c. 1996 Religion News Service

PARIS (RNS)-Two months ago the French Bishops’ Conference surprised many of the country’s 42 million Catholics when for the first time it appeared to reverse church policy by endorsing the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Progressives welcomed the decision as a step toward liberalizing church rules on birth control. Traditionalists claimed the change did not reverse or alter existing prohibitions against artificial contraception.

In a sense, both sides were correct. The narrow decree endorsed the rights of doctors to counsel the use of condoms only when”necessary”to slow the spread of AIDS. But it reiterated that the church does not condone their use and said clergy must continue to oppose artificial contraception.”There was a lot of social pressure on them to take a stand on this issue,”said Dominique Mange, staff director of the Catholic Movement for Women.”But if you look at the text, it isn’t that radical. It basically supports what the church has long supported-abstinence. Taken together, it is a narrow decision.” While the decree addressed only condom use, many observers from both the progressive and conservative wings of the French Catholic Church surmise the bishops had a larger goal: to bridge what appears to be a growing division between those who think the church is out of touch with modern social realities and those who believe it must reinforce traditional dogma.

The growing dissent among French Catholics-who make up 70 percent of the country’s population-has not produced referendums like the kind in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland that part with Catholic orthodoxy. But the strains are evident here in the bishops’ recent declaration, the removal of a liberal bishop from his diocese and in the declining participation among rank-and-file Catholics in the church.

Even the Rev. Olivier De La Brosse, spokesman for the bishops’ conference, acknowledges that the Catholic Church in France is becoming increasingly polarized.

On one side, he said,”some Catholics feel the church imposes ideals too pure for them and that they can’t live up to those ideals. There are others who feel the church doesn’t respond to problems of society today and that it doesn’t question these problems enough.” Claude Bressolette, chairman of the theology department at the Catholic Institute of Paris, put it another way:”We have the traditionalists on one side and the progressives on the other. They are confident of their paths.” The two men agree on the problem, but like many Catholics, they differ over the solution.

De La Brosse said that in keeping with the conservative views of Pope John Paul II, the church must demand more, not less, of its followers.”The church would keep more followers if she were more demanding of them,”he said.”They need to be provoked into action, in charity, economic life and social life.” But Bressolette and others say Catholics cannot be herded”like sheep”into action that the church deems appropriate.”They want to be heard,”he said.”And a lot of them are saying they can be good Catholics and still favor contraception and abortion and the ordination of women.” The fissure among Catholics in France is manifest in Catholicism throughout Europe. As conservatives hold fast, progressives fight the church’s moral edicts, such as rules against birth control. Others seek acceptance for married priests, women’s ordination and homosexual clergy. Still others feel the Vatican has gone too far in micro-managing their countries’ episcopates.

With John Paul in the 17th year of his pontificate and in the twilight of his papacy, European Catholics have become increasingly vocal in their views of how the church should be governed.

Overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland has approved a referendum upending a ban on divorce. Several Irish bishops have called on the church to examine its ban against a married clergy.

Last year, 500,000 Austrian Catholics and 1.5 million German Catholics signed separate petitions urging major reforms, including allowing women’s ordination, reversing the ban on mandatory priestly celibacy and allowing artificial birth control.

In the Netherlands, Catholics have begun a similar petition drive, calling on the church to allow women’s priestly ordination and making celibacy optional for clergy.

Restive Catholics in Belgium, Italy and Eastern Europe have sounded similarly discordant tones.

Perhaps the most significant single incident that has galvanized opposition to orthodoxy in France was the pope’s decision last year to remove Monsignor Jacques Gaillot from his diocese in Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, for expressing dissident views such as backing homosexual rights, women’s ordination and an end to the church’s ban on married clergy.

Supporters protested on Gaillot’s behalf in demonstrations and letter writing-campaigns to newspapers and the church. Some simply stopped attending church services.”I don’t want to sound pretentious by saying that I represent the silent majority but that’s what I would like to believe,”Gaillot said.

He also has been a thorn in the side of the Catholic bishops, needling them for what he claims is their failure to address the burning social or moral issues of the day, such as poverty and abortion.”All they care about these days is the pope’s visit in September,”he said scornfully. The pontiff is scheduled to make his sixth pastoral trip to France next fall, visiting the Vendee region in western France, and Tours and Reims.”People are not necessarily leaving the church but more of them are comfortable with the notion that they can be in favor of abortion and be a good Catholic,”Bressolette said.

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Most French Catholics favor the use of artificial birth control regardless of questions over public health. Abortion is legal and accessible.

As in other predominantly Catholic countries throughout Europe, many of France’s Catholics do not go to church. Only eight percent attend Mass regularly, according to a recent study published in Le Figaro magazine.

Only 14 percent of self-described Catholics 18 to 25 years old said they considered themselves”convinced believers,”compared with 23 percent among all Catholics.

In France the presence is strong among what the pope has derisively called”cafeteria Catholics,”or those who pick and choose elements of church teaching that suits them.

Most Catholic parents still baptize their newborns and most of their offspring marry in the church. In fact, baptisms are up dramatically among adults in the past two decades.

Even if they reject many of the church’s tenets, many Catholics remain interested in what the church’s leaders think. The pope’s book on church teaching,”Crossing the Threshold of Hope,”has sold nearly 500,000 copies in France.

But Catholics appear to be reading and observing with increased skepticism about a church they say is becoming more centralized and less accepting of unique cultural distinctions.

An overwhelming 75 percent of Catholics polled by Le Figaro disapproved of the pope’s decision to intervene in the Gaillot affair.

While Archbishop Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris publicly supported the pope’s action, other bishops did not. Archbishop Andre Collini, considered among a small group of moderate senior prelates, said the firing”threatened to create divisions and misunderstandings”within the church.”There are a lot of bishops who have said to me that you have to speak like Rome,”Gaillot said.”They say, it’s one thing for us to feel what we do but in public we must take Rome’s position.”

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