Misd-agin,
When the cloud base is 100' above your minima, flying into an airport as busy as CDG, I would absolutely use the automatics every single time. The whole point of automatics is to take the workload off us and enable us to step back and monitor the whole situation better.
At the time of the G/A, the PF was obviously so overloaded with the flying that he forgot to put the thrust levers into the TOGA gate.
Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of manual flying whenever I can and I practice it as often as I can, but only when the weather is decent. We're paid to make decisions. Making the decision that this was a good time to practice some manual flying wasn't a great one.