Resumption of worship: "Confidence between Catholics and the State has been broken"

Henri de Beauregard is a lawyer at the Paris bar.

FIGAROVOX.- Despite what the Head of State had led to believe during a telephone conversation with the president of the Conference of Bishops of France,

Henri DE BEAUREGARD.-

The government is trying to buy time.

In fact, from the start he has been leading the believers on a boat.

During the second confinement, when the Catholics learned that the masses (which the Council of State had however recalled in May that they fell under a fundamental freedom) would again be prohibited to the faithful, an appeal was immediately filed.

The administrative judge, obviously not so comfortable with this new ban, had invited the government to consult the heads of worship within eight days, as if asking believers to be patient.

This consultation was not initiated… until the eighth day following the judge's decision!

Win time.

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Then the government hinted that masses could resume with a strict sanitary protocol, and the bishops prepared a detailed protocol for this purpose.

Faithful took to the Council of State to denounce this strategy, which replied - in substance - that it was necessary to wait for the president's announcements.

Tuesday evening, in defiance - it seems - of the consultation that took place with the cults, the president mentioned a maximum number of thirty faithful per mass, whatever the size of the church, the businesses benefiting for their starts with a gauge which is a function of the floor area.

In front of the indignation of the Catholics, the president called Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort, evoking a misunderstanding and explaining that a proportional gauge would be well fixed but "put in place in two stages".

In terms of a “two-step” gauge, Jean Castex now confirms that the Masses remain reduced to 30 faithful and that the situation will be re-examined later.

They make fun of Catholics.

We walk them.

What upsets me is that this is done in a duettist act, with the more or less tacit agreement of the Council of State, via decisions whose legal foundations appear increasingly fragile.

They make fun of Catholics.

We walk them.

Moreover, the fact that the Prime Minister himself speaks of a "reopening of places of worship" when it is a question of a resumption of ceremonies of worship in public, since places of worship have never been closed, testifies to the lack of seriousness with which he followed this file.

Did the Catholics not know how to make themselves heard?

I have the impression that since Tuesday evening, the tone has changed, including among bishops who had been very careful until then.

Bishop Aupetit had very strong words.

Many others as well.

The situation is all the more difficult for them as this situation of deprivation has created divisions among Catholics themselves.

Those who mobilized through gatherings, mostly young, were called irresponsible, fundamentalists or immature by some of those who called for patience.

I would have preferred that they were wrong, but the reality is that the negotiations did not really bear fruit.

Paradoxically, this ultimate humiliation could bring believers together.

Those to whom they expressed their incomprehension in a more visible way are joined by most of the “observant Catholics” as the sociologist Yann Raison du Cleuziou calls them, those for whom the mass is an important moment in their spiritual life.

This time believers are discriminated against in relation to the stores.

To be patient, to comply with a demanding protocol, many could hear it, but when the device becomes incoherent, arbitrary and discriminatory, it testifies to a contempt that becomes unbearable, especially for Catholics who have already felt deceived by the false consultation which preceded the bioethics bill, were found threatened in Nice ...

For you, is this decision humiliating for Catholics?

Yes.

Already in the spring it was necessary that the judge in summary proceedings reminded the State that the opening of places of worship at the same time as shops was the least of things since freedom of worship comes under even greater protection than economic freedoms;

it is a beautiful French legal tradition, which places the mind above the stomach.

But this time believers are discriminated against in relation to the stores, which all reopen with a gauge linked to their surface area while the cults are subject to a fixed number.

It is arbitrary and absurd.

The tiniest chapel is subject to the same rule as the largest basilica.

The situation is therefore worse than in the spring.

This can only lead to a breakdown in trust between Catholics and the state.

This rupture may well be irreversible.

Catholics are not a homogeneous whole politically;

some did not already have great confidence in this government, others will use violence to maintain it, but all observant Catholics will permanently retain the painful memory of this deception.

It is accompanied by a particular bitterness for them because, in this country in the construction of which so many Christians participated, they have the impression of having become negligible, insignificant for political power.

There is no longer consent to authority when the exercise of authority is incomprehensible.

In order to maintain an attack on freedom of worship at all costs, the government is increasing attacks on other pillars of democratic life: freedom of assembly, confidence in public speech, feeling of being a nation.

At the legal level, we are installing very worrying case law.

With inept or untenable prohibitions, we install the idea of ​​legitimate disobedience.

At the social level, we create irreversible situations of mistrust, depression ... The health benefits that the government believes it can derive from these restrictions are daily becoming less than their democratic, legal and psychological disadvantages.

It is likely that this weekend will see Catholics going to their churches, to their courts.

There is no longer consent to authority when the exercise of authority is incomprehensible.

And I believe that this widening rift between them and the state risks the government itself causing more damage than it will bring in benefits.

All the more so as religious practice can participate among many faithful in the psychological balance which the government has just realized that it could be weakened by the confinement and the cessation of all social activity ... Finally, if the Catholics continue to demonstrate to demand fairer rules, which is their strictest right given the situation, it will be more difficult to keep them at a good distance from each other as it can be done in a church where since May last the seats were spaced and the entry and exit of the faithful regulated so that the barrier gestures were scrupulously respected.