Catholic & Protestant Church interiors

14-11-2017 4:34pm

tabbey wrote: »

You also have to consider the plaques in churches in France etc.
Look at Amiens Cathedral, it is full of memorials to all nations who fought to preserve French liberty in the Great War, Ireland included, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United States. there are also memorials to individuals, for example, Asquith's son.

The main difference between RC churches in Ireland and elsewhere, is that in Ireland there are no memorials to the fallen, due to the fear that it was divisive, and might attract negative attention.
A case of whatever you say, say nothing.

There is actually a plaque to Willie Redmond in St Patrick's church, Kilquade.

https://www.kilquadeparish.ie/parish-churches/st-patricks-kilquade/

pedroeibar1 · 14-11-2017 8:08pm

It's a bit OT but one big difference between R Catholicism in Ireland & France is that in France on the ourskirts of every town there are notices that give the times of 'Messe' in their churches. Being a minority religion it also is quite snobbish, with strong leanings towards RC by the aristos. I'd also agree with Tabbey's assertion " ....in Ireland there are no memorials to the fallen, due to the fear that it was divisive, and might attract negative attention."

Avatar MIA · 14-11-2017 8:37pm

[QUOTE=pedroeibar1;105266407]Being a minority religion it also is quite snobbish, with strong leanings towards RC by the aristos. [/I][/QUOTE]

Why do I feel like I'm on an episode of QI and the Klaxon is about to go off?

How is RC a minority religion in France?

pedroeibar1 · 15-11-2017 12:20am

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Why do I feel like I'm on an episode of QI and the Klaxon is about to go off?

How is RC a minority religion in France?

I know its a TV show but I don't watch much TV.;)

Christianity covers the beliefs of about 40% of the French population (see edit below) and I agree that Roman Catholicism is the biggest percentage of that. However, that has to be seen in perspective; the percentage of under 35yr olds who admit to being RC is considerably less. Of the total figure, less than 10% are practicing RCs, mainly ‘oldies’. In effect, at less than 10% it is just another ‘minority’ religion. Islam has about 5% of the population, but a much higher percentage are practicing. Numbers wise that is not a big difference.

For perspective one really must look at the role of religion in French society, which, outside of the upper classes, is non-existent. . For starters, France is ‘laic’ ("La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale”) and there has been complete separation of religion and state since 1905. That is why there was no ‘juridique’ issue with banning the burqa/niqab. Secondly, overt practice of religion is disparaged. Most educated Irish people would know that Douglas Hyde was C of I, that Bertie was a regular mass-goer, that most Taoisigh were RC and that Dublin and Cork had Jewish Lords Mayor (Briscoe & Goldberg). In France the religion of politicians does not enter into the public domain and is actually ‘hidden’. Just look at their Google profiles. Religion is just not seen. For e.g. the religion and beliefs of Mitterand only became a major topic at the time of his death.(Note below)

That non-religious format is particularly so with the French Left, from which France has drawn many leaders. However, the upper echelons of the Army and Navy, and the remains of the French aristocracy are very openly RC or 'practicing'.. Those who can afford it do not send their children to free-ed secular state schools, instead preferring those fee-paying ones run by religious orders. Their children are strongly encouraged to move within the same circles socially. The socially aspiring nouveaux attend mass, send their kids to the right schools (granted a few non-religious Lycées have the same cachet) and they use religion as an entrée to rub shoulders. That level of society tends to be the one that has church weddings, the rest use the Mairie.

So, perhaps expressed more precisely, in France overt regular practice of Roman Catholicism is more in the domain of a tiny elite minority.

(Note) Mitterand nearly became a seminarian and it is said of him that he once declared he wanted to be either King of Pope. He re-joined the RC Church shortly before his death.

Note 2 Actually my figures are too conservative. Gallup page 3 here
France
37% a religious person
34% a non-religious person
29% a convinced athiest
1% don’t know

pedroeibar1 · 15-11-2017 1:29am

Putting it back on topic, (sorry Mods) a bit of research has shown that the main reason for the war dead not being listed in churches would appear to be that the French state created its own system for those who ‘died for France’ . By a law of 25th October 1919 covering the ‘commemoration and glorification’ of those who died for France during the Great War, the State launched a ‘Livre d’Or’ in which the names would be listed and stored in the Pantheon.
Makes sense not to have plaques in churches, although there are many on street corners/buildings/town monuments throughout France.

Nekarsulm · 15-11-2017 2:05am

Unless I missed it in an early post, one difference between RC and P churches, are that in a P church, any Cross on the wall or freestanding will be bare. ie, no image of Jesus nailed to it.
While the fact that he died for our sins is a central tenant of P belief, more is made of the fact that he is "a risen lord".

On the Plaques to War dead, any P church I have been in lists all from the Parish who died, place of death, Regiment and rank.
I would put forward the argument about the greater number killed in the first world war compared to the second, the country was British at the time. By the time the second war rolled around, we were independant and people had learned the hard lesson of a generation being killed, and weren't in a hurry to repeat it. And of course, twenty young men killed out of a parishes equates to 20 less families, and perhaps 40 less young 16 to 18 year old men by 1939 .

Peregrinus · 15-11-2017 4:06am

Couple of points:

There's no question on religion in the French census (what with the State being laïque and all) but there is of course other social research on the subject, which shows that about 50% of the population claim a Catholic affiliation, about 4% other Christian, about 5% Muslim and about 1% Jewish. Religious practice is harder to measure, and partly depends on your definition of "practice", but certainly regular church attendance is well below these figures. But that's pretty typical for Europe.

As regards weddings, a church wedding isn't an alternative to the mairie; it's an addition; you have to get married in the mairie; you can have a subsequent religious (or non-religious) ceremony if you wish, but this has no legal significance. The number of Catholic church weddings is about 50% of the number of mairie weddings every year; when we discount those who can't have a church wedding (e.g. because they are remarrying after divorce, or because neither of the couple is a Christian) it seems that the substantial majority of those who can choose a church wedding, do. So this isn't really the preserve of the aristocratic remnant.

As regards schools, the state schools are a largely religion-free zone, but the State also funds private schools, nearly all Catholic, provided they teach the state curriculum. They do charge fees, but are fairly affordable and about 20% of high school students attend these schools - a minority, clearly, but not a trivial minority.

The laïcité of the State notwithstanding, the French make a distinction between the republic, which is laïque, and the French nation/French culture/French society, which is diverse and pluralist, but historically has a distinctive connection with Catholicism. Catholicism is seen as the characteristically French religion in much the way that Anglicanism is in England, Presbyterianism in Scotland, Orthodoxy in Russia, and this does give the Catholic church in France a social/cultural significance which is more than it would have simply as the largest of a number of non-established churches.

Pedroeibar is quite right to say that the state-sponsored memorialisation scheme for the French dead of the Great War did not involve the churches; this of course is because of the tradition of laïcité, so it's not an example of the church distancing itself from the state; more the other way around. Something similar was true in Italy, which although an overwhelmingly Catholic country was at the time at odds with the papacy. (They had a bit of unfinished business over the seizure of the Papal States.) During the war itself, and during the 1920s when monuments were being erected, the two were at odds and, once again, this resulted in not many war memorials being located in churches. From the late 1920s onwards war memorialisation efforts became increasing politicised by the Fascist government,and this made them increasingly controversial and therefore even less likely to be associated with churches.

What this suggests is that, overall, the question of whether war memorials will be located in churches isn't mainly driven by the attitudes of the churches. It's driven first and foremost by the bodies erecting the memorials, which are mostly state or political bodies. With Anglicanism's traditionally close, and traditionally somewhat subservient, relationship with the state, locating monuments in Anglican churches was relatively unproblematic, although in Ireland it did acquire a certain political significance, given what was going on here in the 1920s.

Catholic & Protestant Church interiors

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