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The more I read this, the less I get his point on the religious influence. > It is unclear why the Catholic Church’s influence waned so quickly and why France

The more I read this, the less I get his point on the religious influence. > It is unclear why the Catholic Church’s influence waned so quickly and why France was the first country to secularize. But then, if he doesn’t know enough about what’s happening in France during that period, how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? What if it was a completely different reason that he couldn’t find in his very limited set of documents ? > The decline of Catholicism, and fertility, in eighteenth-century France turned it from a demographic powerhouse – the China of Europe – to merely a first-rank European power among several Why wouldn’t it the other way round, with the core causes of the French decline also triggering less religiousness ? This article has a lot of data, but the base logical argument feels off, like starting from a conclusion and sticking correlated statistics to it without ever coming up with definitive causality.

mardifoufs 4y ago
I'm not sure about France, but the catholic church has definitely been a huge factor in population growth here in Québec. It's a widely accepted fact in academia here, though I agree the linked article does not make a great argument for a possibly similar effect in France.
arrozconcosas 4y ago
Catholic families tend to be very large. They tend to use contraception less and also have greater number of children per family. It’s still true today: https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secular-fertility-divide https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secula...
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I don't know if there's a direct line between this and the post ww2 service / office career for all (including women) so that people invested all their thoughts and time in work.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Sure, but for contrast Italia is a largely more catholic country than France [0], yet France has a higher fertility rate [1] So religion can be a factor, but there are so many other factors than can weight in the balance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210323-2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
  - philwelch 4y ago
    People can be nominally Catholic without doing a particularly good job of actually believing in and practicing the tenets of the religion. In fact, this is sort of the rule rather than the exception in much of Europe and North America.
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      IME a lot of French people consider themselves to be “Catholic” if they’ve been baptized, even if they’re completely atheist.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        The way to think about this is that people affiliate themselves with tribes for multiple reasons. One can philosophically not care at all about the beliefs of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, but for the purposes of interacting with members of their tribe, and signaling to other members of their tribe that they are in that tribe, they might still describe themselves as being “Catholic” (or whatever).
        School-Cotton 4y ago
        Exactly, and it’s reinforced by the fact that the two main ethnic groups in France (“ethnically French”, and North African Arabs), are distinguished by religion: the former are mostly Catholic, and the latter are virtually all Muslims. So the lines between religion and other markers of identity are blurred.
ciphol 4y ago
> how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? He gives several data points for secularization, such as the language people chose to use in their wills. Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion, it seems likely that these are causally linked in 18th century France, rather than coincidentally happening at the same time. It's a harder question why France in particular secularized at this time. The argument he very tentatively proposes is that freedom from religious coercion leads people to tend to become more religious (as can be seen by comparing the US to Europe over the last few centuries) and that France, due to its strong counter-reformation, had an unusually high level of religious coercion. > Why wouldn’t it the other way round, with the core causes of the French decline also triggering less religiousness ? What do you mean by "French decline"? Its loss of status as a superpower starting in 1815? That postdates the decline in religiousness.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion The article isn’t proving that point, and I’d argue other conditions, in particular mortality rates or living conditions in general have more of a widely accepted impact on fertility than religion. I’d be open to see religion playing a role in this narrative, but IMHO it needs be more than an opinion or a hunch. > “French decline" I meant by that the decline in population
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mardifoufs 4y ago

I'm not sure about France, but the catholic church has definitely been a huge factor in population growth here in Québec. It's a widely accepted fact in academia here, though I agree the linked article does not make a great argument for a possibly similar effect in France.

arrozconcosas 4y ago

Catholic families tend to be very large. They tend to use contraception less and also have greater number of children per family. It’s still true today: https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secular-fertility-divide https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secula...

agumonkey 4y ago
I don't know if there's a direct line between this and the post ww2 service / office career for all (including women) so that people invested all their thoughts and time in work.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Sure, but for contrast Italia is a largely more catholic country than France [0], yet France has a higher fertility rate [1] So religion can be a factor, but there are so many other factors than can weight in the balance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210323-2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
- philwelch 4y ago
  People can be nominally Catholic without doing a particularly good job of actually believing in and practicing the tenets of the religion. In fact, this is sort of the rule rather than the exception in much of Europe and North America.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    IME a lot of French people consider themselves to be “Catholic” if they’ve been baptized, even if they’re completely atheist.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      The way to think about this is that people affiliate themselves with tribes for multiple reasons. One can philosophically not care at all about the beliefs of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, but for the purposes of interacting with members of their tribe, and signaling to other members of their tribe that they are in that tribe, they might still describe themselves as being “Catholic” (or whatever).
      - School-Cotton 4y ago
        Exactly, and it’s reinforced by the fact that the two main ethnic groups in France (“ethnically French”, and North African Arabs), are distinguished by religion: the former are mostly Catholic, and the latter are virtually all Muslims. So the lines between religion and other markers of identity are blurred.

ciphol 4y ago

> how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? He gives several data points for secularization, such as the language people chose to use in their wills. Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion, it seems likely that these are causally linked in 18th century France, rather than coincidentally happening at the same time. It's a harder question why France in particular secularized at this time. The argument he very tentatively proposes is that freedom from religious coercion leads people to tend to become more religious (as can be seen by comparing the US to Europe over the last few centuries) and that France, due to its strong counter-reformation, had an unusually high level of religious coercion. > Why wouldn’t it the other way round, with the core causes of the French decline also triggering less religiousness ? What do you mean by "French decline"? Its loss of status as a superpower starting in 1815? That postdates the decline in religiousness.

makeitdouble 4y ago
> Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion The article isn’t proving that point, and I’d argue other conditions, in particular mortality rates or living conditions in general have more of a widely accepted impact on fertility than religion. I’d be open to see religion playing a role in this narrative, but IMHO it needs be more than an opinion or a hunch. > “French decline" I meant by that the decline in population
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