French Catholic Environmentalists and the Church: Suspicion, Expectations and Mutual Reliance

The French Catholic environmentalists are in an ambiguous position halfway between political ecology as supported by the Green French Party and a Catholic field largely hostile to any environmental issue. It results from this position an aversion to political commitment, as I could perceive it during my qualitative survey of forty French catholic environnementalists met in Catholic movements concerned by the environment.

Far from leading to a denial of any political commitment, Catholics avoid the obstacle, and promote a commitment of the Church on environmental issues. Sometimes seen by activists as a political force able to mobilize a significant part of French population, they also highlight Church skills as international actor capable of producing a meta-political discourse overstepping the borders that can be understood by all Christians in the world.

The Church of France faces these expectations, positioning itself as a concrete objective and neutral actor, ready to restore a democratic dialogue between the government and environmentalists (especially in Bure, future center of nuclear waste disposal, or at Notre-Dame des Landes).

The links developed between environmentalist believers and Catholic Church illustrate, in a specific way, the complexity of relationships between social movements and institutions. Far for being reliant to the institution, (Cf. D. Hervieu-Léger, 1979), there is an indivisible bond that connect institution to social movements. In theory, the political commitment demanded by activists should be confronted to the expertise wanted by religious bodies. However, this polarity is not absolute. And inevitably it ends up, at the crossroad, with an interdependence that will result in a form of commitment in the expertise wanted by Catholic institution concerned about the "signs of the times" (Cf. W. Ossipow, 1978) while the discourse of militants called by the institution turns into expertise to remain audible. (Cf. S. Ollitrault, 2008).