Faith?s French revolution

With the number of priests in steep decline, the laity is keeping the Catholic church alive in rural France. It?s a dramatic transformation borne of necessity

IT WAS a sweltering summer?s day in Peyrat-le-Ch?teau, Limousin ? the heart of la France profonde. Families dressed in their best converged upon the village church of St Martin of Tours and crowded in, within its eleventh-century walls; the children of the district were making their First Holy Communion. They mounted the sanctuary and sat beneath two beefy, bearded statues: one of St Martin, whose disciples had evangelised Limousin from the fifth century on, and the other of St Martial, the founder of the Church in the regional capital, Limoges. The children read the bidding prayers, sang hymns and helped P?re Jean-Michel Bortheirie at the altar. Eleven children received the Eucharist for the first time. Cameras and camcorders recorded the joyful rite of passage.

Regular churchgoers, generally advanced in years, meanwhile led the responses and singing. Their welcoming team had distributed Mass-sheets and ushered people to their seats.

Peyrat?s church is one of the principal ones in the recently formed ?parish? of St Anne. (There is a traditional devotion to Our Lady?s mother in the region; ancient effigies of her nestle among foliage on country lanes.) The ?parish?, which roughly corresponds to the local administrative district, incorporates 25 formerly independent village churches. Fulfilment of one?s Sabbath devotion can require a long and winding road journey, for P?re Bortheirie celebrates a regular Sunday Mass in just a handful. And out of a population of almost 11,000 over the entire district, only 11 children made their First Holy Communion.

While the Catholic Church remains by far the most important religious institution in France, statistics show a slow erosion of religious observance. At present, there are 24,000 priests in active ministry but this figure is set to diminish to 8,000 within a decade. In a June poll, while 71 per cent of the population affirmed a Catholic identity, half of these claimed not to believe in God or to be agnostic. Only 37 per cent of those polled considered that religion was important in their lives.

Take the region of Limousin, which incorporates the three departments of La Creuse, La Corr?ze and Haute-Vienne, and covers 17,000 square kilometres (vaster than historical Yorkshire). Its population of 700,000 is served by only 113 priests. Some 45 retired clerics help out by celebrating liturgies and presiding over some of the other sacraments. Limousin, 400 kilometres from Paris, is situated in the so-called ?diagonal of emptiness?. During the summer holidays, when turtle-doves purr from the chestnut trees, Peyrat?s tourist-swollen church is full for Sunday Mass but at other times 20 is the average number in the pews. According to Jacques Fihey, Bishop of Coutances, and president of the French Bishops? Committee for Mission in the Countryside: ?When there is only one priest in the centre of a district, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Church is absent ? this is a challenge for Christians who are invited to create living communities.?

That challenge causes the rural Church to have to face two particular questions: how to look after its dwindling and ageing flock and how to witness to the Spirit and bring joy and hope to the modern world?

Michel and Marie-Th?r?se Gu?guen epitomise those devoted lay members of the Church who ensure its dynamic presence ? la campagne. The couple are parents and grandparents and while retired are blessed with energy, collaborative vision ? and two cars.

They are members of St Anne?s pastoral council which, except for P?re Bortheirie and two nuns, is dominated by the laity. The council is responsible for overseeing catechesis, liturgy, baptism, charity work, parish visits, Communion ministers, the welcoming committee, and finances.

The Gu?guens, themselves, are particularly involved in liaising with bereaved families and presiding over funeral liturgies, for priests now almost never celebrate requiem Masses. These arrangements require much preparation. ?We discuss the deceased, how they died. We then seek to find out whether the deceased was far from the Church. But rather than ask questions, we get the family to speak. This isn?t always easy. Sometimes the family had fallen out with the dead member,? says Mme Gu?guen.

M Gu?guen often delivers the eulogy. ?We need to find out about the dead person?s life; what good things occurred. We often write this up but sometimes the family does so,? he says. They stress that everything is possible, nothing is fixed and that they adapt according to a family?s wishes. Mme Gu?guen recalls one funeral when seven grandchildren placed seven candles on their grandparent?s coffin.

They explain the funeral service to the mourning families. ?We provide them with possible readings, religious and non-religious; sometimes the family is very far from the Church,? she says. There is always a Gospel or New Testament reading. Sometimes preparations are delicate. A family has moved away leaving behind an aged parent or relative. The interview in these circumstances may take place over the telephone. Sometimes someone dying elsewhere is brought back to their home village (funerals always take place in the local church) and buried in the family vault.

The Gu?guens and others like them among the rural laity are essential in creating and fostering relationships between the different village communities within the sprawling St Anne?s parish. During the First Communion Mass in Peyrat, the far-flung country-dwellers converged as neighbours. There was a hubbub before and after the celebration as they swapped stories and caught up on news.

Mme Gu?guen is involved in a patchwork group in the parish in which women come together to sew quilts. She explains that the group was formed, in part, to ward off loneliness and isolation; many of the members are widows. The finished articles decorate walls, or become bedspreads. They have been given as gifts to the Mairie and local nursery or auctioned during le t?l?thon (French television?s equivalent to Red Nose Day).

The patchwork stands as a striking metaphor which evokes the interconnected countryside in which the parish of St Anne?s is situated. And just as each patch on a quilt has its own texture and qualities, so each village in the wider parish is custodian of its peculiar traditions and history. Chief among such traditions are the ?pardons? ? the parading of local saints? relics in ornate reliquaries. The origin of this practice apparently dates back to the ninth century when, during an outbreak of ergotism (?St Anthony?s fire?), the Bishop of Limoges paraded through the streets with the relics of St Martial.

At the Peyrat Mass, the children?s catechist is a woman. So is the cantor and many other ?key players?. Women, traditionally more active in the Church than men, are progressively more present in decision-making roles. More than one-third of French dioceses count women among the members of the bishops? councils which meet in order to run the dioceses. Other bishops maintain a more conservative body (sometimes composed solely of priests) but in these dioceses, women have important roles in such bodies as diocesan pastoral councils. Women head diocesan services (such as catechesis, educational chaplaincy, health, rural mission) in all dioceses. On average, women run half a diocese?s departments. ?They are everywhere in the life of the Church,? according to Jean-Louis Papin, Bishop of Nancy. ?We sometimes wonder where the men are.?

The countryside is experiencing something of an upheaval. While the farming population is diminishing, across the nation 4 million people have moved into the countryside in the past 30 years and the rural population stands at 23.3 million, approximately a third of France?s total. This rural population is now heterogeneous and much of it is poor.

Smallholdings have been swallowed up by mega-farms. Les agriculteurs now account for less than 10 per cent of the rural working population and there is a danger of losing their wisdom and influence. If farming is no longer the dominant activity, it still shapes the countryside and covers by far the greatest area: 664,000 farms take up 30 million out of the 55 million hectares of the nation?s territory. Established country-dwellers fear that townie newcomers wish to take over.

It is striking how many of the committed rural laity are as active in the secular world as they are in the Church. Catholics like the Gu?guens are working towards a future based on solidarity and durable development. They work alongside their ?social partners? such as charities, associations and trade unions, innovating change and opposing measures that they perceive as undermining the common good. The Church and its relevant agencies ? such as the countryside arm of Secours Catholique and Chr?tiens dans le monde rural ? are involved in all manner of social projects: childcare, youth-work, transport, care of the elderly, counselling and social housing.

Michel Gu?guen, a long-time activist in l?Association des familles rurales, was instrumental in founding Peyrat?s recently established cr?che, prodding the Mairie and the region for investment and subsidy, finding further sponsorship from other quarters. He leads tourists on local rambles and engages in conservation work.

The Gu?guens do not hide their concern for the dwindling Church: ?We do what we can here. The Holy Spirit will come to our aid. We do not lose hope. The Church cannot disappear.? As their manifold activities attest, community lies at the heart of the Catholic faith. Even as it grapples with its own problems, the Church remains a vital force in fostering community in a countryside undergoing a dramatic transformation.