In France, there are approximately one hundred thousand churches, of which 40,000 are still open – many of them rarely – to Catholic worship. But they are threatened by the dilution of religious practice: 2,500 to 5,000 risk abandonment, sale, or destruction by 2030.
In July 2022, an information report on the state of religious heritage identified three causes for this worrying situation: the growing secularization of society aggravated by the desertification of certain territories, the budgetary constraints of municipalities, and parish consolidations.
The opening of the churches to “new uses” has become the new creed of certain politicians and churchmen, in an attempt to solve this puzzle: this is the whole meaning of the colloquium which held on June 2 in the Senate.
“We can only save a building if we can open it,” explained Benoît de Sagazan, president of the Pèlerin Heritage Institute who took part in the meeting, while the (communist) senator Pierre Ouzoulias called for a “necessary re-socialization of these buildings.” It is enough to make one fear the worst.
As for the Bishops’ Conference of France (CEF), invited to take part in the debate, their attitude is one of wait and see. When asked about the possibility of sharing the churches with other religions, Fr. Gautier Mornas, Director of the Sacred Art Department of the CEF replied that the idea of entrusting churches to other religions such as Islam did not seem “compatible” with the consecration of the buildings. An answer supposed to reassure, but behind the language precautions, one senses that everything remains possible.
The CEF is rather trying to find “uses compatible with the cult,” uses which would concern “everything that elevates humanity, helps it to grow, to look further and higher,” says Fr. de Mornas.
Should we see as a sign of these future uses “the solidarity grocery store” that opened in St. Camille Church in Lyon, where one can, between two stations of the Way of the Cross, do your shopping in the middle of a noisy crowd, at unbeatable prices? Or in this “concert” in the St. Vaast church in Villers-au-Bois, where the public, sprawled in deckchairs, listens to the music at the foot of the statues of the saints who made France?
In any case, there is resistance, and that’s a good thing: Armelle Dallibert, conservation officer in the Calvados department – which has more than 950 churches – deplores the “sometimes hostile reactions from the clergy.”
More lucid and full of common sense, Bertrand de Feydeau, Vice-President of the Heritage Foundation invited senators and the CEF to give priority to “the quality” of the projects, to “work the spirit of the place,” to promote “cooperation” and to avoid new “disordered” uses that may carry a “fairly rapid risk of fatigue”.
The sages of Luxembourg Palace and the prelates of the CEF would benefit from taking inspiration from these few lines written in 1914 by the Academician Maurice Barrès, because they have not aged a bit in more than a century: “Our churches are at the forefront of our wealth of civilization. We have received them from our ancestors, we must transmit them to our sons, we do not have to be stunned by those who declare them useless.” (La grande pitié des églises de France).
On June 2, 2023, a symposium was organized in the Senate to decide on the future of municipal churches, having long been emptied of their parishioners. The desire they expressed is to imagine “uses compatible with the cult,” but behind the good intentions, certain tracks are suggesting the worst.