"The prohibition of masses is a matter of ignorance of the Catholic religion"

Julien Leclercq is a business manager and essayist.

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For Catholics, the first confinement had been painful but the acceptance of the closing of churches had been rather mixed.

Accustomed to standing back for two centuries vis-à-vis the State, the faithful had shown resilience and had watched with emotion as Pope Francis celebrate Easter Mass alone in a deserted St. Peter's Basilica, even if no political regime had yet banned worship on French territory, including the Committee of Public Safety.

The second confinement decided by the executive on October 30 in order to fight the Covid-19 pandemic not only discouraged a large number of citizens but also many Catholics who demonstrated by the thousands in front of the churches of Paris, Bordeaux Nantes or Nice.

Gérard Larcher, President of the Senate, has already taken up the cause for the authorization of worship, but Jean Castex and Gérald Darmanin, at the end of a meeting with religious leaders, refused to resume masses for the beginning of Advent.

Mass is an encounter with God.

The management of the file by the government is as disorderly as for all the other sectors.

If it does not seem relevant to put the Mass on the same level as businesses in difficulty, the fact remains that the prohibition of worship is at the very least a failure to recognize the centrality of worship in the Catholic religion. .

The gathering for mass is not a time of prayer as it may be the case for Muslims at the mosque, no, at the church, it is a meeting with God which is offered to the faithful at through the Eucharistic sacrifice.

Mass is not an option

The Catechism of the Church reminds us: “

"(VI, 1382), which refers to the words of Jesus:"

”(John, 6,53).

For Catholics, practicing religion is not just a gathering.

It is an encounter with the living God who offers himself to the faithful through the bread of eternal life.

It is a sacrament.

Closing the door of churches is therefore much more than an obstacle, it is a blind decision which puts all cults on the same level by denying their specificity.

It is not the law that clashes with faith, but bureaucracy that clashes with the spiritual.

Discernment and sense of proportion

The temptation is therefore great among Catholics to reconnect with "

", with these innumerable faithful persecuted in Rome who celebrated Mass away from belligerent eyes.

If the demonstrations of November 14 and 15 were symbolically very strong and equal to the pain felt by the faithful, Catholics should not be able to lend a flank to criticism.

The political and media pack only watches for a sign of disrespect for Catholics to leap up and denounce "

", blinded as they are by a secularism that they nevertheless put aside when it comes to the visibility of the Islam in the public sphere.

This quarrel is also a sign of the dechristianization of our country.

Finally, this quarrel is also a sign of the dechristianization of our country.

The ban on masses a few weeks before Christmas seems to worry the French less than the closure of shops to stock up on gifts.

The lack of lucidity of the government is also and above all an oversight of the Christian traditions of France, reduced to the simple rank of inessential folklore.

The stake is even greater: the mass in the big cities is certainly important, we must not neglect the hundreds of villages whose churches are closed all the year because of the crisis of vocations as well as the lack of followers.

After the pandemic, it will therefore be crucial to address a much deeper crisis: the philosophical, spiritual and identity crisis of the eldest daughter of the Church, increasingly won over by acedia and lack of hope, fertile ground fertile of all fanaticism.