Seldom has such dazzling headgear gathered in one place.
A meeting
of Catholic bishops from the Middle East has just ended in Rome.
For two
weeks, some 180 patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops and bishops of
six different churches – Chaldean, Coptic, Syrian, Greek-Melkite,
Maronite and Armenian – discussed the challenges facing Christianity
with their Latin-rite brothers, with Pope Benedict listening in.
An
expanding Israel and the rise of political Islam figured heavily. So
too did the emigration of Christians in the region, which has
accelerated in the last 15 years to the point where there is a real
prospect of Christians disappearing from some parts of the cradle of
Christianity.
The area known as Dora
in Baghdad used to be nicknamed "the Vatican of Iraq".
But the seven
churches, seminary and bible college have all closed since 2003. In
Iraq, almost every Catholic family knows someone who has been kidnapped
or killed. Churches have been car-bombed. No wonder close to half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians before the US occupation have fled abroad.
But
Iraq is exceptional. So, too, is the West Bank, where land belonging to
Christian Arabs – like other Palestinians – is seized by Israel in the
name of security, then handed over to settlers; or Jerusalem, where
Palestinians are being forced from their homes.
Mostly, in places such
as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, or Jordan, Christians live peacefully with
Muslims. Yet they keep their heads down, aware that, even though their
forebears were citizens of the region long before the Muslims, the
latter increasingly – at least in some parts – equate rights with
religious allegiance.
That's why the Synod's call for
Catholics and other Christians to be advocates in the region of a
"positive secularism" – the term the bishops used was "positive
laïcité", after a 2007 speech by Nicholas Sarkozy
– is, at least, bold. It may also surprise Catholics in Europe and the
US who criticise the secularist drive to separate faith and politics to
find the church in the Middle East at the forefront of arguing that
faith and politics should be, ahem, separate.
Sceptics will
be quick to point out one of the basic rules of religious co-existence
throughout history: secularism always looks better to religious
minorities who have the most to lose from theocracies. And there's truth
in that in the Middle East.
Caught between Israeli expansionism and
Islamic radicalism, the future of the tiny Christian minority depends,
in large part, on basic rights of freedom of religion and freedom of
conscience – on building, as the Synod put it, "an all-inclusive, shared
civic order", in the words of its working document, that protects "human rights, human dignity and religious freedom".
But
this isn't only about survival.
Christianity is the religion that gave
rise to secularism. Laïcité is a Christian by-product; secularism a
Christian heresy.
The church has always promoted a distinction between
the two spheres – temporal and spiritual, civic and religious – without
ever, of course, agreeing where the border between them lies.
When Pope
Benedict bowed to his audience of politicians at the conclusion of his Westminster Hall speech,
he was deferring to the legitimate sovereignty and proper autonomy of
the political sphere – while at the same time asserting the church's
right to hold that sphere to a transcendent ethical horizon.
Separation,
in other words, but not divorce.
The principle has been clear ever
since St Thomas Aquinas said that sins and crimes are different things;
and at least since the second Vatican council, the Catholic church has
argued that religions should not be privileged by the state, that the
state cannot coerce in matters of faith, and that citizenship is not
contingent on beliefs or membership of institutions.
All residents of a
country, whatever their faith or lack of it, are social actors with a
stake in society and the legitimate right to seek to shape it.
Yet
separation does not imply exclusion; it does not mean making of the
state and the public square a faith-free zone, as secularists and
humanists seek to.
The so-called "neutral" state is, in reality, the
attempt to impose an ideology – an individualist, humanist form of
thinking.
A secular theocracy is just as much a theocracy as an Islamic
one. "Positive" secularism – as opposed to the "aggressive secularism"
deplored by Pope Benedict in the UK in September – means a separation
of religion from the state, but at the same time allowing faith the
freedom to run schools, offer services, and build the common good,
according to the principles and values that nourish it.
Such a "positive
secularity" allows for faiths (alongside non-religious beliefs) to seek
to shape society on equal terms, benefitting from the freedom accorded
to them by the state, but not depending on state sponsorship or legal
privilege.
Arguing for a "positive secularity" is not easy
in the Middle East, where regimes are pressurised by millenarian and
fundamentalist movements – whether Zionism or radical Islam – which seek
to link rights to religious allegiance.
Yet the three religions of the
Middle East have a long history of peaceful, respectful coexistence –
the many exceptions to this story do not negate the truth of it – and a
theology to underpin it.
Universal human rights are not concessions of
the state but intrinsic to every human being, whose dignity lies in his
creation by God. That is the root of our citizenship – not our nation,
tribe or religion.
They be few – and shrinking. But
Christians in the Middle East, the region's "indigenous citizens", are
well-placed to invite Judaism and Islam to embrace a healthy secularism.
SIC: TC/UK