Of films, riots and hatred I: Benedict XVI in Lebanon
Like the rest of the world, the Middle East is experiencing two opposing trends: secularization, with its occasionally extreme consequences, and a violent fundamentalism claiming to be based on religion.
Benedict is well know for his opposition to the “occasionally extreme consequences” of secularism: here he speaks in favor of what he terms “healthy secularity”.
Some Middle Eastern political and religious leaders, whatever their community, tend to look with suspicion upon secularity (laïcité) as something intrinsically atheistic or immoral. It is true that secularity sometimes reduces religion to a purely private concern, seeing personal or family worship as unrelated to daily life, ethics or one’s relationships with others. In its extreme and ideological form, secularity becomes a secularism which denies citizens the right openly to express their religion and claims that only the State can legislate on the public form which religion may take. [ … ]
A healthy secularity, on the other hand, frees religion from the encumbrance of politics, and allows politics to be enriched by the contribution of religion, while maintaining the necessary distance, clear distinction and indispensable collaboration between the two spheres.
Religious fundamentalism is the second challenge the Pope addresses:
Economic and political instability, a readiness on the part of some to manipulate others, and a defective understanding of religion help open the door to religious fundamentalism. This phenomenon afflicts all religious communities, and denies their long-standing tradition of coexistence. It wants to gain power, at times violently, over individual consciences, and over religion itself, for political reasons.
Here he addresses his colleagues in religious leadership:
I appeal urgently to all Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders in the region to seek, by their example and by their teaching, to do everything in their power to eliminate this menace which indiscriminately and fatally affects believers of all religions.
He then drives the point home by quoting his own words on an earlier occasion:
“To use the revealed word, the Sacred Scriptures or the name of God to justify our interests, our easy and convenient policies or our violence, is a very grave fault.”
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That’s the substance of the Pope’s message in the context of recent disturbances in the region. There were a couple of notes he touched on, however, that interested me not for any connection with recent events, but for specific theological connotations:
Growth by individuals in the life of faith and spiritual renewal within the Catholic Church will lead to the fullness of the life of grace and theosis (divinization).
Theosis is a term more commonly found among Eastern Christians, and I wouldn’t want to define the doctrine in words, though I’ll suggest that its spirit is captured in the English mystic Thomas Traherne‘s magnificent meditation [Century I. 29]:
You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.
One of Benedict’s comments specifically addresses an issue of importance as Christianity and Islam find common ground in the Middle East:
In those unfortunate instances where litigation takes place between men and women, especially regarding marital questions, the woman’s voice must also be heard and taken into account with a respect equal to that shown towards the man, in order to put an end to certain injustices.
He gives an account of the Catholic doctrine of scriptural interpretation, which will be of interest to those concerned with such things in specifically Catholic, more generally Christian or comparative contexts:
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