Religion usually makes news in France when the state invokes its stern policy of “laïcité.”
This is the country, as we read again and again, with laws that ban crucifixes and Islamic headscarves in state schools and outlaw the full-face Muslim veil in public streets.
Yet here I am sitting in the front row at a Catholic lycée surrounded by Muslims, Christians and non-believers, as the bishop of Versailles blesses the pupils and the building and reads to the new pupils from the gospel of Matthew: “You are the light of the world. ...”
The 350-odd boys and girls at the Lycée Jean-Paul II, many from immigrant families, heartily applaud the bishop. I notice a few tapping their feet as a gospel choir belts out energetic hymns.
When the ceremony ends, I watch the students file out of the hall along as-yet-unscuffed floors and freshly painted corridors to classrooms still marked with handwritten numbers.
As I watch these teenagers from differing social backgrounds and religions being drawn into a new community, I recall my own Catholic school in New Zealand.
St. Mary’s was a convent school reserved for Catholics from families in good standing with the church. Each Monday morning we were obliged to tell Sister which Sunday Mass our family had attended; the pious among us added that we’d made time for Saturday benediction.
At various times each day mathematics, science and history were pushed aside for lessons about creationism and the power God bestowed on us by letting us be born Catholic. The message was clear: God would help us more than education. I left there certain that I would never again enter a Catholic school.
A few decades on and 11,000 miles away, I find a church stripped of its power to interfere and returning to its core values, especially in education.
The Lycée Jean-Paul II arose last year on the banks of the Seine River alongside a cement factory on the outskirts of a Paris suburb notorious for its mediocre education and crime-scarred housing estates.
To build a high school here is an act of faith — one in which the Catholic Church and the secular French state have seamlessly joined forces.
The cooperation dates back to 1959, when, after decades of animosity toward the church, the state grudgingly realized that Catholic schools are not only to be tolerated, but should also get support, given the shortcomings of France’s often gray, one-size-fits-all public education system.
A change in the law allowed Catholic schools to receive a subsidy if they taught the state curriculum, appointed state-trained teachers and opened their doors to children of all faiths. The state pays the teachers’ salaries; other costs are met by tuition fees of €200 to €300 a month.
In effect, students receive the attentiveness of private education school but without sky-high fees — and without proselytizing.
Sex education, for example, is the same as in a state school: Teenagers learn about condoms, abortion, morning-after pills and homosexuality. Dark dogma and thou-shalt-not have no place. Nor does creationism.
The hybrid arrangement, known as “sous contrat” (“under contract”), benefits all but the fiercest secularists and Catholics.
More than one in six French children today attend Catholic schools, a small but growing number of them from France’s Muslim minority. Each year over the past decade, the demand for places has outstripped supply. To help meet demand, 7,165 places were added last month.
At a time when religious extremism is creating global problems, that autumn morning on the Seine demonstrated the advantages that come when church and state come together in an understanding that is reasonable and clearly defined.
Catherine Field, a journalist based in Paris.