Tuesday, December 13, 2011

France: Catholic protest grows against the "theatre of blasphemy"

Enough with resignation to "Christianophobia." 

Faced with the latest in an endless stream of blasphemous attacks on their values, French Catholics have decided to take the path of public protest. 

The motivation for this protest by the faithful of Paris was the play "On the Concept of the Face, Regarding of the Son of God," by Italian playwright Romeo Castellucci, director of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. Groups of believers gathered in front of the Théâtre de la Ville, holding up crosses, rosaries, and flags of the Sacred Heart, to protest a play they believe to be blasphemous.

The last few minutes of the show are particularly offensive, when the enormous face of Christ appears, filthy with excrement, an expression of the suffering of the two characters, an incontinent old man and the son who bathes and changes him.

"Dear audience, today you will bear witness to a blasphemy, and we are here to remediate your sins," yelled priest Xavier Beauvais of the Parisian church Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, addressing the public who had entered the theatre after being searched by the police.

"We are not evil fundamentalists," he added. "We are Catholics, believers in the Catholic faith, who have come to protest against blasphemy."

The latest news, prominently reported by the Guardian, is that in the last few hours the protest grew: 8,000 Catholics protested in Paris against the "Christianophobia" that finds various expressions in French culture. 

However, the Catholic Church does not have a uniform response to the protests. The French Bishops took a position at a meeting two weeks ago in a Plenary Assembly at Lourdes, where, in his opening speech, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, President of the French Conference of Bishops, deplored the excessive behavior of fanatical groups "whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian." 

And like him, each of the bishops in the corridors of the hemicycle strongly condemned the recourse to violence to defend Christian values. "Jesus did not draw a sword," said, for example, Monsignor Laurent Ulrich, Archbishop of Lilla. 

But, despite this, there is still the issue of the attitude of bishops toward attacks on Christianity and its symbols. And with the next performance of the play "Golgotha Picnic" and the revival of Rolf Hochhuth's "The Deputy" (on the subject of Pius XII's attitude during World War Two), we can be sure that the problem will reassert itself over the next few weeks. 

"We risk being dragged into aggressive countermoves," said a concerned Monsignor Benoît Rivière, Bishop of Autun.
 
Even the use of the term "Christianophobia" to describe an anti-Christian climate finds few supporters among the bishops. 

"We cannot follow the same logic as the Muslims, who immediately consider themselves attacked," said Monsignor Gilbert Louis, Bishop of Châlon-en-Champagne, who, however, also admitted to sometimes being irritated by certain editorials or anti-clerical positions which are often "hateful because of the negative way they view religion, causing us harm.”

“It is true that sometimes we cannot bear any more of these attacks," insisted Monsignor François Garnier, Archbishop of Cambrai, who sees the situation as paradoxical: "On one hand, institutions ask to collaborate with us and we are happy about that. On the other hand, there is a backflow of radical anti-clericalism, and abnormal treatment of the Catholic religion." 

He gave the example of a hospital chapel that was changed into a place for interreligious worship, where Catholics were not allowed to place a cross, but the direction of Mecca was drawn on the walls. Religious pluralism changes things: "There are the obvious rejected requests, with the pretext that they couldn't do for us what they can't do for other religions," he mentions again. This is what angers the Archbishop of Dijon, Monsignor Roland Minnerath, who believes that it is the responsibility of the bishop, in his role as pastor, to address the bewilderment of the Catholic people, "shocked by the violence of some of the attacks on symbols of Christianity." 

He points out that artists should be aware of their social responsibility.

The Bishop of Dijon states that he has received many letters from people who criticize the "deafening silence" of the Church. And he believes that attention must be given to the trivialization of the criticisms against the figure of Christ.

"The risks taken by the Church, we know, are the same that are taken by any institution. But in this case, we are talking about Christ!" 

And this is without taking into consideration another underlying risk: allowing Christian extremists to have a monopoly on the defense of Christ's honor. Thus bishops have all reached the same conclusion: the number of exasperated Catholics exceeds the number of those in small fundamentalist and activist groups.

For Monsignor Éric de Moulins di Beaufort, they are often "very simple Catholics, upset because people joke about their strongly-held beliefs” - a fact that worries the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard: "There has always been a far-right Catholic and political faction characterized by violent action. But today those actions are legitimized and justified by Catholics who are troubled by secularization and believe that they are being mocked." 

 Speaking before the Assembly behind closed doors, Cardinal Vingt-Trois warned against recourse to a "minority strategy.” An evolution of Catholicism on the model of religious minorities, who react only to defend themselves, would be contrary to the Christian tradition, which claims a broader role in the social and political debate, he said in essence. 

Cardinal Ricard translates this into an analogy: "The bishops have the choice between two ways of reacting," he says. 

"They can form a protective shell, but a shell is destroyed once it is perforated. Or they can strengthen their backbone, to forcefully confront these criticisms while remaining open to society."