In the wake of the revelation of massive sexual abuse of children in French churches, the head of religious affairs at the French newspaper Le Point asked: Does Catholicism still have a future?

Is this the end of Christianity?

At the beginning of his treatment of these two questions, the writer Jerome Cordley recalled the article published by historian Jean Delemo in a prestigious religious and historical periodical in 1977 under the title "Does Christianity Die?", noting that Delemo no longer exists, but his question is still on the table.

Christianity - according to Cordeli - has not died, but it is going through a bad phase, especially since the publication of the report of the "Sofi" commission, which sheds light on the staggering and systematic scope of child sexual abuse crimes within the Catholic Church in France.

The writer added that the discontent with Christianity - which was talked about by the work of the writers Marcel Gaucher and Jerome Fourquet - has now become a sociological fact, as the most careful followers of the Catholic Church are today lost and no longer know which saint to follow.

The future of the Christian faith

French historian Guillaume Cauchy chose the question "Does Catholicism still have a future in France?" as the title of his new book on this issue, after a recent poll conducted by the "French Institute of Public Opinion" (Ifop) showed - for the first time - that more than half of the French have not They come back to believe in God.

Cordelli pointed out that this expert continued in his latest book his exploration of the Catholic crisis that he started in his previous book, "How Our World Has Stopped Christianity."

This historian - according to the writer - not only alerted to well-known indicators of a decline in religiosity, such as the number of children who were baptized and the rate of going to church on Sundays, but also clearly highlighted the erosion of Catholic influence.

The victory of modernity

The writer said that the philosopher Chantal Delsol believes that what happened in society today is that modernity has triumphed, and this victory represented "the end of the Christian world" after 16 centuries of domination.

More than half of the French no longer believe in a god, according to a recent poll (European)

Dessole acknowledged that faith has diminished but still exists, and there will always be believers, while "powerful Christianity", the social organization it produces, and the civilization it embodies quarrel with "impressive heroic sugars".

She stated that the phenomenon of the Church's conversion to Protestantism, and the resulting purification of rituals and symbols, accelerated the degeneration of the sacred in the Catholic Church, as she put it.

The philosopher addressed the fall of what she called the "Christian Empire" from a historical perspective, noting that this highlights the current misery of those Catholics who see their world collapsing. Is this the end of history?

asks the writer.

However, Cauchy seemed more optimistic than Chantal Delsol;

He believes in the future of cultural Catholicism, thanks in particular to the enthusiasm of the immigrant population - Africans - but provided that the church does not retreat into itself and become confined to "a sect of over-zealous evangelicals or unruly religious people", in the writer's words.