And now it’s happening in France.
A
staunchly right-winged politician whose chances seemed slim when the
primaries began is now in line to become the next President of France.
François
Fillon, former prime minister of France and a faithful Catholic, has
pulled ahead in the Republican party, shocking pundits and political
commentators throughout the country and beating out the moderate former
Prime Minister Alain Juppé by a wide margin.
His Catholicism is such a strong part of his character that a headline in the newspaper Libération proclaimed: “Help, Jesus has returned!”
With
an active faith and conservative values, Fillon has promised to
preserve traditional family values and to uphold France’s Catholic
roots, and holds traditional views about marriage and abortion, though
he has said he does not plan to overturn the 1975 law that legalized
abortion.
“I will put the family at the heart of all public politics,” Fillon promised in a recent rally.
The
family was “certainly not a place for dangerous social
experimentation”, he said, referring to recently adapted adoption rights
for same-sex couples.
To
understand his success in a country where numbers of churchgoers have
plummeted, experts point to the cultural Catholics of France - geniously
dubbed les zombies catholiques (the zombie Catholics) by sociologists
Emmanuel Todd and Hervé Le Bras. In their book Le mystère français, Todd
and Le Bras explain that “Catholicism seems to have attained a kind of
life after death. But since it is a question of a this-worldly life, we
will define it as ‘zombie Catholicism.’”
Once
one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, France has seen a steady
decline in churchgoers over the years, with only 15 percent of the
country’s 41.6 million Catholics who are considered regular or even
occasional churchgoers today.
But
there are still pockets in France where the social values of
Catholicism have remained strong despite waning church numbers -
explaining, at least in part, the success of Fillon.
“Zombie
Catholics share certain symptoms: Not only do they hail from regions
where resistance was greatest to the French Revolution, but they also
have taken advantage of the benefits that flowed from that seismic
event,” Zaretsky wrote.
“Highly
educated and meritocratic, they also privilege a traditional ordering
of professional and domestic duties between husbands and wives; strong
attachment to social, community, and family activities; and a general
wariness over the role of the state in private and community affairs,
including ‘free schools’ (Catholic private schools).”
Fillon shares most of these characteristics, and was able to harness his appeal to the zombie Catholics for political gain.
Robert Zaretsky writes in Foreign Policy Magazine that
Fillon has “never made any secret of his beliefs.” He hails from a
deeply Catholic part of France, and goes on retreat every year.
Fillon
recalls his Catholic upbringing fondly in his campaign book Faire (“To
Make”), and explains how the Catholic worldview has shaped who he is as a
person: “I was raised in this tradition, and I have kept this faith.”
Voters
in regions considered zombie Catholic strongholds, such as the western
regions of the Vendée and Brittany, turned out in strong numbers for
Fillon. Areas considered more liberal - southern regions, Paris and
other large cities - had lower turnout numbers overall in the primaries.
Whether
his popularity and appeal will hold long enough to win him the office
remains to be seen. He will run against Marine Le Pen, the leader of the
far-right National Front, and the Socialist nominee, which will be chosen in January. Incumbent president François Hollande of the Socialist Party declined to run for another term.