- Feb 5, 2002
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Bishop Marc Aillet, author of a new book in which he calls on bishops to dare to go against the flow of the world to lead their flocks to holiness, discusses the central issues raised by today’s crisis of faith.
The statements of Bishop Marc Aillet, head of the Diocese of Bayonne, Oloron and Lescar, in southwest France since 2008, generally stand out in the French religious and political landscape. His outspokenness, combined with his gentle, diplomatic manner and the lilting phrasing of the dialect of southern France, make him a very popular Church leader in a France where the winds aggressive secularism force many Catholics to adopt a low-key, even self-censorship approach.
It is precisely against this backdrop that Bishop Aillet published the book Le temps des saints (The Time of Saints) last fall, in which he calls on his fellow bishops to “not be mute dogs” in order to keep their flocks within the bosom of the faith at a time of great turbulence for the Church.
It’s a prescription he has consistently applied to himself in recent years, never shying away from sensitive topical issues.
After being one of the only bishops in France to comment on the “motu proprio” Traditionis Custodes restricting the traditional Latin Mass in 2020 — renewing his expressions of trust in the communities involved — he was more recently the first bishop in the country to publicly address the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration Fiducia Supplicans and the question of blessing homosexual couples, attracting the wrath of French LGBT activists in the process.
But it was more broadly the feeling that “truth itself is under threat, and with it the whole of humanity” that prompted the bishop to pen this book, in which he asserts that unity among ordained ministers is “based on the Creed, which suffers no divergence, though in dialogue with the world it is not always possible to wait for consensus before speaking out.”
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
The statements of Bishop Marc Aillet, head of the Diocese of Bayonne, Oloron and Lescar, in southwest France since 2008, generally stand out in the French religious and political landscape. His outspokenness, combined with his gentle, diplomatic manner and the lilting phrasing of the dialect of southern France, make him a very popular Church leader in a France where the winds aggressive secularism force many Catholics to adopt a low-key, even self-censorship approach.
It is precisely against this backdrop that Bishop Aillet published the book Le temps des saints (The Time of Saints) last fall, in which he calls on his fellow bishops to “not be mute dogs” in order to keep their flocks within the bosom of the faith at a time of great turbulence for the Church.
It’s a prescription he has consistently applied to himself in recent years, never shying away from sensitive topical issues.
After being one of the only bishops in France to comment on the “motu proprio” Traditionis Custodes restricting the traditional Latin Mass in 2020 — renewing his expressions of trust in the communities involved — he was more recently the first bishop in the country to publicly address the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration Fiducia Supplicans and the question of blessing homosexual couples, attracting the wrath of French LGBT activists in the process.
But it was more broadly the feeling that “truth itself is under threat, and with it the whole of humanity” that prompted the bishop to pen this book, in which he asserts that unity among ordained ministers is “based on the Creed, which suffers no divergence, though in dialogue with the world it is not always possible to wait for consensus before speaking out.”
Continued below.
‘American Bishops Offer the World an Example of Courage,’ Says French Bishop
Bishop Marc Aillet, author of a new book in which he calls on bishops to dare to go against the flow of the world to lead their flocks to holiness, discusses the central issues raised by today’s crisis of faith.
