The contrast could not be greater. A month ago, Pope Leo XIV visited France. A million people lined the Champs-Élysées to greet him; he held beautiful Masses in Paris, Lourdes, and Metz; 8,000 youth presented a beautiful dramatic narration of French Catholic history through the lives of the saints. 

Catholic France, known traditionally as the Eldest Daughter of the Church, was on full display, lifting up the true, good, and beautiful. 

The peace and joy of Pope Leo’s visit were palpable, even on a screen.  

In many ways, France reminds us that the Catholic Church formed Western civilization.  

Art, architecture, literature, law, education, science, medicine, and health care, grounded in the identity and dignity of the human person as a child of God, all came to be through the culture which the Church built.

Several days after the papal visit, protests and riots broke out across France, beginning with discontented students but now seemingly led by an alliance of leftists, Antifa, communists, immigrants, and their children. 

These mobs have burned scores of schools and hundreds of buildings, looted businesses, and assaulted the police and citizens, with no clear end in sight. 

The government has done little to nothing to intervene. The violence feels orchestrated and purposeful, and coming immediately after the papal visit, could not present a starker contrast.

A clash of cultures

I have a personal friend who is devoutly Catholic and French who offered a nuanced take on these disturbing events. 

He opined that while the current violence illustrates a clash of cultures, it also points to the failure of the liberal, socialist, and secular state, which offers many material benefits, but has become economically and culturally impossible to sustain. 

Many people in France, especially the immigrant community, cannot afford to live there, even with all the seeming advantages socialism promises. 

A country with no sustainable birthrate, a significant Muslim presence which does not assimilate into the broader culture, salaries which do not match the cost of living, and a secularized society which rejects its Catholic roots becomes a failed project. 

Globalized, left-wing, and areligious socialism is literally crashing and burning in Europe.

These dramatic and disturbing events point to the importance of culture. 

St. John Paul II often reflected on the etymology of the word “culture.” 

At least in English, we see that “cult” is part of the word. 

When we think of a cult, our first thought may be of a group of fanatics who brainwash children, but the original meaning is simply “the worship of God.” 

The pope rightfully points out that the worship of God and religion is the basis of any human society, that a shared and lived religious belief becomes the matrix in which all aspects of political and economic organization, art, literature, beauty, education and law, and every aspect of a flourishing culture of love and life, reach their potential.

The Catholic Church formed Western civilization. 

Human identity and dignity grounded in God as our Father, universities and hospitals, theology and philosophy, the arts and sciences, agriculture, and the preservation of ancient learning, indeed all of the fundamental aspects of Western culture which we often take for granted, emerged from Catholicism.  

When modern culture denies the religious roots of its own existence, it cannot survive, let alone flourish. 

Hope for society

Pope Leo articulated this truth when he was in Paris last month, and St. John Paul II proclaimed it while advocating for an acknowledgement of Europe’s Christian roots during the formulation of the European Union’s Constitution. 

Why does all of this matter? 

It matters because we want to live in a society where we can know ourselves as children of God, worship the Lord in freedom and truth, uphold the dignity of life, build stable marriages and families, have an economy that works for everyone, build a political system which sustains the common good, and become the saints that God has called us to be.  

The French Revolution, Nazism, communism, and secular socialism all have failed because they rejected the sovereignty of God and the truth of the Catholic Church. 

As disciples of the Lord, we give witness to the saving and liberating power of the Gospel in the public square, so all people can flourish in a culture of life and love.