The World of Religions, January-February 2007 —
"France, eldest daughter of the Church." Pronounced in 1896, Cardinal Langénieux's formula refers to the historical reality of a country where Christianity was introduced in the 2nd century and which, from the 9th century onwards, offered the model of a people living in unison around the faith, symbols and the Catholic liturgical calendar. What historians have called "Christendom."
With the French Revolution, and then the separation of Church and State in 1905, France became a secular country, relegating religion to the private sphere. For multiple reasons (rural exodus, moral revolution, rise of individualism, etc.), Catholicism has continued to lose its influence on society ever since. This sharp erosion is first perceptible through the statistics of the Church of France, which show a constant decline in baptisms, marriages, and the number of priests (see pp. 43-44). It is then seen through opinion surveys, which highlight three markers: practice (the Mass), belief (in God), and belonging (identifying oneself as Catholic).
For forty years, the most involving criterion of religiosity, regular practice, has been the one that has declined most sharply, affecting only 10% of French people in 2006. Belief in God, which remained more or less stable until the end of the 1960s (around 75%), fell to 52% in 2006. The least involving criterion, that of belonging, which refers to a religious as well as a cultural dimension, remained very high until the beginning of the 1990s (around 80%). It, in turn, has experienced a spectacular decline over the past fifteen years, falling to 69% in 2000, 61% in 2005, and our survey reveals that it is now 51%.
Surprised by this result, we asked the CSA institute to repeat the survey with a nationally representative sample of 2,012 people aged 18 and over. The same figure. This drop is partly explained by the fact that 5% of those surveyed refused to include themselves in the list of religions proposed by the polling institutes (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, no religion, etc.) and spontaneously responded "Christian." Contrary to the habit of forcibly reducing this percentage to the "Catholic" category, we have mentioned it as a separate category. It seems significant to us that people from a Catholic background reject this affiliation while still calling themselves Christian. In any case, fewer and fewer French people claim to belong to Catholicism, and more and more say they are "no religion" (31%). The other religions, which are very much in the minority, remain more or less stable (4% Muslims, 3% Protestants, 1% Jews).
Also very instructive is the survey conducted on the 51% of French people who declare themselves Catholic (see pp. 23 to 28), which shows how far the faithful are from dogma. Not only does one Catholic in two not believe or doubt the existence of God, but among those who say they do, only 18% believe in a personal God (which is nevertheless one of the foundations of Christianity), while 79% believe in a force or energy. The distance from the institution is even greater when it comes to questions related to morality or discipline: 81% are in favor of the marriage of priests and 79% of the ordination of women. And only 7% consider that the Catholic religion is the only true religion. The magisterium of the Church has thus lost almost all authority over the faithful. Yet, 76% of them have a good opinion of the Church and 71% of Pope Benedict XVI. This very interesting paradox shows that French Catholics, who are becoming a minority in the population – and who certainly already perceive themselves as such – embrace the dominant values of our deeply secularized modern societies, but remain attached, like any minority, to their place of community identification: the Church and its principal symbol, the Pope.
Let's be clear: not only in its institutions, but also in its mentalities, France is no longer a Catholic country. It is a secular country where Catholicism remains, and will undoubtedly remain for a very long time to come, the most important religion. A figure: what we perceive as the "shrinking skin" of regularly practicing Catholics is numerically equivalent to the entire French Jewish, Protestant, and Muslim population (including non-believers and non-practicing people).