RELIGION IN FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 4 June 1914, Page 22

RELIGION IN FRANCE

EVIDENCE OF A REVIVAL. Is there a religious revival in France? A special correspondent in Paris, who asked the question yesterday, admits that there is a significant stirring of the dry bones in the domain of religion, but he cautiously refrains from a more postiive ■ statement We (London Times) are inclined to be bolder. That there is a revival, both of Roman Catholicism and of those, looser and undogmatic religious views and sentiments which Frenchmen describe as ‘ spiritualistes/ seems to us unquestionable. How far it has gone, how deep are its roots, and what are its prospects are, on the other hand’ matters of much doubt. Religious and moral movements in a state of transition are notoriously difficult to gauge and to appreciate. They can be judged only by their fruits, and their fruits usually lie hidden until the roots which nourish them have had time to strike deep into the soil. But thoughtful and fair minded observers of many schools in France have recognised for some years a gradual and progressive change in the attitude towards religion of certain classes of Frenchmen. Little importance need be attached to the attendance of large crowds at the regular ceremonies of Holy Week noted by our correspondent. The size of the congregations, and still more the nature and the attitude of the congregations, which, frequent the quiet Sunday Mass in the parish churches of the big towns, are more significant. A Roman Catholic publication lately gave from, official returns the number of Easter communicants in 58 out of the 78 parishes of Paris as 314,000 —a. figure which would not have been reached, we fancy, a very few years ago. But the number of Catholics in France, as in other Latin countries, cannot be measured by the number of those who ‘ practise.’ *On mevrt asset bien chez nous,* said a French lady from a manufacturing district, where the work-ing-men are ostentatious in their religion., Most Frenchmen, and nearly all ' Frenchwomen, like to. have the blessing of the Church on the great events of their domestic life. They are christened and married and buried with the same rites as their fathers and mothers. Many observe the custom as a custom; but it means

something to them. It takes more than a few statutes, and. even then a few decades of education laique, to wean a nation from traditions bred in their bone for countless generations. The Roman Church has those traditions to build on, and she is making earnest efforts to turn them to account. The class in which the revival is most unmistakable is that of the educated young men. It is said that of the students at the Ecole Normal© Superieure about a third are convinced and ‘ practising ’ Catholics, while as many more are ‘ spiritualistes ' with a craving for supernatural belief of some kind, and the rest are active or passive unbelievers. There is plenty of evidence that the movement extends to other bodies of the youthful ‘ intellectuels.’ It has already lasted long enough to have set its mark on literature. Some of the new writers avow opinions which are frankly Roman Catholic, while others speak of religion with respect as a great moral and social force. The ablest of the unbelievers themselves recognise that there is more in heaven and earth than the laboratory can reveal. It is rather remarkable that, next to the young men of the schools, the bourgeoisie are the class in which the reaction is most conspicuous, M. Homais still flourishes and measures the universe with his footrule, but he dimly feels that, outside certain cliques, he no longer commands the admiration that he did. And in some quarters at least, of Paris and of her suburbs, as in Lyons and other large cities, there are plenty of working men and working women who quietly perform their religious duties, while amongst others who remain strongly ‘ anti-clerical ’ the old bitterness against supernatural beliefs has largely died away. What are the causes of the change, which, whatever its proportions, does appear to be passing over the minds of such widely separated portions of French society? It has been attributed to fashion. - It has been attributed to the fear of social convulsions. Both have probably contributed to it. The aristocracy in France have always made a profession of Roman Catholic belief since the guillotine beheaded the noble patrons of the ‘ philosophcs.’ The growth of syndicalism and of anti-militarism, the open dissemination of doctrines fatal alike to the State, to private property, and to the family, the constant recurrence of formidable strikes, the increasing audacity of the criminal classes, the impunity with which some of their most daring feats have been performed, the spread of financial and political corruption, the decrease in the birth-rate and the rise in the divorce-rate, the general relaxation of the old moral standards in private life as in public, and the decay of the sanctions which guarded them, have undoubtedly led many good citizens of - all classes to reflect whether negation can constitute the sure and stable foundation for the life of a great people. We believe, however, that there is a deeper cause than thtese. Man does not live by bread alone. The ‘lights of Heaven’ always are relit. At all times and in all societies crass materialism provokes reaction. Man will look before and after; and, as he looks, he feels that he is more than a chance group of atoms, that he has imperious needs and cravings which neither wealth nor ease nor fame can satisfy. He longs for some principle, some doctrine, which will offer him a tolerable explanation, however incomplete, of himself and of the ‘ immensities ’ he sees and divines about him. He turns instinctively to the traditional beliefs of his race. Whether the 'present religious revival in France will expan and develop no prudent man will lightly undertake to foretell. All we desire .to note is that it exists and that, in our belief, it is really ‘spiritual’ — genuine and wholesome recoil from the cold clod of scepticism which threatened to kill one of the deepest and the noblest instincts that have made historic France.