The French Priest-Workers

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DURING the fall and winter of 1953-1954, the case of the French priest-workers, or the "priests of the worker mission," created much controversy in France and considerable interest abroad. It illuminates the deep divisions which plague French political and social life and some of the perils which confront those who seek to struggle against Communism within its strongholds in the working class world. Above all, it suggests the enormous power which the combination of misery and Marxism has in France.

Early in World War II, a Paris priest, Father Godin, came to the conclusion that most of the workers in France were pagan and that their attitudes and ideas reflected a spiritual and intellectual vacuum. Godin recognized that these developments derived from the long-term decline of Christianity in France, but he concluded that the de-Christianization of the country was greatest among the workers, many of whom had grown up in a tradition which had for several generations been completely divorced from any knowledge of or interest in religious faith. He and a few associates discovered, for example, that some churches in the industrial suburbs of Paris had no parishioners, that only four of 19,000 men employed in one industrial complex were practising Catholics, and that in some port and mining cities virtually none of the workers were Catholic. Godin wrote a book in 1943 which stated that France was so de-Christianized that it should be declared a mission country, with missionaries sent to live and labor among the workers in particular. He believed that the workers were beyond immediate conversion, but that they would make the first steps back toward Christianity if priests worked in the ports, mines and factories, dressing as the workers did, living in workers' homes, and demonstrating that the clergy were willing to share the workers' hardships. At the same time, the priests were to celebrate Mass, read the office, and otherwise live a priestly life, though they were to have no parish duties. They would, in other words, serve as living examples of Christianity among the workers, who were not so much anti-Christian as simply divorced from and ignorant of Christianity...