This is part of a roundtable on Notre-Dame de Paris. Self-declared atheists represent 30 percent of the French population, and France is among the top five most atheist countries in the world Marchand Since , public school students are not permitted to wear ostensible religious symbols i. How could such a secular and atheistic nation collectively mourn a Catholic cathedral to begin with? Of course, many would say that this collective mourning of the famous cathedral is simply due to the fact that Notre-Dame is more than just a church.
It was the sanctuary in which General Charles de Gaulle rallied the nation after the victory march at the conclusion of the Second World War. Notre-Dame is the epicenter of our life…. Thus, the place and space for this Notre-Dame in the French national imaginary may appear rather unsurprising—even despite the paradox it might present against secular Republican expectations. The Catholic Church in France has experienced a number of changes over the past five decades or so—not least of which is its shift toward becoming a minority religion despite its normative status in French society.
An survey of religious statistics in France showed that 98 percent of the population declared themselves Catholic and only 0. At the end of thes, more than 80 percent of French citizens still recognized themselves as Catholic, and about 25 percent attended Church every Sunday.
Although attending weekly mass goes above and beyond the norms of mainstream French Catholic practice, church attendance for funerals, weddings, and baptisms remain commonplace and normal. This is especially the case when compared with Islam: crescents, the adhan Islamic call to prayer , halal food in the cafeteria, as well as public displays of Muslim prayer set off alarms of illegality, Otherness, non-normativity, and above all, non-Frenchness.
As historian Darcie Fontaine also points out in her essay in this EuropeNow roundtable, it is not necessarily religious attachments, but the cultural manifestations and attachments to French Catholicism that have remained the most powerful, and even reinvigorated in recent years—much to the chagrin of Church clergy and practicing Catholics. The rallying cries of France being a historically and culturally Catholic country made numerous headlines in the long lead-up to the presidential elections beginning in There has even been a somewhat curious alliance born out of this sentiment between cultural Catholicism and populism—notably in the interest of reinstating Christian values in France see further Bherer Right wing movements have capitalized on this cultural Catholic surge to garner more support and popularity amidst a social climate anxious with looming questions of terrorist threats, immigration, national identity, and national unity Goar ; Werly ; see also Fontaine in this roundtable.
