“Do Catholic countries have better football players?”

I was surprised to see this headline on the Austrian Catholic website kath.net today… and even more surprised to see they seemed to mean it seriously.

“A look at the participants in the final round of the European football championship in Switzerland and Austria suggests this,” kath.net writes in a report from Vienna. “In seven of the 16 participating countries, Catholics are clearly in the majority: Poland (95 percent of the population), Spain (92 percent), Italy (90 percent), Portugal (90 percent), Croatia (77 percent), Austria (69 percent ) and France (51 percent). Only one Protestant stronghold confronts them, Sweden. Of the 8.8 million inhabitants of the northern European country, 80 percent are Lutherans.”

There’s no hint of analysis of why this should be relevant, or mention of the personal faith — or lack thereof — of the players on these national teams. This purely statistical view (sports fans love stats, don’t they?) goes on to point out which participating countries have large numbers of both Catholics and Protestants (Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands).

The article notes that only 32 percent of all Czechs call themselves Christians, making the Czech Republic the most “de-churched” participating country, i.e. the country where religion has retreated the most. Even there, though, the Catholics make up the largest group among the believers (26.5 percent of the population). So maybe they still have a chance after all.

No religion story in Europe is complete without a mention of Islam, so the Vienna-datelined article ended up with a comment about Turkey. The Turkish team, by the way, beat Austria’s co-hosts Switzerland 2-1 on Wednesday in Basel and face the “de-churched” Czechs on Sunday in Geneva, aka “the Protestant Rome”.

“The only Muslim-dominated country in the European Championship is Turkey, where 98 percent of the 72 million inhabitants are Muslims. The 120,000 Christians there have a hard time because of much discrimination,” it wrote. “In Europe there are 224.5 million Catholics, 57.8 million Protestants, 39 million Orthodox, 15.7 million Muslims and 1.6 million Jews.”

These statistics appear to be completely irrelevant to Euro 2008. In fact, with the large Catholic majority in Europe that kath.net mentions at the end, it’s almost inevitable that many countries with a Catholic majority will end up in the final rounds every time the championships are held. Can any football fan tell me if there’s something this religion editor is missing?

A French Muslim who blocked a male doctor from performing an emergency caeserian on his wife has lost his bid to sue the hospital because his son was born handicapped, according to French press and radio reports. The court also ordered him to pay the court costs — €1,000 ($1,550) — because he kept the doctor from “performing the tests that could have prevented the serious neurological complications” that occurred. Coming shortly after the “virginity lie” controversy, this case has once again raised the question of if and how to accommodate religious demands from Muslims in France.

The law in French state hospitals is clear. Women can request women doctors and probably get them most of the time. But if the attending doctor that night is a man, as happened in this case, the woman — and in this case, her husband — have to accept that. When this woman went into labour in November 1998, the couple rushed to a hospital in Bourg-en-Bresse and a midwife examined her. She recognised a complication and called the doctor, but the husband physically blocked him for half an hour because he did not want a strange man touching his wife. By the time he gave in, it was too late for a caeserian and the baby had to be delivered by foreceps. Little Mohammed is now 100% handicapped.

The father sued the hospital for €100,000 in damages and €10,000 in personal compensation. The court rejected this and blamed the father, saying: “The child’s state is totally attributable to the attitude of Mr. Radouane Ijjou.”

The issue of Muslims demanding exceptions at state hospitals has been an issue in France since 2003, when the Stasi Commission (whose hearings led to the headscarf ban in state schools) heard doctors say a growing number of Muslim men refused to let male doctors treat their wives. There were stories of fistfights between husbands and doctors — including one non-fatal stabbing — and husbands driving from emergency room to emergency room searching for a female doctor to treat a wife in desperate need of medical attention. But while these stories appeared from time to time in the media, it was hard to get clear facts on specific cases. My impression was that there was a definate problem, with some very worrying cases, but it was not as widespread as the French media seemed to say it was.

This is a clear case that has gone through the legal system. I think the judge was 100% correct in not only rejecting this suit but throwing the blame back on that irresponsible father’s shoulders. He — and his wife, and especially his son — is the victim of a kind of folk Islam that confused cultural traditions with faith. Several Muslim scholars and chaplains I spoke to while researching other cases said they could have given him a litany of Koran quotes to prove that his wife’s and son’s health came first. One doctor I met once had the Paris Grand Mosque fax over a fatwa to convince a Muslim couple to perform an emergency abortion.

Have you seen cases of faith vs. health care clashes in your local media? Do they look like hearsay or are they well sourced? I think this is less serious than it’s made out to be, but when it’s serious — like in this case — it can be tragic.

Things seem to be looking up at the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM). The first round of elections for its new national leadership went off well on Sunday — the second round is due on June 22 — and several leaders of member groups expressed confidencethe council can finally get down to work. This will be a revolution in itself. Since it was created in 2003 under heavy pressure from the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy (now M. le Président), the CFCM has been almost completely paralysed by internal rivalries. The reason for hope this time around is that the government didn’t choose winner in advance, as it did in the 2003 and 2005 elections. Instead of naming Paris Grand MosqueRector Dalil Boubakeur the next CFCM president before the vote no matter what his mosque network’s result was, the government let the Muslims decide for themselves who should run the council. The Moroccan-backed Rally of French Muslims (RMF) mosque network came out clearly ahead and its candidate for CFCM president, Mohammed Moussaoui, looks set to win the top job on June 22. Here’s a post-election interviewwith Moussaoui (in French) where he lists his priorities as religious training for imams and chaplains, mosque construction, consumer protection for hajis, better conditions for Eid slaughterhouses and Muslim sections in cemeteries. Without ever mentioning the record of the CFCM to date, he shows all that has to be done. The back story to the CFCM election is fascinating. Back in 2003, Sarkozy insisted that Boubakeur be president in order to:-

1. Ensure a moderate head of a prestigious mosque headed the CFCM rather than the supposed “radicals” of the Union of French Muslim Organisations (UOIF), which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood and
2. Work closely with Algeria, which supports the Grand Mosque and its network, the main mosque network for Algerian Muslims in France.

The Grand Mosque network came in third in the 2003 and 2005 elections, so the UOIF and the Moroccan mosques — first represented by the National Federation of French Muslims (FNMF) and now the RMF — had serious problems with this interference. Although Sarkozy is now president, it seems he did not bring the same priorities into the Elysée Palace. The current approach shows less worry about the UOIF, which is not really all that “radical” after all, and a tilt towards Morocco. Press reports say Rabat has also become more interested in influencing its emigrants in Europe after Moroccans were implicated in the Theo van Gogh murder and the Madrid train bombings. Anyway, back to the CFCM elections. Once Boubakeur pulled out of the race in supposed protest against the voting mechanism accepted in the two earlier elections, the vote was free for the winners to be the group that actually won the most votes. The Moroccans came in a strong first at 43.2 percent, far ahead of the UOIF at 30.2 percent. This satisfied the Moroccans and smaller groups that will probably ally with them, but left the UOIF very dissatisfied. Now it is clear they are stuck in second place and they don’t like that. So they’re calling for a rotating presidency to let them get the top job some day. Judging from what RMF President Anouar Kbibech said after the results were in (RFI audio here in French), the RMF plans to actually tackle practical problems for Muslims in France. The regional council (CRCM) in Rhône-Alpes, the region in and around Lyon, showed up the national council by producing a 74-page report on its progresson such practical issues over the past three years. The pragmatic regional leader there, Azzedine Gaci (picture at left), has set a high standard for the new boys in Paris to meet. One of the first would be to set up their own website … One fly in the ointment is that the election confirmed the influence of what the French call “consular Islam” — the influence that the so-called countries of origin have on French Muslims. The switch in leadership from the Paris Grand Mosque to the RMF also means a shift in influence from Algeria to Morocco. Turkey has a similar link to ethnic Turks in France, but they are a smaller group (12.7 percent in the election). For all the government’s talk of creating an Islam de France, it persists in fostering this consular Islam.When it was launched, the CFCM aroused interest around Europe because it seemed to be the most developed form of official representation for Islam in a European country. It looked like some kind of answer to the question ‘who speaks for Islam?’ But its immobility over the years made it drop off the radar screen.There are a mixed bag of efforts to create or maintain Muslim councils in other countries, such as the “Islam Conference” in Berlin pictured at right. Here’s a roundup of them by H. A. Hellyer. Each country has a different approach and there doesn’t seem to be any one-size-fits-all solution.How do you think a Muslim council in a European country should be organised?

A rabbi, an imam and a Catholic priest have written a book about the “painful verses” in scriptures that offend other faiths. Instead of plucking quotes out of each others’ holy books, however, they went to their own texts and picked out the passages they found difficult themselves. The result, recently published in France in the book Les Versets douloureux (The Painful Verses), amounts to an interfaith dialogue that goes straight for some of the most sensitive topics between different faiths.

The trio — Rabbi David Meyer, Imam Sohaib Bencheikh and Rev. Yves Simoens — thought it was a needed switch from the polite interfaith meetings they were used to attending.

Here’s a feature I wrote today after their book presentation this morning. Meyer said there were no plans yet to translate it but their publisher Editions Lessius was in contact with counterparts in Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace, a group Meyer and Bencheikh are active in, has posted a short summary of the book in English.

The “virginity lie” case gripping France for the past two days has given French politicians the opportunity to indulge in one of their favourite pastimes — expressing indignation. There’s been much more heat than light in this story since it broke last Friday.

If you haven’t been following it, the story is about a French Muslim couple who got their marriage annulled after the husband complained the wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be. Since he could not have cited either religion or the traditional Muslim preference for virgin brides as valid reasons for annulment, the husband’s lawyer argued the wife had lied about an “essential quality” necessary for the marriage. Under French law, a marriage can be annulled if, for example, one partner found out only after the wedding that the other had lied about a previous marriage or a criminal record.

Politicians, feminists and human rights activists immediately demanded the ruling be overturned. The critics vied to issue the most ringing denunciation. “A real fatwa for women’s liberation … (like) a ruling handed down in Kandahar” was a memorable one from Fadela Amara, the state secretary for urban affairs who comes from an Algerian Muslim family. Here are many more in French. By Monday, Justice Minister Rachida Dati — another cabinet member with a North African Muslim background — was flip-flopping. After originally defending the ruling as a means of helping a woman get out of an unwanted marriage, she decided on Monday to ask a public prosecutor to launch an appeal.

The news today was that the erstwhile husband and wife both accept the ruling and do not want an appeal that would make them a legally married couple all over again and force them to replay their separation through a longer and more costly divorce process. The woman’s lawyer said she was furious. “I have to get on with my life,” he quoted her as saying. “I don’t know who decided that they would think for me. I haven’t asked for anything. It feels like I’m hallucinating.”

Almost nobody but the couple and their lawyers want the ruling to stand. But almost nobody is actually thinking through the implications of what they’re demanding.

Most critics want the ruling overturned for one or several of the following reasons:

• it violates a woman’s privacy by making virginity a possible criterion for marriage.
• it violates sexual equality because no proof is asked of a groom’s virginity.
• it introduces a religious concept of the virgin bride into the secular marriage contract.
• it treats the bride like merchandise in a commercial transaction.

These are all valid arguments. Unfortunately, the result of a successful appeal would be to restore the marriage of a couple who do not want to be married, especially not after the drama they went through. As was widely reported, the hoodwinked husband discovered his wife’s lie on their first night together and went right back to the wedding reception, which was still in progress, to announce the news…

Simply overturning the ruling would also leave on the books the paragraph in the civil code that allowed it in the first place. Several hundred marriages are annulled in France every year because of the “essential quality” clause, and nobody’s saying this should be scrapped. Some critics have said the other criteria — such as hiding a previous marriage – were OK but a woman’s sex life must remain completely private. There is probably a way to amend the code to accommodate that, but the legislators will have to get around another problem. Male impotence is currently accepted as a criterion for annulment. Should that be private too?

One of the few politicians who seemed to look beyond a knee-jerk reaction was the straight-talking health minister, Roselyne Bachelot. While explaining her position, she made some statements that might surprise people outside of France. But her comments still made a lot more sense than most others:

“This is a topic that cannot be resolved in court,” she said. “What one ruling has done, another can’t simply undo. Now, it’s an issue for national legislators. Parliament is where all this should be decided.

“It’s true that the notion of a ‘fundamental quality’ is something that, in the case of virginity, may have been widely accepted … in the 19th century or in the early 20th. Morals have changed and that’s fine. So I want parliament to pass a law to define these characteristics.”

She rejected the argument that the wife’s lie was the central issue. “The right to lie is a fundamental right of human beings. The issue at the heart of this is the notion of a fundamental, substantial and essential quality.”

Nadine Morano, the state secretary for family affairs, warned against seeing this as a Muslim issue. “People say it’s a Muslim family, but I also know many families of practising Catholics for whom this element remains an essential quality for both the man and the woman.”

“No matter what anyone says, the decision handed down by the court in Lille conformed to the civil code. Should we make a law and say we cannot include virginity as one of the essential qualities of a person simply because we see that it creates inequality between men and women?”

Any suggestions about what French lawmakers should do once the soundbite phase of this story is over?

A French court has annulled the marriage of two French Muslims because the husband complained his wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be. His lawyer won the case by arguing a civil marriage is a legal contract and lying about an important element in it amounts to fraud. Religion had nothing to do with it, he argued, and the court agreed. More details are in our news story here.

But religion obviously had something to do with this. The man has a traditional Muslim view (and not only Muslim, by the way…) that his wife must be a virgin at marriage. Some Muslim families shun daughters who are sexually active before marriage, in rare cases going so far as committing a so-called “honour killing.”

The decision is also discriminatory. Only a woman’s virginity can be physically tested, so applying this standard violates the legal equality between men and women.

The clause in the civil code that the lawyer used is usually applied to cases where a spouse finds his/her new partner concealed an earlier divorce or had a physical or mental disability that made a normal sex life impossible. French media have mentioned earlier cases where it was used. In one, a man had his marriage annulled because he discovered his wife had been a prostitute. In another, a devout Catholic woman used it against a husband who had concealed his earlier divorce.

One interesting angle here — although Islam is mentioned in this debate, there hasn’t been much Muslim-bashing or suggestions of “creeping Sharia” like those made in Britain after Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams suggested some elements of Islamic law should be taken into British law. It’s not surprising the husband’s lawyer did not mention religion because a French court would have thrown out an argument based on faith. The debate is over which issue takes precedence, prosecution of a fraud case or defence of equality and individual rights.

Amar Lafsar, rector of a large mosque in Lille where the case was tried, said Islam does not necessarily demand virginity for a new bride and gives men and women the same rights. Asked what he tells young Muslim women considering marriage, he said: “I tell them a girl should preserve herself for her husband, for her Prince Charming, and if the girls listen and preserve their virginity and chastity, that’s great. But they’re free. They’re in a country of law and liberty. Each is free to respond or not to the message.” Here he is speaking in French to RTL radio.

The man was reported to be a 30-year-old French convert to Islam and his wife a student of about 20 from a French Muslim family. According to Le Monde, the wedding festivities stretched late into the night and the husband, who had left with his wife, returned to the party and announced the news. He went to see his lawyer in the morning.

The case leaves a whole list of questions. Looking back, should the court have ruled as it did? Should the principle of sexual equality take precedence over the realities of a broken contract? And what should now be done? A government spokesman suggested an appeals court should review the verdict, but overturning it would place the woman back in a marriage her husband doesn’t want. Letting the verdict stand creates a precedent that, according to feminist philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, treats the woman as “merchandise.”

What do you think about this?

The future of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the state-backed body meant to represent the country’s second-largest religion, is once again shrouded in uncertainty. The Grand Mosque of Paris (GMP) announced on Saturday it would boycott elections next month for the CFCM leadership. Although the Grand Mosque and its national mosque network rank third in size behind rival organisations, a CFCM without it is a rump organisation that cannot really claim to represent Islam in France.

The CFCM has been paralysed by internal rivalries for most of its five years of existence. Back in 2003 when he was interior minister, France’s current President Nicolas Sarkozy engineered an agreement among the country’s main Islamic groups to create a council to speak for Muslims similar to the way the French Bishops’ Conference speaks for Catholics or the Consistory speaks for Jews. His ministry’s Religious Affairs Bureau kept close tabs on the Council and influenced its operations behind the scenes. But the CFCM could not overcome the divisions within the Muslim community itself. It rarely acted as a single body and member groups continued to compete with each other.

That competition now threatens the June 8 election.

While the Grand Mosque of Paris is the symbolic centre of French Islam, the main Muslim group are the Moroccan-backed Rally for French Muslims (RMF) and the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF), which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood. The RMF has been steadily gaining ground and has strong backing from Rabat (it even held a conference of 250 leaders in Marrakech in February). Moroccan immigrants in France tend to be more observant than the Algerians close to the GMP (which is directly supported by Algiers). They have opened many mosques and prayer rooms around the country, often in suburbs or small towns where they can get ample prayer space.

That factor boosts their clout within the CFCM, because the Council elections are based on the total prayer space each organisation commands, with 10 delegates for every 1,000 square metres of prayer space in the mosques. Only these delegates are allowed to vote in the national and regional Council elections. As one GMP source put it, “All one needs to do is buy premises in the suburbs, throw a few rugs on the floor and declare the place a mosque, even if there isn’t an imam.”

The first two elections, in 2003 and 2005, were decided in advance because the Interior Ministry ensured that Grand Mosque Rector Dalil Boubakeur was installed as the Council’s president no matter result what his network garnered in the actual voting. The Moroccans (then in another organisation called the FNMF) “won” both those polls and Rabat is actively supporting the RMF to do this again. This time around, the current Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie consulted Algiers and Rabat but did not engineer any such deal. The CFCM faced its first open election.

Failing to have the earlier deal upheld, the Grand Mosque has now decided to boycott any election it cannot win. “We can’t be in the CFCM without having the presidency,” Chems-eddine Hafiz, a senior Grand Mosque official, said at the news conference announcing the boycott. Boubakeur denounced the election procedures as unfair, even “iniquitous” and said the number of delegates should be based on a more complex formula that takes into account the other services the mosque provides (like the GMP’s theological school), the educational level of the imams (the GMP’s come off better here too) and the background of the mosque group (GMP again scores high). Boubakeur has argued for years that the voting procedure had to be reformed, but only a small group of African mosques has supported his view.

When it was founded, the CFCM aroused a lot of interest in Europe as a possible model for other European countries trying to integrate their growing Muslim minorities. Now it looks like it will remain moribund beyond the June election (if it is held) and may never get down to tackling the practical problems these minorities face. Some in the GMP seem to think that Sarkozy will step in at the last minute to ensure Boubakeur a third term, but others doubt the president would do that at a time his popularity ratings are so low.

Do you think European governments should get involved in “managing” Islam like this?

It’s never too early to start speculating about the next pope. The Paris daily Le Figaro seems to be the first out of the starting blocks with an article on Friday saying that Pope Benedict appeared tired during his U.S. tour and has been delegating more and more of his duties. “Three years after the election of Benedict XVI, his succession is not yet a daily issue at the Vatican but the rumours are rife,“ Rome correspondent Hervé Yannou wrote. “It’s true that he celebrated his 81st birthday on April 16 and everybody knows his health is fragile. The sovereign pontiff still climbs the stairs and is mentally alert, but he’s as old as his years. And it’s no secret for anyone that the pope has a weak heart.”

Perhaps to calm any concern the article might stir up, Yannou promptly says Benedict still plans to visit France on September 12-15, where he will celebrate a large outdoor mass at Les Invalides in Paris and visit the sanctuary at Lourdes. After a bit more background, he returns to the succession issue and names Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (photo below left), 74, as the front-runner. If the cardinal electors lean towards a non-European, Yannou’s pick is Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio, 72, the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires who emerged as the main alternative to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now B16) at the 2005 conclave.

The reason for this speculation may have less to do with Benedict’s health than the fact that another “papabile” (pope candidate) has all but thrown his hat into the papal succession ring. On April 14, the day before Benedict left for Washington, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, 65, published a book in France entitled De la difficulté d’évoquer Dieu dans un monde qui pense ne pas en avoir besoin (The difficulty of evoquing God in a world that thinks it doesn’t need him). In it, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa (photo below right), who was considered a long-shot papabile back in 2005, wrote about the possibility of a non-European pope. This pontiff should be a “man of the 21st century” who embodies both tradition and innovation and whose knowledge of the concerns of the Third World would mean he could influence North-South relations, he wrote in what sounded very much like a self-description and job description rolled into one. French reporters covering Benedict’s U.S. visit briefly discussed the book one day in the press centre, but it didn’t sound like the start of the succession speculation season.

“Certainly, the pope is 81 years old,” said Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican Press Office, told John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter. “But on live television, before the eyes of the whole world, anyone can see that he’s fine and is performing all of his duties.” Allen said the article illustrated “an iron-clad rule of Vatican coverage: however thin the pretext may be, speculation about the next pope is always guaranteed to generate an audience.”

Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale noted that Benedict, following his U.S. visit, had celebrated a funeral, would preside over a long ceremony on Sunday and planned trips in the coming months to northern Italy, southern Italy, Australia and France. “Il Giornale has confirmed there is no (health) alarm,” he wrote.

On his blog, Tornielli asked whether reluctant vaticanisti were now going to have to write more and more papal health stories. Only three years ago, he recalled, the death of Pope John Paul II ended a difficult decade in which Vatican reporters had to write frequently about health issues and medical false alarms. “What’s coming from France is an ugly signal — is it already starting again?” he asked.

(Update: Zenit has more on the Vatican denial here.)

What do you think about speculation like this? Is it irreverent, given that Benedict seems in good health for his age? Or should Vatican reporters follow up any lead like this?

Remember Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation, the lavishly illustrated Islamic creationist book that first turned up in Turkey, then France and other European countries and prompted a disapproving resolution by the Council of Europe? It’s now being mailed to universities in Scotland, the Sunday Herald there reports:

“I find it quite staggering,” said Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh. He houses his seven copies in a cupboard in the zoology department’s staff room. “Every academic I know says they’ve got one of those. And it’s peddling an absolute, downright lie…”

According to Taner Edis, a physicist at Truman State University in the US who has written several books on Islam and science, Oktar is “the leader of a small religious sect and an art school drop-out.”

Copies of Atlas Of Creation began appearing in American universities last year. Edis has two in his office. He said they caught academics’ eyes because of their high production value, but also because the book argued for creationism from a Muslim perspective, as opposed to the more widely heard Protestant Christian tradition.

The Evangelical Church in Germany, the main Protestant church association there, issued a warning last week against teaching creationism in schools. It didn’t mention Atlas of Creation but it’s been reported to have been distributed there.

The mysterious Istanbul writer Harun Yahya (actually Adnan Oktar) is clearly spending large amounts of money sending this unwelcome book around Europe. Where does he get it from?

Since the last time we wrote about Oktar, he has given interviews to several news organisations from Muslim countries. Here’s one with Al-Jazeera (video in Arabic, text in English) and several other news groups.

Given the discussion about the new Latin prayer to be read at Catholic Good Friday services in the Tridentine rite today, I’ve tried to find estimates for how many people will actually hear it. Jewish groups have expressed dismay that the new version of the prayer, which drops references to the “blindness” of the Jews but still calls for their conversion. The leader of Germany’s Jewish community said she could not fathom how the German-born Pope Benedict could “impose such phrases on his church.” The Vatican rejects this criticism and sources there say it could soon issue a conciliatory note. So there’s a lot of talk about this issue, but how much is actually happening on the ground?

Actually, the vast majority of Catholics attending Good Friday services around the world will not hear this prayer in Latin but a different one in their own native language. That prayer is based on a 1970 text without any explicit reference to the conversion of the Jews. There is no official number for how many will attend the Latin services in the older Tridentine rite that Pope Benedict promoted with a ruling last year authorising wider use of the old Latin Mass. But even ardent supporters of the traditional rite agree that the number is very, very small. Some have objected to our use of the term “tiny minority” for it, saying this was dismissive and implied the number was insignificant. It wasn’t, but it’s very hard to write about such a small amount without seeming to write it off.

Looking for anecdotal evidence, I first turned to the excellent conservative Catholic blog What Does The Prayer Really Say? (which just swept the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards). This was a logical step since its lively moderator, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (”Fr. Z”), had just taken us to task for writing “tiny minority.” I posted a question about how to describe the size of this group and several readers chimed in, suggesting words like “rare” (sounds like an endangered species), “relatively few in number” (too vague), “some” or “a few” (even more vague) or “small but growing minority” (that adds movement, but it’s still vague). Even the most neutral synonyms for “tiny” — diminutive, microscopic, miniature, minuscule, slight or wee (for my Scottish colleagues) — can be read as dismissive. How would Fr. Z put it — paupera lingua angliae?

One reader estimated there would be about 40 traditional Latin Good Friday services in the whole United States, compared to about 20,000 overall. There would be about 60 in France, the real centre of the Catholic traditionalist movement, he estimated.

I then turned to my colleague Nicolas Senèze from the French Catholic daily La Croix who has just published “La crise intégriste - Vingt ans après le schisme de Mgr Lefebvre” (The Fundamentalist Crisis — 20 Years after the Schism of Archbishop Lefebvre). He was not sure about Good Friday but said there were 124 parishes in France that celebrated the Tridentine Mass on the basis of the 1984 indult. Only about a dozen have been added to that total since Benedict’s motu proprio last year encouraging wider use of the old Latin Mass. “Based on the current rhythm of celebrations being organised, one can estimate the number of churches (in France) using the John XXIII missal should stabilise around 200,” he wrote in his book.

These are still exceedingly small numbers in the 1.3-billion-strong Catholic world. Fr. Z and several of his readers say they are rising, and I’m sure that’s true, but the rate is very gradual. We have also heard many bishops and priests saying there is little or no interest in the traditional Mass in their dioceses. We’ve been criticised on some blogs for reporting this, often by indignant readers who insist the traditional Latin Mass is so much more beautiful and prayerful than the usual vernacular services. That may very well be the case, but that is an internal Catholic matter. For the time being, we have to look at the overall numbers. This doesn’t mean we think that’s the end of the story. If this number rises steadily, we’ll revisit the issue at some point. But this is where it stands now.

Several traditional Mass enthusiasts have contacted us to point out that many young Catholics attend these services and ask why we haven’t written about this. Actually, we have written about it, back in 2005 when we first noticed this. If this continues to grow, watch this space. In the meantime, Happy Easter to all Christians, no matter which language they pray in this Sunday.