Pope Benedict always links the church’s past with his present action. This coming week he links his
lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany with his speech to be given at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris. President Sarkozy may be the Pope’s unlikely ally in a country that has dropped to less then 10% attendance for Mass. I suspect that the increase in Muslim population also at 10% may pose problems for the extreme secular state. So I would say the President is using the pope to create a bit of historic French nationalism with cultural Catholicism and the Pope is hoping to rekindle the faith in the country that was traditionally called the first daughter of the church.
Another interesting take on it comes from America
The first is that the radical exclusion of religion from the public sphere known as laïcité is increasingly being questioned. There are many reasons: social breakdown and high levels of Muslim immigration are causing the French to see the Church as “theirs” more than they did, while church-led social movements are among the most prophetic and energetic in France.
Whatever the reasons, it is France’s own president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is recognising this shift in his call for a “positive laïcité“, calling for the state to have a “structured dialogue” with faiths and for Catholics and others to play a greater role in public life. This is an attempt, not without its risks, to move the French model more in the direction of the American one — towards Church-state separation as a means to protect the freedom of faith rather than to put it into a box marked ‘private’…
The second contemporary paradox is that France is the Catholic country with the strongest-declining congregrations and clergy while also being the Catholic country with most vigorous Catholic “revivals” and movements.
And finally John Allen over at National Catholic Register provides a broader view to the issue of B16 and the ‘creative minority’ of French Catholics.
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Bishop Kevin W. Vann
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Cradle catholic* Charterhouse 
I’m following with great interest the Pope’s Apostolic visit to France. This article is a very good short summary of Pope Benedict’s upcoming activities. This Pope has long been hoping for Europe to come back to its Christian roots, especially France, the largest country in Western Europe by land area and, like you say, “traditionally called the first daughter of the church.”
While it is sad that Mass attendance has decreased so much in France, there is hope. Seven years ago I went to Lille to study Biology at l’Université Catholique de Lille, in northern France. There were a fair number of youth that would attend Mass regularly there. Lille has a very large student population during the academic year. There and in the south of the country are the highest proportion of Muslims. Most are very kind and loving people, although some use their interpretation of their religion as a weapon.
Interestingly, you cite Pope Benedict’s Regensburg lecture, which ignited violent reaction in many Muslim parts of the world after it was delivered in Germany. That speech, which was required reading in a Greek Philosophy and Christian Tradition course I took at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, is a brilliant examination of faith and reason and how they must relate to each other.
Anyway, I’ll leave it at that since my comment is already much longer than your original post, which is a good one. God Bless,
Warren
Warren,
Good informative post. It’s interesting in the USA where some Catholic politicians have attempted to divorce faith and knowledge on the topic of abortion in this country. The bishops are to my suprise taking action to address the issue.
THe reason I brought up the gov’t side of it, is because I can find no other reason why a leader of the strictist secular country who’s poll #’s are dropping want to meet & greet with the Pope. It doesn’t seen like good political sense, yet a political appeal to a small but commited minority(weekly attending Catholics) and the appeal to the other 70% of cultural Catholics may help him.
The Marian devotions I think would be way over the top for most people in France. Yet it may be so counter-culture to have an appeal especially to the young to start a base for rebuilding the church.
Hi quickbeamoffangorn,
Sorry to bother you again, but I ran across this article on the Pharyngula blog that has relevance to something we discussed early this year about Catholics and Hitler.
Article is Here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_great_desecration.php
Excerpt:
“I wonder how many of our Catholic friends have heard of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215? This is the event where many of their important dogmas were codified, including the ideas of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, that the Eucharist was the sacrament that only properly ordained priests of the Catholic church could give, and that the Jews were a pariah people, who could hold no public office, had to pay a special Jew tax for their right to exist, and were required to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians. The yellow badge marking the Juden was not an invention of the Nazis, but a decree by faithful Catholics in the Middle Ages. That’s an interesting juxtaposition, that a symbol of Christian exceptionalism was formalized at the same time that they formally decreed the Jews to be inferior, and a target of hatred.”
Hope you are well. 🙂
Hello,
All is well thanks for asking.
The canon laws were a gradual development over a very long time. Recall that there were many Jewish converts to the church in the early ages. And dispite Paul letters about not being required to maintain the Jewish law as the means of salvation, it still occured especially with inter marriage, where the woman converted and the man did not.
You can likely find Pope Gregory the great as the consolidater of the churches attitude towards the Jews. At the time (early middle ages) the collapse of the western roman empire the “end” seemed near. resistance of the Jews to the Gospel posed a threat to Christianity.
Acta Sanctorum makes references to Jewish hostility and often violence towards the Christians martrys. Unfortunately this was used as justification for not only mistrust of Jews, but as accurate historical documents of Jews acts of hatred of Christians.
Combine the Gospel of John with the Jewish leaders involved with killing Jesus, resisting the Gospel, Jewish husbands influencing their wives to live by Jews laws, perceived historical hatred of christians, and the states desire to promote uniformity to support political stability, you come up with these canons.
So yes certainly these canons permitted the atmosphere to allow hatred of the Jews to grow.
Its certianly a leap to go from the canons to the final solution however, don’t you?