Well, this is an interesting little twist you probably didn't see coming.

France just might be one of the most absurdly secular countries in Europe right now, but apparently Catholicism didn't get the memo that it was supposed to pack up and hit the road.

Pope Leo's recent trip to France drew a wild and very enthusiastic reception, and there are signs that Catholicism may be stirring again in a country where that faith helped shape everything from its architecture and art to its traditions and national identity.

Most people probably wouldn't find the Catholic comeback all that shocking… to be honest, it's shocking that it disappeared in the first place.

But it is France, after all. They do strange things, and the migrant invasion hasn't helped matters.

But one Muslim apologetics group is looking at the same thing we are, and they're getting very nervous.

"Mercy for Humanity" has been watching what it calls a "Catholic revival" taking shape in France and is now openly fretting that France could actually become Catholic again.

This goes against their wishes to make France a Muslim country and influence the rest of Europe in the same way.

Now, alarm bells are going off.

LifeSite:

A French Muslim apologetics group that actively opposes a Catholic revival has predicted that France could "become Catholic again" within a few generations, following the Pope's enthusiastic reception in Paris.

On September 25 the group Miséricorde pour l'Houmanité ("Mercy for Humanity") published a message on X predicting that "France will become Catholic again" amid what it described as a growing Catholic revival, strengthened by American Catholic influence. The group lamented that such a revival could undermine Islam's spiritual influence in Western Europe.

You have to admit, there's something really troubling about reading that.

A Muslim organization operating in France is worried that France might become… too Catholic.

Western Europe has spent decades wrestling with the immigration invasion, declining religious participation, and the question of how much of its traditional culture should be preserved as its population changes at the speed of light.

France sits smack dab in the middle of that debate.

Catholicism may not dominate French life the way it once did, but pretending it has nothing to do with France would be ridiculous. Walk through Paris, Lyon, Rouen, Chartres, or just about any old French town, and the history is sitting there in stone.

So when a group whose faith arrived in France thanks to waves of illegal migration starts worrying publicly that the country's older religion might be making a comeback, it raises a pretty obvious cultural question.

At what point did France's own religious heritage become something that needed to justify its presence?

The scenes from Pope Leo's visit were incredible.

Swarms of people turned out to see him, filling the streets and greeting the Pope with the kind of enthusiasm that doesn't exactly scream, "Catholicism is dead."

For anyone convinced that France had permanently moved beyond its Christian roots and was now embracing Islam, this probably wasn't what they wanted to see.

There's something very French about those images. That's a huge part of France's history rising up, and it's amazing to see.

But the Muslim group wasn't sitting there soaking up the good vibes. They were talking about how disappointed they were and even hatching a plan to try and contain Catholicism's return.

LifeSite:

"I am sad when I see all this excitement around Catholicism," the group wrote. "I have been predicting this for years.… In 45 years, France will become Catholic again and we will be left with nothing but our tears."

"I am a good player, nevertheless the Catholics are much better organized as well as more determined than us Muslims and even than the Zionists," the post continued. "We must know how to recognize the strength of the Catholic international. American Catholics will now flood the world with their soft power at the expense of both Muslim spiritual hegemony in Western Europe and the Zionist lobby."

Miséricorde pour l'Humanité France has pledged to "fight" what it sees as a Catholic "resurgence." In another post on X the following day, the group wrote: "Let them [Catholics] know that I have enormous esteem for them as theological opponents, but I will fight to the end, God willing, with cordiality and in compliance with [civil] law, on the intellectual and financial battlefield in order to contain the resurgence of the Catholic religion, just as Ronald Reagan contained the rise of communism."

There's a lot packed into that statement, but the phrase "contain the resurgence of the Catholic religion" really jumps off the page at us.

And that's what makes this whole conversation so infuriating. Because just imagine the situation flipped around. Suppose a large Christian population migrated into a historically Muslim country, grew dramatically over time, and then a Christian organization announced that it intended to "contain" a resurgence of Islam because it feared losing Christian spiritual influence there.

There would be so many red flags flying, you wouldn't be able to see a patch of blue sky between them.

The question on everybody's mind is whether France is really heading toward some great Catholic comeback. We sure hope so. But the fact that a Muslim activist group is already worried enough to start talking about how to "contain" it should be the headline here, and something France should be really concerned about.

Because France rediscovering a little bit of France shouldn't be all that shocking…

But apparently, to Muslims, it is.