint, because they saw an intensification of a ‘lutte d’influence’² between Church and Party for the souls and minds of the French people and specifically for those of the working class. However, the third relationship, that between Catholic faith...

In June 1940 French Catholics were in ambivalent mood. While there was dismay at the way in which Hitler had laid waste the allied armies, there was also hope for the future. Marshal Pétain’s government promised a return to traditional values. In the event, Vichy proved a disappointment, and opened up divisions within the Church that had been eclipsed at the moment of defeat. As has been observed, in the 1920s and 1930s a ‘relaxed tension’ in Church–State relations ‘loosened the tight discipline’ that was forged during the anti-clerical phase of the Third Republic when committed Catholics had rallied...

Si l’on peut faire remonter le premier emploi du terme de ‘démocratie chrétienne’ en France à un discours prononcé en 1791 par l’évêque constitutionnel de Lyon, La Mourette, qui se référait aux ‘principes lumineux de la démocratie chrétienne’, c’est à partir de 1848 qu’est apparu un premier mouvement d’inspiration démocrate-chrétienne autour du JournalL’Ère nouvelle. Lamennais avecL’Aveniren 1830 n’avait jamais employé cette expression. Mais l’émergence de cette ‘démocratie chrétienne’ doit être resituée au milieu d’autres courants qui avaient également surgi au dixneuvième siècle, et notamment ceux du catholicisme libéral d’une part et du catholicisme social d’autre part. Le...

Catholicism in France shifted significantly to the Left over the twentieth century.¹ The evidence for this view is overwhelming, at least in terms of where Catholic priests and laity cast their votes, which public policies they may support or criticise and which intellectual traditions they draw their ideas from. But as a generalisation, this conceals as much as it reveals. The period between the banning of theSillon(1910) and the removal from office of Mgr Gaillot (1995) saw fundamental changes in the religious and political landscapes. Both French Catholicism and the French Left became more diverse entities, and relations...

In 1990, Mgr Jacques Delaporte, Archbishop of Cambrai, the then president of theCommission épiscopale française ‘Justice et Paix’and formerly head of theCommission épiscopale des migrations, called on behalf of the Church for the full integration of immigrants into French society on the grounds that ‘l’intégration est sans doute, en effet, la solution la plus conforme au respect des Droits de l’homme auquel un chrétien ne peut pas déroger’.¹ This direct link between integration and human rights is significant in terms of the Church’s response to the immigration question in France. For if, as has been argued, the...

In 1992–93, there were 2,043,054 pupils in Catholic schools in France: 895,210 of them were in nursery and primary schools; 1,104,694 were in secondary schools (collèges, ages 11–15, andlycées, ages 15–18: the ages are indicative only becauseredoublement,or repeating of a year, is common in France); 43,150 were in agricultural schools and colleges.¹ Apart from indicating that Catholic schooling in France is a substantial enterprise, these figures have little meaning until they are compared with those from other parts of the system. As soon as such cross-sector comparisons are made, certain inferences can be drawn....

Les femmes, plus attirées que les hommes par un engagement dans l’Église, représentent en 1900 environ 70% des pratiquants.¹ Elles sont présentes sous la forme d’adhésions massives aux ligues féminines, à des associations, aux mouvements de jeunesse, au syndicalisme. Elles y tiennent un rôle de moins en moins subalterne, ont des sphères d’influence de plus en plus visibles,² même si, au début, leurs initiatives étaient énoncées ou reprises par des hommes. Lentement et irréversiblement au cours du vingtième siècle, les femmes catholiques ont pris de l’importance tant dans le fonctionnement des paroisses que dans la société civile.

Il y a...

La sociologie religieuse du catholicisme français au vingtième siècle est assez bien connue grâce à l’utilisation des méthodes quantitative prônée dès 1931 par Gabriel Le Bras. Une série d’enquêtes remarquables sont conduites sous l’impulsion de Fernand Boulard au milieu du siècle, puis des études historiques rétrospectives exploitent les chiffres contemporains dans les visites pastorales. Cependant lors de la crise de civilisation de 1968, la mode change: le militant politique et social intéresse beaucoup plus que le pratiquant religieux. Pendant vingt ans, les enquêtes rigoureuses disparaissent, les sondages sont censés les remplacer. Depuis quelques années, enquêtes et travaux précis ont repris...

In his 1936 novel,Journal d’un curé de campagne, Georges Bernanos chose the setting of a rural parish to explore the crisis besetting French Catholic culture. The parish was the natural focus of identity. It was more than a geographical area: it had a history that reached back to the era of Christendom in which religion was woven into the social fabric, and shaped a whole culture. Moreover, French Catholicism from the Revolution until the First World War had a very clearly defined self-identity summed up in the word ‘intransigence’: namely, adherence to an interlocking set of anti-liberal political and...