Word: churches
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...Catholic faith. At one 2005 political event, he memorably vowed that "the next Republican that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary down their throat." That spirit, along with his Scranton roots, could attract him more sympathy from fellow Catholics when criticized by church leaders. "His blue-collar background may inoculate him in ways that it couldn't for John Kerry," says Bill Roth, president of the Catholic Democrats...
...Next, someone cited French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran's statement that the Pope would come to Paris to "set the clock straight" on French Catholicism. Vingt-Trois cocked his head, and said such words don't correspond to "Benedict's style." Finally, a questioner declared that the French Church was the Grande Malade (the Sick Lady) of worldwide Catholicism. An exasperated Vingt-Trois finally gave a bit of ground. "Our Church has difficulties, which are quite visible for everyone to see," he said. "But it is not the Sick Lady. Instead, there are signs that it is quite alive...
...Alive, perhaps, but just hanging on. Though some 75 % of French citizens are baptized, regular mass attendance is edging below 10%. Even Church weddings have dropped, from 147,000 in 1990 to 89,000 in 2006. Indeed, the most notable new religious energy in the country is increasingly coming from a growing Muslim community...
...wasn't always this way. French Catholicism is known as the "eldest daughter" of the Church, for having pledged allegiance to Rome in the Second Century; and in the 14th century, the southern town of Avignon even served as the temporary home to the papacy. But France is also where modern anti-clericalism became ascendant with the 1789 Revolution, which eventually led to the thick black line separating church and state known as laïcité, and the arrival of humanist reason as the guiding principle in contemporary culture...
...there is also the work to be done on the ground. Georges Kouakou, 50, remembers the Western missionaries when he was growing up poor in his native Ivory Coast. Having emigrated to France, Kouakou, a computer engineer and father of three, regularly attends mass at Notre Dame des Victoires church in central Paris. The pastor to the mostly native French parishioners there happens to be from the Congo. "There's been an evolution," Kouakou says. "Europeans went to evangelize Africans; today it's the reverse, and Africans are now evangelizing. These are the seeds that God planted...