Catholic Archbishop: ‘The Church in France is Jostled From Many Sides’

NC Register ^ | 12/22/2020 | CNA

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REIMS, France — The Church in France is under pressure, according to the president of the French Catholic bishops’ conference.

But for Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, that is no cause for despair.

“The Church in France is being jostled in many ways; it is reacting, which proves that it is alive,” he told CNA in an email interview.

The archbishop of Reims, in northeastern France’s Grand Est region, has had a busy past few months.

In October, he was among the bishops offering comfort to Catholics after an attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed three people to death at the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice.

In November, he successfully challenged the French government’s proposed 30-person limit on Mass attendance amid rising coronavirus cases.

In early December, he had a private audience with Pope Francis in which he discussed French President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative against “Islamist separatism.”

That may have left him little time to reflect on the condition of the Church in France, often described as the “eldest daughter of the Church” because the Frankish King Clovis I embraced Catholicism in 496.

As a remarkably testing year for Church leaders draws to a close, the 58-year-old archbishop assessed the strengths and weaknesses of French Catholicism today.

The first thing he mentioned was the clerical abuse crisis. An independent commission reported in June that at least 3,000 children were sexually abused by around 1,500 Catholic clergy or officials in France over the last seven decades.

“The revelation of sexual assaults committed by priests on minors or abuses of power against vulnerable people is prompting the work of bishops, religious superiors, and a certain number of faithful responsible for movements or associations,” he said.

“However, it is noteworthy that French society as a whole has confidence in the Church that it is making...

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Plus, many believing Catholics have abandoned the novus ordo services in favor of the traditional Latin Mass. The SSPX order founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is very strong in France; I’ve traveled in France a number of times and found that there were more people attending the traditional Mass than those attending a novus ordo service in a nearby Cathedral (I saw this first hand in both Paris and Chartres).