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Voices Online Edition
Lent/Easter 2003
Volume XVIII, No. 1
Faith of the Eldest Daughter -
Can France retain her Catholic heritage?
by Mary Jo Anderson
A matron of indeterminate age
touched the arm of a foreign visitor to the church of Saint-Suplice
in Paris. "Pray for France. When you pray for your children,
pray for ours too; they do not know the Church".
France won the title eldest "Daughter of the Church"
in 498 A.D., when Saint Rèmi baptized King Clovis. Despite
1500 years of Catholic history, heroic saints and glorious apparitions,
today France fights for her soul. More than eighty percent of
Frenchmen identified themselves as Catholic in 1980. Yet during
Pope John Paul II's 1996 visit to the "eldest daughter",
only sixty-three percent said they were Catholic. (France has
40 million baptized Catholics of a total population of 59 million.)
Whether this decline in Catholic belief reflects a true apostasy
or simply indifference, it weakens France's social fabric. Native
French families are in decline: divorce, cohabitation and illegitimate
births are no longer considered moral issues. The birthrate is
1.2 births per couple. And the Muslim population of France (currently
six million) is growing five times faster than the nominal Christian
population. If these rates hold steady, Muslims will outnumber
Christians in less than three generations.
Considering the alarming decline in Catholic belief and practice
in France, it is heartening to report green shoots of faith sprouting
in the crevices of this ancient Catholic nation. The France that
gave birth to two of the most beloved Catholic devotions -- Devotion
to the Sacred Heart and the Miraculous Medal -- has not forfeited
the fight for the Faith.
Whatever the socio-political influences may be, there is evidence
that faith is making a comeback among ordinary French Catholics.
On a recent visit to the basilica at Lisieux -- the popular shrine
of Saint Thérèse, the "Little Flower"
-- I found that the pilgrims were predominately non-French. One
might mistakenly assume that French piety was nearly extinguished.
Yet blocks away, at the convent where Thérèse lived,
an early Mass was jammed with French communicants.
A meandering route through the countryside just beyond Lisieux
toward Falaise takes one past innumerable personal shrines. Set
in the niche of a stone wall or over a doorway of the village
bakery, these devotional tributes to the "old faith"
are adorned with fresh flowers. It is not uncommon for a restaurateur
to display a statue of the Virgin at the entry to his establishment.
Further on, in a day's journey through town after town, there
is evidence of an unabashed and active Catholicity.
Piety at Pontmain
At Mayenne the countryside is dotted with bright red crosses,
the symbol of the late nineteenth-century apparition of Pontmain.
In January 1871, during the Franco-Prussian war, villagers feared
the imminent attack of the German army, who were at the gates
of Laval, twenty-five miles to the south. Typhoid and smallpox,
camp followers of war, were spreading throughout the region.
The people were near despair.
One evening, young Eugène Barbedettes saw a vision of
the Virgin Mary clothed in a starry robe, her hands outstretched
toward him. Eugène called others, but only children could
see the apparition. They described a blood-red crucifix that
appeared in her hands, and a miraculous message appeared beneath
her image: "Do pray my children, God will answer you very
soon". Three days later the German troops withdrew and the
village of Pontmain was spared. An armistice was signed on January
28, ending the Franco-Prussian war. In 1872 the bishop of Laval
authorized devotion to Our Lady of Hope and the construction
of the shrine at Pontmain. Today the spires of the Basilica of
Pontmain soar over rolling pastures forty miles inland from Mont
Saint Michel, just off the coast Normandy.
Unlike Lourdes, which attracts pilgrims from all over the world,
Pontmain has remained essentially a French devotion, drawing
more than 250,000 pilgrims each year. The Oblates of Mary fathers
operate a family retreat house, Bocage Le Relais, behind
the basilica. Each year hundreds of families come to make a retreat
at Pontmain, strolling the woodland walk of Calvary with rosaries
or breviaries in hand.
A red crucifix, twenty feet high, stands opposite a statue of
the "starry Virgin", partially hidden in the woods.
In villages and towns for miles around red crosses stand in the
fields as a commemoration of the Virgin's deliverance of her
children.
Notre-Dame du Chêne
On the edge of the Loire region, near Sable, is the great Abbaye
Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, home to the Benedictine monks whose
Gregorian Chant recordings are popular worldwide.
Thousands of visitors find the Abbaye, but few realize that only
five miles away is the diminutive basilica of Notre-Dame du Chêne
(Our Lady of the Oak). This image of the Virgin also seems to
be curiously reserved to the French. Seldom do foreigners see
the endearing church, which is filled with oak leaves and acorns
carved into the floors, the altar, woven into the carpets, and
crowning the vault -- a tribute to a kernel of faith that grows
into a mighty spreading tree.
Centuries ago a newly ordained James Buret placed a statue of
the Virgin and Child in the crook of the oak tree that stood
in the center of the hamlet of Vion, near where Urban II preached
a crusade. People of the region brought their petitions to the
Virgin, leaving tokens of their prayers, a lock of hair, a scrap
of cloth. Soon reports of miracle cures and favors granted spread.
In 1515 the first chapel of Our Lady of the Oak was built. Today
the basilica is visited by more than 70,000 pilgrims each year.
Virgin of Rocamadour
At one time the shrine-filled city of Rocamadour was as important
of a pilgrimage place in the Christian West as Santiago de Compostela
in Spain. Religious wars, however, laid waste to the shrines.
In the nineteenth century, the restoration of the Romanesque
shrines revived it as a pilgrimage site. Today, there is an upsurge
in visitors to the magnificent city perched over a gorge.
An ancient blackened statue of a seated Virgin and Child from
the twelfth century is the object of popular devotion. Dozens
of pilgrims to this crusader city on a warm May afternoon last
year said they came to seek the help of Our Lady and to make
the Stations of the Cross in the woods behind the caves. Some
admitted they were not "good Catholics" but that in
this place they felt they were still "in the family".
In the countryside to the east of Rocamadour are farms that post
homemade notices of goat cheese or foie gras for sale.
Frequently the signs carry the image of a cross, a saint or the
Virgin.
Sainte-Foy
At the Abbaye Sainte-Foy (Faith) in Conques, the monks report
a renewed interest among their countrymen in the ancient pilgrimage
route to Santiago de Compostela. Charlemagne established this
abbey town, where the relics of Saint Foy -- a young girl martyred
in the fourth century -- are revered. Once a bare trickle, pilgrims
on this arduous route through the beech forests of the Aveyron
fill the Abbaye's guesthouse. Some make the trek for the adventure,
but many are seeking a connection to the saints of old who passed
this way.
"What have you done with
your baptismal promises?"
After the Holy Father's 1996 papal visit to France, reporters
quizzed Cardinal Lustiger about the pope's omission of the question
that he had asked during his first visit to France in 1981: "France,
eldest daughter of the Church, what have you done to your baptismal
promises?" Cardinal Lustiger replied that the question was
still in the air: "it is stamped in everyone's heart and
conscience already".
Cardinal Pierre Eyt of Bordeaux, speaking about the famous title
"eldest daughter of the Church" counseled that it should
be regarded "not as conveying some right of the first-born,
but as imposing an obligation to set an example".
A 2001 report from the French Bishops Conference noted an unexpected
phenomenon: Thousands of adult converts. Bishop André
Dupleix, national director of catechumens, listed 8,934 adults
preparing for baptism: 59% are in the 25-to-40 age range; 25%
are in the 18-to-24 range; and 16% are older than 40.
Bishop Dupleix attributes adult baptisms to a renewed hope, a
sign that the French -- at a time of crises, tensions and uneasiness
about the future -- are returning to the Church.
All across France, convent and abbey guest quarters are finding
more religious pilgrims at their door. Increasingly, families
combine reunions and celebrations with retreats at a nearby religious
house. And while France is still in grave danger of losing her
soul to secularism, there are genuine signs of hope.
Mary
Jo Anderson, a member of the Voices editorial
board, writes on the United Nations and family issues for Crisis,
WorldNet Daily, and other publications. Her commentaries
have appeared on radio and television.
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