{"id":2832,"date":"2008-09-16T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T07:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/the-church-through-the-eyes-of-a-young-french-priest.html"},"modified":"2008-09-16T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-16T07:07:00","slug":"the-church-through-the-eyes-of-a-young-french-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/the-church-through-the-eyes-of-a-young-french-priest.html","title":{"rendered":"The Church through the eyes of a young French priest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anticipating the pope’s visit, a French newspaper last week published this interview<\/a> with a young (30) French priest, offering his thoughts on the Church in his homeland, and on his vocation: <\/p>\n

Yellow banners boasting the smiling face of Benedict XVI, his hand raised in blessing, run down the imposing facade of the Saint-Lambert de Vaugirard church in Paris\u2019 15th arrondissement.<\/p>\n

Parishioners and priests are rallying a few days away from the first Parisian mass of John Paul II\u2019s successor. They won\u2019t be alone on the vast Invalides esplanade: 250 000 people are expected to show up.<\/p>\n

<\/a>This will be the second time Charles Cornudet, a 30-year-old priest who was just assigned to the parish, meets the Pope. He and dozens of others have been invited to co-celebrate the mass. \u201cTo co-celebrate with the Pope is a way of demonstrating the Church\u2019s unity and the communion to which everybody is invited,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Eleven years after John Paul II last came to the French capital, the papal visit is also a chance for French Catholics to show that the Church hasn\u2019t forfeited its central role in society, despite its internal difficulties and criticism from advocates of secularism. These are the questions that young priests like Cornudet, still full of hope but without much illusion, deal with on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Fewer but better trained young priests amid an aging clergy<\/p>\n

The Saint-Lambert parish is very much a reflection of the neighborhood it is nestled in, populated with young upper-middle class families. \u201cPeople who are at a point in life when they feel like they want to get back in touch with the Church, for a wedding or a baptism,\u201d says Cornudet. Four priests, one deacon and 300 volunteers work together to liven up the parish.<\/p>\n

As in many other French parishes, one of the priests, who is in his seventies, is about to retire and won\u2019t be replaced. This is official Church policy. There are only 20,500 priests left in France, half the number in 1965; nor is their renewal guaranteed given the low number of new vocations.<\/p>\n

Father Cornudet heard the call to be a priest at 16. After earning an undergraduate degree in econometrics, he joined the Paris Seminary. \u201cIt helped me realize that the calling was still there. I thoroughly enjoyed my studies, which gave me the possibility to act upon my calling in complete freedom,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But young priests\u2019 profiles can be very varied, says C\u00e9line B\u00e9raud, a sociologist and author of several books on priesthood. \u201cThe average age of ordination increases, as well as the priests\u2019 education level. But that doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s not a great diversity of backgrounds.”<\/p>\n

The generational divide doesn\u2019t always make dialogue easy, she adds. \u201cThey tend to disagree on what their role should be. The older priests lived through Vatican II [which ushered the Church into modernity] and a time of contestation. They favour a Church that\u2019s more modest, less visible. Young priests today are more inclined to trumpet their identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Church\u2019s values resist as faith becomes a private matter<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the conceptions of priests that are changing, but the parishioners\u2019 demands as well, says Father Cornudet, who wears a Roman collar to lay down his priestly identity. \u201cPriests over 65 have a vision of the parish that has a lot to do with that of charities. However, people today don\u2019t want to be part of movements but of networks, which are a lot harder to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if French people don\u2019t go to church as often as they used to, the Catholic Church still has a reason to be, he says. \u201cThe Church responds to three essential demands: to be listened to, to be loved and to be comforted. That\u2019s what makes the reality of Christ, not some theory.\u201d According to Father Cornudet, the proportion of French people \u2013 practicing catholic or not \u2013 who are attached to the Church\u2019s values is rising, even if they don\u2019t agree with everything.<\/p>\n

As a result, the number of Catholics who go to Sunday mass has dropped significantly, even among those who call themselves practicing Catholics. According to an August 2006 La Croix-Ifop poll, 65% of French people declared themselves Catholics but less than 5% of them said they went to mass.<\/p>\n

“Our society has turned faith into a private matter,\u201d concludes Father Cornudet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anticipating the pope’s visit, a French newspaper last week published this interview with a young (30) French priest, offering his thoughts on the Church in his homeland, and on his vocation: Yellow banners boasting the smiling face of Benedict XVI, his hand raised in blessing, run down the imposing facade of the Saint-Lambert de Vaugirard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Church through the eyes of a young French priest - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/the-church-through-the-eyes-of-a-young-french-priest.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Church through the eyes of a young French priest - 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}