France: how Catholic schools struggle with their confession
Roman Catholic students pray before taking their final exam. Photo EPA, Zsolt Czegledi
Western Europe
Catholic schools in France are struggling with their identity. Their policies regularly provoke discussions.
The meaning of the term ‘Catholic school’ is no longer self-evident in France, says Anne-Laure Zwilling, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. In a society increasingly foreign to religion, this causes struggles with the state, parents, and teachers. A Catholic school, according to Zwilling, “must constantly choose: to address the hardcore, taking the risk that it is reduced or, conversely, to welcome more widely at the risk of being diluted.”
The French Catholic daily La Croix lists some incidents of the last few weeks. Earlier this month, for example, a director of a Catholic school resigned after he came into conflict with some teachers. They accused him of prohibiting high school students from seeing a film on homosexuality in Kenya. And at the end of June, a school in Paris was accused of using a mode of operation that maintained “homophobia, sexism and transphobia.”
With these kinds of incidents in mind, school leaders confess to La Croix that educating children in a world that is changing so much is not easy. However, many see the freedom granted to them and the values preached by the Gospel as good guides. “And each family chooses the establishment where it enrols its child knowingly”, says a college director. “The colour is announced upon registration.”
World
However, that is not the case in villages where there sometimes is only one school. “We welcome everyone”, explains a pastoral assistant of a small school in Saint-Brieuc. Meanwhile, In Nice, there is a Catholic school in an area popular with the homosexual community. “Our students do not live outside the world. They know these realities”, says Jérôme Latreille, a staff member. “We remain firmly Catholic, in the sense that we return to Jesus: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ We do not judge but insist on mutual respect.”
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