I had a wonderful day in Paris yesterday, truncated though it was. I had intended to spend a few hours in the Louvre, but after walking from my hotel down the Champs d’Elysee to the Tuileries in the bright, bright sunshine, I couldn’t bear to go inside. I kept walking, on to Notre Dame and then over the river to hang out in St. Germain on the left bank.

One of the churches I checked out, Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (right across the street from Saint-Etienne-du-Cabernet) was advertising a special mass that evening in honor of the miracle at Lourdes. February 11, 2008 was the one hundred fifty year anniversary, to the day, of the first Virgin Mary sighting. The celebration would feature a Latin mass sung by a choir, followed by a procession of flaming torches throughout the streets. Well! Flambeaux! How could I resist?

I am no stranger to the French mass. When I was in the Peace Corps, church on Sunday was my regular French lesson. (Such useful phrases: “la paix du Christ,” “le sang de l’Agneau,” “Seigneur,” “aux siècles des siècles.”) At this point in my life, it’s safe to say I’ve attended more French masses than English ones. It’s been a long time, though. I was a little late to the church, and as I settled in I saw something that amazed me: many women, perhaps as many as ten or twenty percent of the female communicants, had covered their heads. Some wore lace mantillas, but others had regular scarves wrapped around their hair, hijab-style. They were not all old ladies, either. In my row there were three women under 35 with scarves tied under their chins. I don’t think I’ve seen that in church in thirty-five years. Has this custom never died out on the Continent, or is there a nouvelle vague of Catholic fundamentalism in France?

Attending Mass made me recall what is seductive about religion. There is a comforting sense of community that comes from enacting rituals in unison with other people. Not exactly in unison — there seemed to be different opinions on sit vs. stand vs. kneel for much of the service. Plenty of people knelt, though, and there were no cushioned pries-dieux, only cold stone floor. (The Internets do not agree on that plural, by the way.) Still, there was something thrilling about all these people, young and old, black and white, European and not, coming together in this way.

I had to work hard to comprehend the homily, and that’s when this sense of community began to fade. The priest compared the pattern of apparitions at Lourdes to the pattern of the rosary. I believe he detailed each of the eighteen apparitions in turn. I was surprised, because I hadn’t realized that the clergy really took this stuff literally. I thought they just tolerated it as a salubrious metaphor that brought people to the Church. Suddenly I had the same feeling that I do while watching the characters on Battlestar Galactica perform their religious rites. It seemed so unreal to me that all — some? any? — of the people in the room really believed that Jesus’s mother visited a little girl in France almost two millennia after her death.

It’s especially hard to believe that French people believe that. Didn’t Mitt Romney just tell us in his concession speech that they’re utterly godless? “Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality…. I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century.”

Cue the flambeaux!