.
The well-known progressivist Catholic magazine Informations Catholiques
Internationales (no. 563, June 1981) affirms: "Everyone agrees:
one-fourth of those considered to be practicing Catholics are in favor of
Mitterrand, and three-fourths are for Giscard ... The fact that one out of
four of those Catholics voted for Mitterrrand, and is of decisive political
importance. Many more than a million votes went to swell the camp of the
left. Now ... if only half of these Catholics had voted for the
outgoing president, it would have been enough to reelect him. Francois
Mitterrrand owes his success to, among other causes, the movement that led part
of the Catholic to the left."
Not
that the magazine singles out only the "practicing Catholics," One
should ask how many baptized by non-practicing Catholics who consider themselves
Catholics could have been influence by a firm and enlightening word form the
bishops and this have refused to vote for the socialist candidate.
In
pointing out the reason for Mitterand's victory, prestigious organs of the
press, whoxse testimony in this mater is not suspect, comment that the most
significant advance of the left took place in the Catholic provinces of
Western, Eastern and Central France. (cf. La Croix, semi-official organ
of the Archdiocese of Paris, 5/12/81; L'Express, 5/5-11/81 and
5/12-15/81, and even L'Humanité, official organ of the Communist Party,
5/ 15/81).
Furthermore,
as the Program joyfully notes, Catholics not only vote for the SP but even join
it, apparently without any major problems of conscience: "The Socialist
Party has always aimed to gather, without distinction of philosophical or
religious belief all workers who find in socialism their ideal and their
principles. So there are more and more Christians who not only join the
Party but adopt socialist [methods of] analysis themselves
without thereby renouncing their faith..." (Program, p.
29).
This
fact, by the way, is public and notorious in France.
Lest
there be any doubt about the meaning of the verb ''join" the
citation above, Mitterrand makes it clear in his Conversations avec Guy
Claisse:
"Militant
Catholics are not a cover up for the Socialist Party. They are at home [in it]. There are very many of them in the Party ...
"-
Are they among the grassroots militants?
"-
Yes. But also in the national leadership and in the local executive
boards" (Francois Mitterrand, Ici et
Maintenant - Conversations avec Guy Claisse, Fayard, Paris, 1980, p. 12).
Therefore,
the bishops' failure to enlighten these Catholics is entirely inexplicable.
Finally, we must note that this openness of Catholics to socialism is not something
new, but dates from the middle of the last century, as Mitterrand himself is
pleased to register in his abovementioned book:
"From
the beginning, my efforts have been to make Christians faithful to their faith,
recognize themselves in our Party, that the multiple sources of socialism may
flow towards the same river. In the middle of the nineteenth Century, except
for the vanguard of people like Lamennais, Ozanam, Lacordaire, and Arnaud,
French Catholics belonged to the conservative camp. The Church, shaken by
the first French Revolution, concerned about the progress of the Voltairian
spirit, had closed ranks along side the power of the bourgeoisie, the power of
a narrow-minded, egotistic social class, ferocious when necessary ...
"With
Christ obscured, the Church an accomplice, there was no way out but to wage a
manly struggle to achieve, here and now, a state of affairs delivering you from
every, misery and humiliation. By a natural inclination, a majority of the
socialists adopted theories that rejected the Christian explanation....
"A
deepening rationalism and the rise of Marxism accentuated in the proletariat
the rejection of the Church and her teaching. Socialism, which was made without
Her, began to be made against Her. But also, what a silence of Christianity!
What a long silence!...
"Nevertheless,
at the end of the century, Leo XIII in Rome and the Sillon among us began
the turnaround. The First World War accelerated the evolution. The
camaraderies of the front, death everywhere and for all, the country in danger,
taught everyone to recognize in each other the colors they subscribed to, even
if their laicist or religious translations remained different, if not antagonistic.
The initial appeal again rose up from the depths of the Church and the
Christian world. The personalism of Emmanuel Mounier finished giving
Christian socialism its title of nobility" (op. cit., pp. 14-15).
In
the face of this historical panorama painted so much in accordance with
socialist taste and style, but unfortunately not lacking many elements of
truth, one would expect the French bishops to imitate the mettle and courage of
Saint Pius X, who in his Apostolic Letter Notré Charge Apostolique of
August 25, 1910, vehemently condemned the Sillon movement (cf. footnote
4) so reverently recalled by Mitterrand.