Recent events portray the Catholic Church in France and in the world at large as reaching a critical point. A  change of some kind embarks the Church on what promises to be one of the more crucial periods in its history. Certainly there have been improvements. Investigation into and some reorganisation of the system of seminaries, along with remaining issues–the role of the priest, celibacy, social and political responsibilities–seem unlikely to be resolved in the near future. Other questions re-examined with some vigour are  the position of the lay member of the church and of women.

The worker priest experiment is the best example of a number of significant developments after the  experience of war and the Occupation. Under its catalytic influence the French people’s sense of religion was expressed as it had been after 1870 in highly emotive terms. Divine punishment for the sins of the Third Republic was a theme taken up by Camus in ‘La Peste’. Loyalty to the Vichy regime was upheld while suggesting actual political commitment should be avoided. Statements to this effect were churned out with censorship of the more cautionary passages partly in an appeal for renewal of the militant Christianity of the waning of the Middle Ages. The effect of propaganda took the form of a cult accompanied by invocations, poems and a parody of the Lord’s Prayer. A slogan of  ’travail, famille, patrie’ was also likely to appeal to many Catholics who saw growing readiness to agree to a liberal interpretation and flirtation with communism as real threats to the stability and traditions of faith. François Mauriac founded with others a left-wing Catholic paper ‘Le Temps présent’ as a successor to ‘Sept’, signs of resistance among Catholics not in favour of a rather one-sided and even unfair picture.

At the same time in France itself the appeal of the central church authority to respect the legitimacy of the Vichy regime was swept aside by a wave of indignation. Continuing association of Catholicism and the bourgeoisie rendered the former unknown to the workers and more importantly, unknowable.  This view, together with the situation in Germany, led to the creation of the worker priest experiment, at no point a large scale undertaking.

Since the war regular developments of Catholic action can be divided into three different categories: groups continuing the work of those established in the 1930s, the whole of the worker priest experiment and various attempts to reform certain aspects of ecclesiastical structure and traditions. Special training for priests sent to work in teams in dechristianized, working class areas differed significantly from worker priests who worked individually and were criticized for doing so, causing the Vatican some concern. Outspoken support for the working class was so disturbing published in a book ‘Les Evénements de la foi’  by the Abbé Montuclard that it was put on the Index.

Like worker priests before them, they felt their attempts to integrate themselves with parishioners were doomed to failure. Inadequate training, insufficient opportunity for integration and a sense of isolation within the ecclesiastical framework, were all listed as major contributory factors.

The institution of study circles of the type which had been popular in the past was too intellectual a method: instruction, it was thought, should be replaced by example. Youth groups within different social environments were established, all of them affiliated to the ‘Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française’, founded long before, but with their own distinctive autonomy. Of these the ‘Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne’ was the first, soon to be followed by a number of others.

‘Lift me up and amongst the teeth and the gums let me dwell.’

Our ancestors had not quite stumbled upon the method to treat toothache. Its treatment was beer and oil mixed together and to recite this incantation three times to put medecine on the tooth. Trace back and find from the most ecstatic grandeur to the most trivial of events, a most powerful and elegant method called science has made them accessible to human understanding.