We Are Church in France

For WAC France the issue of separation of Church and State was very prominent with the centenary of the 1905 legislation on the issue coming up soon. A conference was organized together with a coalition of 4 other Church reform organizations on "Europe on its path towards laicité" (secularism) in March, and the issue followed up in the European Network meeting, where these organizations are all members of and where the decision was taken to promote a campaign against article 51 of the European Draft Constitution, which deals with Church and State relationships. This article concedes the Church a privileged position within the EU.

In September a Christian Observatory of Secularism was created, again together with the coalition of progressive Catholic organizations. A Manifesto was issued that was published a few days ago in the Daily Le Monde, gaining much public attention.

The French progressive Catholics have been successful in creating a platform, a bit like COR, of 37 Church reform organizations, around a quarterly "La Revue des Reseau du Parvis", which has around 3000 subscribers and is at its 20th issue. The organizations include, besides WAC, organizations like the French branch of ARCC, Femmes et Hommes en Eglise (which deals with issues of gender equality and women's ordination), organizations of married priests, Christians and AIDS, Catholic Students and Partenia (Bp. Gaillot).

France holds the worldwide record in decline of ordained ministers. Some 100 priests are newly ordained while the French clergy is diminished by 700 to 800 persons, because of death or for other reasons. The average age of priests is of 70 years. About 50 % of the dioceses had no ordination this year, and some have not had any ordination at all for several years. There are around 44 million baptized Catholics in France, but only some 4 million practicing ones. The Muslim population is estimated at some 4-5 million persons. (Not all of them are practicing). Only 30 % of the children of Catholic parents attend religious courses. Only 2 % of young baptized Catholics are practicing.