French church leader condemns its ‘activists’

French Catholics should remain open to dialogue and political engagement in a society that is no longer based on Christian values, rather than retreat into narrowly focused factions, Archbishop Georges Pontier, president of the bishops’ conference, has said, writes Tom Heneghan.

The Marseille archbishop, speaking a week after a lively debate at the bishops’ spring plenary meeting on growing activism by conservative Catholics, told the daily Le Monde he was concerned that some groups were campaigning on a few ethical questions to the detriment of a wider perspective including environmental, social and global issues.

That was a barely veiled reference to movements mobilised by last year’s protests against gay marriage that are now pressing for a more combative church line to defend traditional families, oppose abortion and reject increasingly liberal sex education.

Some conservative groups have taken to criticising the hierarchy on social media, where anonymous commentators deride them as “free-mason bishops” and a “Vatican council sect”. Their blogs are abuzz with polemics over cases such as a Paris Catholic lycée accused of “fundamentalism” for inviting an anti-abortion activist to address an extra-curricular meeting.

“It’s become difficult to have Christians step back and enter into a dialogue with others, to have them accept that we don’t have the whole truth, to have them understand that, by oneself, one cannot reach the full understanding of all things,” Archbishop Pontier said.

“We also have to look into the question of social networks to see what we are doing with them and they are doing with us, in which way they serve us and in which way they alienate or confiscate our freedom,” he added. “What’s new is the emergence of these lobbies, their effectiveness, their immediacy, the irrationality of their reactions, the dramatisation of debates.”