As Political Theology Among French Catholics

CARING FOR OUR COMMON HOME: ‘Écologie Intégrale’ as Political Theology among French Catholics Camille Michèle Hélène Lardy Sidney Sussex College University of Cambridge September 2020 This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology 2 PREFACE Declaration This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any work that has already been submitted before for any degree or other qualification except as declared in the preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the Archaeology & Anthropology Degree Committee. Statement of length This dissertation is 79,999 words. 3 ABSTRACT This thesis is an exploration of ‘integral ecology’, a new paradigm of Catholic political theology, through an ethnography of Les Alternatives Catholiques, a prominent Lyon-based association of lay Catholic intellectuals. A cornerstone of Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’: On The Care for Our Common Home, the term ‘integral ecology’ indexes the synergy between climate change and global socioeconomic inequality, suggesting that ‘all is connected’. Drawing on Laudato Si’, Les AlterCathos host conferences on political participation and green conversion, and run a café as a microcosm for their advocacy of a holistic, environmental and human ‘Common Good’. This case study of public Catholic praxis in secular Republican France brings into conversation the concerns of three anthropological traditions, which have respectively addressed Catholic lives, the ethical self- formation of religious actors, and the presence of religion in modern public spheres. Intended as a positive counterpart to the anthropological work on pious religiosity, this thesis aims to take seriously the ‘worldly’ commitments of religious institutions and actors, suggesting political theology as a locus of anthropological and ethnographic investigation. Ethnographies of Islam in France have exposed the uneasy place of religion in the secular Republic; here, I offer a parallel inquiry into French Catholicism. I demonstrate, firstly, that the place of Catholics in the French Republic is simultaneously central and marginal – both in their political participation in the public sphere, and in their cultural relationship with the sphere of education. I situate the rise of ‘integral ecology’ as an explicitly Catholic politics in the national aftermath of the 2012-2013 anti-same-sex-marriage and anti-surrogate-pregnancy protest ‘La Manif Pour Tous’, widely viewed by the public as a religious incursion into secular politics. This bioethical protest, predating Laudato Si’, ineluctably set the stage for all subsequent attempts by French Catholics to politically or discursively defend ‘Nature’ and ‘mankind’. It is in this equivocal context that the lay philosophers of Les Alternatives Catholiques articulate Laudato Si’ and the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church into political guidelines, through public conferences. I address the ways in which Les AlterCathos authoritatively spearhead a turn to Catholic environmentalism through the day-to-day running of their café and, by including lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics as participants, negotiate the place of belief and piety in their efforts. Finally, I argue that the praxis of integral ecology relies on the cultivation of subsidiarity – and show how this advocacy of small-scale, locally- situated lifestyles runs against two hurdles: the narratives of Republican commentators who fear a reactionary promotion of the (rural and Christian) ‘roots’ of France, and the discourses of segments of the Catholic population who do uphold just such an ‘integralist’ stance. This work offers a case study of lay Catholics’ efforts to combine religious, political, and philosophical epistemologies, and to position their praxis within and besides the institutions of the Catholic Church. Attending to the modes of subjectivation of this instance of political theology, the thesis endeavours to showcase the worldly modalities of ‘caring for Our Common Home’ as a political and spiritual project. 4 CONTENTS Preface 3 Abstract 4 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction: Caring for Our Common Home 11 ––––– Catholicism(s) in secular modern France 13 ‘Progressives’ vs. ‘intransigeants’: The question of modernity 14 Vatican II and the ‘silent revolution’: The question of culture 16 The return of Catholics on the public stage: The question of nature 18 ––––– The anthropology of public religious projects 20 Religious ‘visibility’: The question of power 20 Religious politics: The question of the ‘theologico-political’ 23 Public religiosity: The question of piety 26 ––––– ‘Worldly’ religious commitments: The suggestion of political theology 27 ––––– Fieldsite and interlocutors 29 Lyon 29 ‘La cathosphère’ 31 Les Alternatives Catholiques 34 ––––– Outline of the dissertation 35 Part One: France, our common home? 35 Part Two: Towards an integral ecology 36 Part One: France, Our Common Home? 39 Centrality and Marginality of Catholics in the Republic Chapter One. ‘La Manif Pour Tous’: Catholic Families and the Order of the French Public Sphere 41 ––––– Introduction 41 ––––– French universalism and the place of the family 44 ––––– Frigide Barjot and the protection of ‘bio’ filiation 48 ––––– ‘Mobilising the Muslims’: Inter-faith negotiations and Republican interfaces 52 ––––– Manif memories #1: An orderly protest? 56 ––––– Manif memories #2: A bourgeois protest? 59 ––––– Manif memories #3: A Catholic protest? 63 ––––– Conclusion: ‘Matter out of place’? A secular stalemate. 65 ––––– Coda. Problematic politics at home: An ‘apartment meeting’ 69 5 Chapter Two. French Culture Générale, Integration or Integralism? 73 On the Stakes of French Catholic Philosophical Conferences ––––– Introduction 73 I. Thèse: Catholic conferences mediate a particularly Catholic world 78 I.1 The stakes of ‘Christian roots’ 78 I.2 Catholic schools and Catholic conference centres 81 I.3 Philosophy and ‘general culture’ among Catholic audiences 85 II. Antithèse: Catholic conferences articulate a ‘whole’ ‘French culture’ 89 II.1 The stakes of Republican education 89 II.2 A Catholic defense of ‘general culture’ 91 II.3 Equivocal ‘epistemic and social bodies’ 93 III. Synthèse: Catholic conferences curate ‘transmission’ and ‘rootedness’ 96 III.1 Familiar content rather than new 96 III.2 The philosophical method against ‘postmodern derision’ 98 ––––– Conclusion 101 Part Two: Écologie Intégrale, 103 An Instance of Political Theology Chapter Three. ‘Catholic Alternatives’: 105 Prefiguring a New Catholic Political Epistemology ––––– Introduction 105 ––––– ‘Grand schemes’ in/and action in the anthropologies of religion and politics 109 ––––– ‘Renovating society, not the Church’ 114 ––––– Catholic alternatives and/as/are modern politics 116 ––––– A new Catholic political epistemology 119 ––––– ‘Radical’ recursivity and the ‘provincialisation’ of one’s roots 123 ––––– La Manif Pour Tous: Écologie intégrale 1.0 128 ––––– Conclusion: Écologie intégrale 2.0 after Laudato Si’ 132 Chapter Four. Putting Écologie Intégrale Into Practice, 137 Or, Does Piety Matter in a World-Oriented Religious Ethic? ––––– Introduction 137 ––––– Le Simone – a logistical introduction 142 ––––– Le Simone – a conceptual (albeit equivocal) introduction 145 ––––– A successful grassroots expansion: ‘Laudato Si’ in Action’ 151 ––––– A problematic initiative: Yoga, and the limits of a Catholic space 155 ––––– Conclusion: Political theology as world-oriented religious ethics 160 6 Chapter Five. Scaling ‘Our Common Home’: 167 The Moral Landscapes of Subsidiarity ––––– Introduction 167 ––––– A troubling red herring: The political theology of the ‘Benedict Option’ 172 ––––– The principle of subsidiarity: A matter of scale 177 ––––– From ‘localism’ to ‘subsidiarity’: A problematic transition 181 ––––– Scalar ascetics: Is the ‘smallest scale appropriate’ always small? 185 ––––– Conclusion: Being subsidiary in a Republican nation 190 Conclusion: ‘Everything is Connected’ 195 ––––– Vatican vignettes #1: The ‘baby of paper’ 195 ––––– Dissertation summary 197 ––––– ‘Rooted’ politics 199 ––––– For an anthropology of political theology 202 ––––– Coda. Vatican vignettes #2: ‘The girl with the potato’ 206 References 209 7 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first thanks go to my supervisor, Dr Matei Candea, for showing me that thinking further and more rigorously makes anthropology all the more exciting. I am grateful beyond words for his generosity, both intellectual and human, over the years and in recent months. Of all the cafés in all the towns in all the world, I conducted my fieldwork in theirs: my friends in Le Simone, among Les AlterCathos, and across Lyon have all my thanks, no less heartfelt for being anonymous. It was a privilege to be invited to share the thoughts and projects they care about so deeply, and I hope to have done them justice here. The Department of Social Anthropology is an incomparably stimulating setting in which to study, and I thank all its Faculty and staff for making it such an inclusive environment. I would like to thank Prof Susan Bayly, Dr Rupert Stasch, and Prof David Sneath for their guidance, in their capacity as the PhD Committee and beyond. I count myself lucky to have been taught and encouraged at key junctures by Dr Marta Magalhães Wallace, Dr Chris Kaplonski, and Dr Barbara Bodenhorn; Dr Paolo Heywood was an inspirational

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