Flowers & Sugared Water

What does a Roman Catholic from France see when he looks at religion in the U.S.? In the current issue of the French Catholic monthly Esprit are three critical reports from returned visitors.

Most church architecture in the U.S., writes Journalist Georges Fradier, "may evoke an English cathedral, a Corinthian temple or a bathhouse, but the interior is always the same: that of a third-rate movie palace . . . Varnished benches present a comfortable resting place for faithful buttocks. A drawing-room organ emits sugared water. A pulpit . . . two or three pots of flowers, that is all the decoration. Some temples retain an altar, but this outmoded object serves only to support a still larger number of flower pots."

Fists & Gasps. Visitor Fradier divides U.S. religion into the "hots" and the "lukewarms." The "lukewarm" services, he says, consist of "hymns sung to military marches composed by fierce Scots," or, for contrast, bucolic Bavarian waltzes. The form of the sermon, he says, never varies. "The [minister] leans on the pulpit and begins in a low voice, indistinct, sleepy. Slowly he becomes animated. He slips a hand in a pocket and tells an anecdote, two, three anecdotes, until the audience consents to smile a little. Then his tone warms up, the face of the orator turns purple, his voice becomes husky. He strikes the pulpit. He paces the platform, he brandishes supplicating or vengeful fists, and only sits down when he has reached his last gasp . . ."

Of U.S. Catholics, Fradier says: "Their congregations are so prosperous, they have such good success with profitable conversions, that, apart from their liturgy, I think one has to classify them with the 'lukewarms.'"

But Fradier concludes that "one would be very wrong" to suspect U.S. religion of hypocrisy. "Very sincerely, with a humility that is a little sanctimonious but authentic, its adepts strive for goodness and the life everlasting."

Is It Religion? Young Philosophy Student Antoine Pelletier considers that "the principal characteristic of American Protestantism of today seems to be the complete loss of the idea and the very meaning of religion . . . Religion has given way to religiosity and belief to opinion . . . The Unitarian Church . . . hesitated, a few years ago, over whether it should define itself as 'Christian' or 'humanist' . . . One may well ask whether American Protestantism is still, in its various forms, a religion at all."

As for Catholicism in the U.S., Father Jean Danielou, S.J., contends that American Catholics are too separatist. "They tend to constitute a self-sufficing community, and as a result, to live apart within the nation . . . American Catholic universities are institutions of great value . . . But apart from this, it is essential that Catholicism should also be represented in non-Catholic universities. And this, which appears to be normal in France, appears to be revolutionary in the U.S.A."

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