French people have a very strong sense of privacy. Many things are private, and according to proper etiquette you should never ask questions about these. Often, you don’t ask for people’s names when you meet them. You certainly won’t ask them what they do for a living, how much they earn… When you grow up in France, you learn to discern these things and to work them out for yourself indirectly, from the clues you can gather, or from someone else.
But there is one subject that make people really uneasy. this subject is religion. You never talk about religion with anyone. This is one of the most private things. It means that unless the people you meet follow a religion that has some visible outward signs, you just can’t know if people are religious or not. It makes talking about spiritual things very awkward I find.
On Friday morning, I was with our stand on the market when one of the dad’s from our children’s school came up to me and started chatting; He is very friendly guy, knows half the school. He is always a gentlemen with ladies. But I would never have thought the guy and his family were practicing Roman Catholics. They are involved in te local Parish and go to mass regularly. I can’t say I am surprised, but I would never have imagined this man was religious.
Having been brought up in a context where you never talk about faith with anyone, I just take it for granted that most people are not going to church anymore. But meeting that guy on the market was encouraging.