How do you think the French Revolution affected the Catholic Church in France/Europe?

[SheepofChrist]

How do you think the French Revolution affected the Catholic Church in France/Europe?

How do you think the people’s faith was affected?

 

[puzzleannie]

we know how the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon affected France. The Church was persecuted, religious orders supressed, bishops, priests and nuns sent to the guillotine, and public worship and practice of the Faith forbidden. We also know the after effects, that two generations of French laity grew up without knowlege of the elements of the faith, so the Cure of Ars like most pastors of his generation (1830s and beyoned) found his rural parish essentially uncatechized and had to restore Catholic life from the ground up. Like other areas where the Church has been persecuted in modern times, the faith of the people survived through expressions of devotions and popular piety in homes and families. What I believe is irrelevant, these are facts we can ascertain from history.

 

[JimG]

In addition to what Annie said, the revolutionaries also closed the monasteries which had been the main source of charity for the poor. It made the poor much worse off. No egalite for the poor. No egalite for religion. Nuns were carted off to the guillotine simply because they were nuns.

 

[puzzleannie]

In addition to what Annie said, the revolutionaries also closed the monasteries which had been the main source of charity for the poor. It .

also hospitals were run by churches and orders so that type of medical care also dried up until the civil government established institutions, which did not happen until much later in many areas.

 

[kama3]

The Church was persecuted …]

You forgot to mention that before the revolution, the state and the institutional Church were intimately linked. Suffice to mention Mazarini and Richelieu, who held government positions while being cardinals – a situation currenly unthinkable. So the Church and the state worked as two parallel power structures:

The French monarchy was irrevocably linked to the Catholic Church (the formula says “la France est la fille aînée de l’église”, or “France is the eldest daughter of the church”), and French theorists of the divine right of kings and sacerdotal power in the Renaissance had made these links explicit: Henry IV was able to ascend to the throne only after abjuring Protestantism. The symbolic power of the Catholic monarch was apparent in his crowning (the king was anointed by blessed oil in Rheims) and he was popularly believed to be able to cure scrofula by the laying on of his hands (accompanied by the formula “the king touches you, but God heals you”).

n 1500, France had 14 archibishoprics (Lyon, Rouen, Tours, Sens, Bourges, Bordeaux, Auch, Toulouse, Narbonne, Aix-en-Provence, Embrun, Vienne, Arles, and Rheims) and 100 bishoprics; by the 18th century, archbishoprics and bishoprics had expanded to a total of 139 (see List of Ancien Régime dioceses of France). The upper levels of the French church were made up predominantly of old nobility, both from provincial families and from royal court families, and many of the offices had become de facto hereditary possessions, with some members possessing multiple offices. In addition to fiefs that church members possessed as seigneurs, the church also possessed seigneurial lands in its own right and enacted justice upon them.

Other temporal powers of the church included playing a political role as the first estate in the “États Généraux” and the “États Provinciaux” (Provincial Assemblies) and in Provincial Conciles or Synods convoked by the king to discuss religious issues. The church also claimed a prerogative to judge certain crimes, most notably heresy, although the Wars of Religion did much to place this crime in the purview of the royal courts and parliament. Finally, abbots, cardinals and other prelates were frequently employed by the kings as ambassadors, members of his councils (such as Richelieu and Mazarin) and in other administrative positions.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancien_Régime_in_France#The_Church

There’s little wonder that the Revolution attacked both the state and the Church.