Until this Sunday, a compromise seemed to be emerging with a view to resuming worship. It was no longer a matter of waiting for June 2, set by the Prime Minister. The idea was to relaunch the celebrations for the great weekend of Pentecost. Either Friday, May 29 for the mosques that gather on that day; in the evening of Friday and for Saturday May 30 for the synagogues which then celebrate Shavuot; Saturday evening and Pentecost Sunday May 31 for the Catholic and Protestant Churches because the Orthodox celebrate it a week later.
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The proposal was issued Thursday by the Conference of worship leaders in France, which brings together senior leaders of religions. The Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, had since consulted them by telephone. But, questioned Sunday during the "Grand Jury-RTL-Le Figaro-LCI", Christophe Castaner, Minister of Religious Affairs, confirmed a hard line: "I think that prayer is done in its relationship to the one we are accompanying, that one celebrates (...) oneself, and does not necessarily need a gathering place where one would run the whole of his religious community " a risk of contamination.
Our disappointment came from the fact that we did not get back on the deconfinement plan requested by the Prime Minister.
Bishop Éric de Moulins-BeaufortHe has therefore refused for the moment to speed up the calendar. The Catholic Church will not appreciate this new end of inadmissibility on the resumption of worship. Especially since she was preparing, last week, for a revival of cults for May 11. She was already very shocked by the postponement to June 2 announced by Édouard Philippe. And made it known publicly. Dissatisfied, she even convened, in stride, for this Monday, an exceptional assembly of the hundred bishops (the dioceses cut almost all the departments) in videoconference.
On April 30, the president of the Catholic Episcopal Conference, Mgr Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, explained his state of mind as follows: "Our disappointment came from the fact that we had no feedback on the deconfinement plan that yet asked us for the Prime Minister's services. It was not very elegant, having asked us for a plan, to bury it, without at least notifying us of this burial. ”
He specified that the Catholics wanted "to make it understood that the spiritual life, the sacramental life and the liturgical life are not hobbies that we could easily do without, nor activities without social significance" . Indeed, argued the man of the Church, "the participation in the mass contributes to the peace of the hearts, to the strength in the test, to the capacity to keep the heart and the spirit open and peaceful in difficult times and worried . "
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But he concluded: "The vast majority of the faithful are very legalistic, so they have no intention of defying the law" especially as "the stake is the unity of the country". Hence this final position of the president of the bishops: "I am not for toughening things."