IN THE MID-1870's 35,387,703 of the 36,000,000 people in France were listed in the official census as Catholics. The rest declared themselves Protestants (something under 600,000), Jews (5,000), or freethinkers (80,000). The secular clergy of the Catholic church alone included 55,169 priests, one for every 639 inhabitants. Roman Catholicism remained, as it had been in 1801, "the religion of the majority of Frenchmen."
One of the things which completely blindsided the Catholic Church was the collapse of the faith among ordinary people following Vatican Two. This in turn has clouded many of the "interpretations" of the Council, with many of the Traditionalists blaming it for the Church's problems. Yet astute minds had recognised long before the Council that serious problems were fermenting. In 1944, two french priests involved with the care of the working class published a survey of the state of the faith in that demographic. France, Pays de Mission?, shocked the clerical establishment in its estimate that eight million of France's working class were essentially pagan. What had happened in the period since 1870? Remember this was 1944, well before Vatican Two.
Most analyses of secularisation tend to take a intellectual approach to the problem of the loss of faith but in my opinion this tends to focus on that small element of society that actually thinks and ignores the mass of men who experience their faith rather than intellectualise about it. This in turn leads to "intellectual" approaches towards re-Christianisation which have largely failed. Weber, in my opinion, sees the practice of religion as being a consequence of an interplay with a wide variety of social and personal forces and in my opinion gives a far more convincing analysis as to why religion collapsed in the face of modernity.
As mentioned before Weber paints a picture of a pre-modernity equilibrium between social circumstances and religious faith, weak or strong, which favored religion. But astute observers noted that much of the relgious zeal of the past was intermixed with intermixed with a great deal of worldliness. In a strongly "local" world the church had both a religious and sociological function, with each underpinning the other, and what modernity did is totally undercut the sociological dimension.
"Sunday, the peasants go to church," wrote Madame Romieu at the end of the Second Empire, "some moved by religious feeling, most by habit or by fear of what people say." One went to church because it was the thing to do on Sunday, because it was one of the few social occasions of the week, because it was an opportunity for talking business or meeting friends, acquaintances, relatives. It was--especially for the women, once men had grasped at the opportunities that fairs held out-the sole occasion to escape the isolation in which many lived, the major recreation or diversion in a restricted life. Observance business, and pleasure were combined. One went to mass wearing one's Sunday best, and given the muddy cart tracks, this often meant special paths, mass roads, chemins de messe. Public announcements were made by the village crier as the congregation left the service, public sales were often timed to fall after it, one could slip off later to call on the notary or the doctor, or drop in to the tavern, circle, or cafe. Even if a majority did not attend the service but went about their work as on any other day, "a multitude of peasants gathered in front of the church, discussed politics, made deals, filled the taverns."
In a world where entertainment was scarce, church provided a certain festive diversion. Those attending might well "love the high mass, the rich ornaments, seeing a great many statues of saints in their churches." Writing about his grandmother, Charles Peguy presented church attendance as a treat for the lonely child raised in a woodcutter's hut in Bourbonnais in the early 1800's : "When she was good, she was allowed to go on Sunday to mass in the village she wore her sabots because one doesn't go to church barefoot, and she was happy because that's where everybody met, where they exchanged news, where one heard about deaths, marriages, births, where gossip flowed about what was going on, where servants were hired."Technological limits placed practical restriction on the ability of people to leave their local circumstances and the only show in town was the Church. What modernity did is give people alternatives.
We see that in the churches, as in the schools, non-attendance is a way of measuring ineffectiveness. The growing numbers of migrant workers going to the cities added to this trend. Urban workers worked Sundays and holidays, or did so very often. The more earnest the man, the more he worked. The less responsible were the more likely to get drunk during their free time. The Church did not see them either way. Like the Revolution, acquaintance with the city did not destroy religious sentiment. It simply made nonconformity possible or created another kind of conformity. Men who attended church at home because their peers did ceased to attend church where such attendance was exceptional. The city merely provided an opportunity for the collapse of practices "shallowly rooted in the personality." Returning migrants may well have lost whatever impulse to religious conformity they had left with. They did not necessarily bandy this about so long as the priest retained his influence in the community. But they were ready to welcome emancipation when it came.
At any rate, all observers seem to have sensed the shallowness of faith behind the slackness of observance. In Beauce respectable farmers, "preoccupied by the care to augment their fortune, work to this end even on Sunday during the services, so that the churches are deserted." Not that they lacked respect for religion, "but they consider that the time they would spend in church would be lost for their work and their fortune." Not challenge, but indifference and hardheadedness. One farmer declared that he would rather go to hell, since heaven was too high and far away. He was not interested in salvation ("it's not in my way of thinking; ... it's not done"). The paradise he sought was here on earth. "The absence of religious sentiment [in the countryside, especially] is such that there are communes where scarcely one marriage in six is blessed in church" (Yonne, 1862) .What Weber argues is that modernity gave the people the real world option of not practicing religion in a way that was not possible prior to modernity. It's true that there were modernist elements that actually tried to stifle religion but the real solvent were the new opportunities afforded by modernity. City life, particularly, was different and provided for more anonymity--and opportunities for alternatives-- than life in the village. Life in small local communities is difficult to live anonymously and peer pressure tends to encourage conformity, not that there was much else to do. What all observers seem to note is that religious rot did not really set in till the last two decades of the 19th Century, just as French modernisation was gaining steam and well after the French Revolution with all of its Enlightenment Ideas.
In 1874 the bishop of Limoges bewailed "this grievous inertia of the masses." Alain Corbin, who has found no evidence of a great increase in religious indifference in the Limousin before 1870, notes a "brutal fall of religious practice" just about that time~not yet the godlessness the bishop of Limoges described in 1875, "but indifference, an incurable apathy, the total abandonment of religious duties, [and] universal disaffection." In the Limousin the Church's identification with the Moral Order brought anticlericalism. But even there, as almost everywhere, the most detached or hostileand,
maintained their loyalty to rites of passage and local festivals. More generally, as in Puy-de-Dome, "the religious question leaves our countrymen indifferent." though they "continue to go to church on Sunday out of habit."
From the Church's point of view, every innovation only made things worse. The bicycle was blamed for enabling young people to avoid mass. Tourists, visitors, and returning emigrants felt increasingly free to speak of their indifference to religious practice or even their scorn of it. Military service side-by-side with "pagan" urban workers made some peasants ashamed of a show of piety as a mark of their bumpkin backwardness. Finally, with war in 1914 there came a culmination of the pressures toward detachment. Yet, how far and fast would all these factors have worked if religion had been solidly anchored in personality?Weber hits the nail on the head here by recognising that a "personal" faith "anchored in personality" is a different thing than an apparent faith of custom, habit and convenience. What modernity exposed is that the "personal faith" was strongly lacking and that a lot of religious practice was a habit contingent upon circumstances. Modernity changed the circumstances and exposed the shallowness in religious belief. What Weber is hinting at--in a roundabout way-- is the notion that a strong faith is not opposed to modernity its just that weak faith is corroded by it. And pre-Modern Europe had a lot of weak faith. What Weber is getting at is that Modernity is not a solvent of religion, it is a solvent of weak and superficial religion, it separates the wheat from the chaff.
The other element at play here was not so much the philosophy of scientific materialism but the practical consequences of it. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, in a world where life was precarious and the means for mastering nature extremely limited, prayer and religion were of some utility to the peasant:
Living was marginal, disaster inexplicable and uncontrollable. This added to the countryman's Winnie-thePooh syndrome of seeing the trace of fantastic monsters in tracks that he had made himself. Where harm and ill-fortune were swiftly come by, nothing was easier than to claim that they were punishments of heaven. Long centuries of trying to mollify and coax the powerful conjured up a religion where fear almost excluded love, a faith bent to flatter and do honor to the heavenly lords in order to obtain their protection or avoid their ire. Power and irascibility were what impressed. The peasants would not work their cattle on the feasts of the nastiest saints, the ones most likely to resent and revenge any irreverence; they sought to discover what "thrashing saint" lay behind their illness. Kindly saints could be invoked when they were needed; in grimmer mood, they evoked well-conditioned submission.
God was far away. The saints were near. Both were anthropomorphic. Saints were intercessors. One did not address God directly, but prayed to saints to request his favors, rewarded them if the crop was good or the weather fair, ....Practical science gave men some form of control over the environment and was therefore more useful than religion. Whatever its philosophical underpinnings--something the average man doesn't even consider---the insights and power bought about by science had practical consequences. Why pray to God when chemical fertilizers will do the trick?
A peasant quoted by Gaston Mery in 1907 explained: "We compare what the teacher gives us with what the priest can give. Well, he gives us more. It's the teacher that has taught us how to read, and that is useful in life. He has taught us how to reckon and that is even more useful ... and then that is not all. If we need advice for our taxes, for our business, we just go to see him. He's got books and papers about farming, about fertilizer." The things one could see, the things one could touch, were taking over; and the school rode forward on their tide. The peasant's need had shifted from consolation to advice on concrete matters; and on this level, at this time at least, the presbytery could not keep up with the school.and,
Yet phosphates, chemical fertilizers, and schooling had spelled the beginning of the end. In 1893, a drought year in Bourbonnais when many men were having masses said for their emaciated cattle (which died anyway), the priest reproached Henry Norre, a self-taught man who farmed not far from Cerilly, for not attending church. "I haven't got the time," he answered. "And really, I haven't got much confidence in your remedies for the beasts. My remedies are better; you can check." Daniel Halevy quotes another story about Norre. This time the farmer returned from the railway station with a cartful of fertilizer and met the priest. "What are you carting there?" "Chemicals." "But that is very bad; they burn the soil" "Monsieur le cure," said Norre, "I've tried everything. I've had masses said and got no profit from them. I've bought chemicals and they worked. I'll stick to the better merchandise." It was the requiem of nineteenth-century religion.
10 comments:
Its sad that instead of Jesus opening the way to the Father such that we can boldly approach the Throne of Grace.
That in practice they didnt even consider Jesus approachable compared to saints.
Perhaps this is another reason why the reformation occurred.
I am surprised that this is not common knowledge. I think you must live in urban areas of very advanced countries.
"Sunday, the peasants go to church," wrote Madame Romieu at the end of the Second Empire, "some moved by religious feeling, most by habit or by fear of what people say." [...] In a world where entertainment was scarce, church provided a certain festive diversion.
You don't have to go back to the Second Empire. This is happening right now. I live in El Salvador (Central America). A month ago (December 2019), I was talking with the priest of C*******a, a small town in the mountains near the capital. He told me that peasants go from their villages to the town every Sunday. They complained to him that the Mass was too short. After walking for hours, they expected to be entertained for longer.
I lived about 10 years ago near a Protestant mega-church that receives about 50,000 people every Sunday in San Salvador (a modern capital with millions of people). I saw many people going to two or three Protestant services in a row because it was their way to spend the Sunday, since they are poor and they don't have many entertainment options.
Weber hits the nail on the head here by recognising that a "personal" faith "anchored in personality" is a different thing than an apparent faith of custom, habit and convenience.
Only about 5% of people have a personal faith (or maybe 10%). Only 5% are true believers. This applies to now, to the Middle Ages, to Christianity, to Islam, to Buddhism, to the progressive religion, to every time in history, to every religion, to every country. "For many are called, but few are chosen." (Matthew 22:14) "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to." (Luke 13:24)
There has never been a golden age of personal religion. Religious ages are composed of 5% of true believers and 90% of people with an apparent faith of custom, habit and convenience. I am surprised that this is not common knowledge.
I was born in the very religious Francoist Spain, where Catholicism was official and enforced. Most people were Catholics, of the "custom, habit and convenience" kind. In my extended family (about 40 people), there were only 3 personal religion people (all of them were women). But the other people went to Mass, baptized kids, had religious weddings, celebrated Catholic feasts, etc... This is what you mean when you say:
But even there, as almost everywhere, the most detached or hostile
maintained their loyalty to rites of passage and local festivals.
I continue below
(Continued from the previous message. This is the second message)
This is what I disagreed with your description of secularization in Spain in this post Protestant integralism, a process that I have experienced or followed daily for the last 40 years (I was on vacation so I could not reply to it). You referred to an "expert" called "José Casanova" and I wondered: "How can this Spanish Catholic guy see things so different?". Then I googled it and found this: the solution to all the problems in the Church is to make women cardinal so women can rule the Church. "Ah!" -I thought- "He is this kind of """"Catholic"""" guy".
The process of secularization of Spain is simple to explain. As always, only 5% of people were truly religious while Franco lived (see my previous comment). When Franco died, an anti-Catholic elite came to rule Spain. They have been educated in the North of Europe, in the secularized Protestant countries of the North (mostly in London). Due to this education and to the black legend (explaining the black legend would be too long), they regarded Spain as a failed state, Spanish history as a dark history of abuse and obscurantism. They regarded Christianity as the cause of all that and a huge mistake that should be corrected as soon as possible.
This elite thought their main goal is to destroy Catholicism in Spain (this was called "to modernize Spain). During the eighties, in the Socialist government , vice-president Alfonso Guerra declared "when we leave [the government], Spain will be unrecognizable to her own mother". So this elite of politicians, journalists, singer-songwriters, TV anchors, film directors, screenwriters... took to the task of transforming the very (culturally) Catholic Spain.
They modified laws to go against Catholicism. But, more importantly, they put anti-Catholic messages and secular messages in all the songs, TV shows, movies, etc. This was a top-down process. During all Spanish history, people were (culturally) Catholic because they imitated their neighbors. Now people are anti-Catholic and believers in the progressive religion because they imitated what they saw in TV.
The process continues today. Five years ago, nobody knew what polyamory was in Spain. They saw it first in a TV show called "First dates", where people go to mate. They presented as a normal thing. Five years ago, I didn't knew any tranny. Now, my sister, which works as a high school teacher, tells me they have multiple trannies and non-binary kids in high school. They only imitate what they see in TV.
The patterns they imitate in TV *are imported from Protestant countries*. Spain never produced an original secular idea in all her history. All the secular ideas were imported from the Protestant countries. This is why I disagree with your thesis that Protestant adapted better to modernity. This only happened in America. In Europe, the first countries to de-Christianize were Protestant countries and all the de-Christianization of Catholic countries was imported from Protestant countries (since they were wealthier, they were seen as a "more advanced" in Southern Europe).
(This is the third and final message. I apologize for the length but these are complex topics)
I think the explanation of American Protestantism being more adapted to modernity goes in the line of this Rodney Stark's book. Societies that have a religious monopoly (a national Church) are less religious. This applies to Europe (whether Catholic or Protestant), ancient Egypt and ancient Middle East. Societies that have a religious free market (where different sects compete with each other) are more religious. This applies to modern America and ancient Rome.
To finish, I have learned a lot from you and I really enjoy every post. But I disagree with your approach to the entire secularization process. Your approach is framed in terms of "losing religion". There is not such thing. A person (and a society) always has a religion, a worldview about what is right and what is wrong. What has happened is a change of religion, from the Christian religion to the progressive religion
In the past, blasphemy was wrong, a huge sin. In the present, blasphemy is also a huge sin. You can incur in blasphemy if you say that men are better in Math than women, if you say that homosexuality is [REDACTED]. In the past, we had the Spanish Inquisition who burned books. In the present we have the Google inquisition that removes Youtube channels. In the past, there were religious fanatics like Savonarola, who wanted to impose a theocracy on everybody. Today we call them SJWs (social justice warriors), that want to impose a progressive theocracy on everybody.
The explanation of the secularization process is simple if you compare to other societies. When societies are poor, most of the people that deviate from the moral law end up dying of starvation. This is why most (surviving) people are very morally strict in their worldview and the religion is very morally strict. See the Rome of the early Republic or the Europe before the Industrial Revolution.
When societies get rich, there is no need to be so strict and people want to indulge in all kinds of degeneracies and are not punished by this, because wealth insulates them from the consequences from their own decisions (whether personal wealth or the wealth of the Welfare State). Then strict religions are left aside (but they can be given lip services) and new religions that allow these degeneracies get popular. In late ancient Rome, this new degenerate religions were the mystery religions or philosophies like Epicureanism. In our times, the degenerate religion is the progressive religion.
End of story and apologies for the length.
And apologies for my broken English. English is not my native tongue.
SP: ...blindsided the RCC was the collapse of the faith following VII
I agree with most of this post, except this part. In reality, he RCC doesn't "think" anything; hell it has a million opinions all over the world. Even popes cannot agree. VII documents were all about changing praxis, and yes, on that front, VII has clearly failed for modern Westerners. So what? Good riddance. They were never going to come to the feast anyway.
I do agree with you that this wasn't a "collapse of faith", just the exposure of reality, or the tide going out showing everyone to be spiritually naked and obese. But to be fair, I think many Trads question the timing of VII, and letting all the sheep get slaughtered my modernity. Not me; Trads are softies. Myself. I'm all for free will, Let the spiritually dead bury the dead. But boy, I agree the pain is really bad out there as seen through the secular confessional. Justice and peace must kiss, and we have a lot more Justice to go, methinks.
with many of the Traditionalists blaming it for the Church's problems.
Is this really still a thing? A Trad would have to be pretty dumb to hold this line, methinks. Perhaps you misinterpret younger Trads (not boomers) who claim is that since half the clergy/bishops were in practical heresy VII was just lousy timing? But those folk are generally just pussies blowing off steam. Par for the West. I doubt Cardinal Sarah or his flock would have had any such worries :-). We get the leadership we deserve.
...in my opinion this tends to focus on that small element of society that actually thinks and ignores the mass of men who experience their faith rather than intellectualise about it. This in turn leads to "intellectual" approaches towards re-Christianisation which have largely failed.
Why not ignore the mass of men who lack faith? Yes, "floating along" with the modern culture as a real Christian is indeed dead. Good riddance! The Faith is indeed undergoing a needed evolutionary purging, and like all great persecutions/purges many (even most?) will go extinct. Yes, the Church will get smaller in the West, as B16 said, and become stronger and more counter-cultural. Call it the Leonidas effect. I'm all for it.
Myself, I think this is an awesome time for faithful modern Christians. Just don't expect much from the Church but doctrine. The rest, the living out the faith, that is our job, to do without help. This is the part the Prots got right! But it's simply not our job to predict how the Church will grow, it is merely our job to make it happen in our small corner.
@JohnR
Perhaps this is another reason why the reformation occurred.
I think one of the great strengths of the Church is its panoply of saints. They're a sort of gateway to God and help those with a limited ability to abstract.
@Chent
Thanks for the comments. I really don't mind a bit of criticism and welcome it when it is well intentioned.
I am surprised that this is not common knowledge. I think you must live in urban areas of very advanced countries.
I do live in an advanced urban area and was aware that much religious adherence was due to social convention. I bring the point up because there seems to be a notion that faith prior to modernity was solid and deeply anchored in society, and this does not appear to be the case. Commentator MK said it correctly
I do agree with you that this wasn't a "collapse of faith", just the exposure of reality, or the tide going out showing everyone to be spiritually naked and obese
Only about 5% of people have a personal faith (or maybe 10%)
That's a very interesting point. What exactly qualifies a person as "truly religious". As I understand it (from Matthew 19:16-22) there seems to be two standards of Christianity which are acceptable to God: Good enough and perfect. I think one of the problems of Catholic asceticism has been to denigrate the "good enough" at the expense of the perfect. And this comes with whole host of other problems. What I'm trying to say is that there is a large body of "weak" but acceptable believers which modernity has attacked. I think the 10% figure is probably too low.
They modified laws to go against Catholicism. But, more importantly, they put anti-Catholic messages and secular messages in all the songs, TV shows, movies, etc. This was a top-down process.
And so it was in Eastern Europe but the collapse of faith there--except in the Czech republic-- is no where as bad as is in contemporary Spain. I'm aware of the "black Legend" and take it with a grain of Salt, as the English and Dutch have a habit of forgetting their own atrocities while playing up the role of others.
The patterns they imitate in TV *are imported from Protestant countries*. Spain never produced an original secular idea in all her history. All the secular ideas were imported from the Protestant countries
I think that many of the old Protestants would be horrified at the forms that modern Protestantism has taken. Modern Protestant ideas are not the new ones being imported. Spain may not have thought up an original secular idea but it seem to have taken them on with gusto. The extend which modern ideas have penetrated into Spanish society points towards a weakness in that society. Spain had 50 years of near integralist society and it was yet unable to produce a society which could not respond to secularism.
As for Jose Cassanova, it's very important to distinguish the diagnosis from the therapy. Jose's diagnosis is right, his therapy is wrong.
Your approach is framed in terms of "losing religion". There is not such thing. A person (and a society) always has a religion, a worldview about what is right and what is wrong.
I think we must be very precise in our terminology. It's true that people always have some kind of values system by which they live their life, so the decline of religion has meant that alternative, secular values have taken their place. But secularism is not a religion. (Once again, this depends on how you define religion.)
When societies get rich, there is no need to be so strict and people want to indulge in all kinds of degeneracies and are not punished by this, because wealth insulates them from the consequences from their own decisions (whether personal wealth or the wealth of the Welfare State).
Agree. A lot of liberalism has been enabled by a wealth buffer which insulates people from the consequences of their actions. The feedback loop has been broken.
@Chent
Once again, thanks for the comments.
@MK
Is this really still a thing? A Trad would have to be pretty dumb to hold this line, methinks
There are plenty of dumb Trads.
Why not ignore the mass of men who lack faith?
Well, our job is to convert the world and perhaps a "one size fits all" approach isn't appropriate. I'm very partial to Thomism but I can see how it could leave other people cold. You've got to come at this with a tool box and not just a simple tool.
@The Social Pathologist
"I think one of the great strengths of the Church is its panoply of saints. They're a sort of gateway to God and help those with a limited ability to abstract."
I don't know about that. As far as I know working class people don't have a problem directly appealing to God if they are Protestant.
There is a level of intimacy with Chris and God his Father(Hebrews 10:19) that is absent when its not screened by intercessory saints.
Through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice God should be far more approachable by default.
I could be mistaken.
To expand on my earlier point instead of Saints for those who have trouble with abstract thought Jesus takes that role for prots.
As true man he is the approachable figure as well as being God himself.
Being human like various saints it shouldnt be too hard for those who have limited or non existent abstraction ability.
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