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Seven years of pontificate to change relations between Catholicism and other religious confessions. French PopeIn these first seven years, it has also had an impact on this aspect. Islam is no longer an opponent. On closer inspection, for contemporary Christianity it never was. At least the moderate one. But now it seems that we are moving towards a kind of “alliance” between the Vatican’s ecclesiastical hierarchies and the Muslim ones, given that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is in favor of interreligious dialogue.
The traditionalist fringe is against any flattening. At first, it seemed that the center of the grievances was the “Protestantization” of the Catholic Church, with the supposed commission set in motion to reach an ecumenical mass (a rite that suits all Christians), with the rest of doctrinal diatribes . Then, over time, the development of relations between the Muslim and Catholic religions has also become an object of discontent on the part of the conservative environments.
The highest point in the dialectic between Christianity and the Muslim religion was reached with the Abu Dhabi declaration. The “Document of Human Brotherhood for World Peace and Common Coexistence” has been criticized, as is often the case in relation to the Argentine pontiff, by the most conservative Catholics. It was February 2019. The main problem raised concerned the hierarchical equation between Catholicism and Islam: traditionalists claim that there can be no parity. And that the “diversity of religions” could not have taken place by divine will. At that time, Bishop Ahtanasius Schneider provided a Carthusian reading.
The problem of the “future of the West”
There are two themes of the ministry of Francis that intersect and offer the side to criticism from the more conservative part of the Church of Rome.immigration as a tool for a profound modification of the roots of society. And Islam as a new perspective to consider for the West. A future that traditionalist Catholics – it is not a mystery – would like to avoid, if not avoid at all costs. One of the most researched situations is the French one, where the humus of civilization seems to have changed with the times: the statistics only count the growth of Islam. An inverse phenomenon, on the other hand, refers to the fate of Catholicism in the Alps, with fewer and fewer baptized. What will be the Europe of the future? Everyone asks this, including the pontiff’s critics. The numbers, for the moment, are dancing there. But being scandalized by secularization, and perhaps by the consequent search for other religious identities by Europeans, often means being politically incorrect. Represents a taboo, perhaps, to argue that the Old Continent could become a Muslim majority in the next few centuries.
But the numbers are also there to be interpretable. Schneider himself, in an interview with IlGiornale.it, had also expressed this position on the issue of the management of migratory phenomena: “The phenomenon of the so-called “immigration” represents a plan orchestrated and prepared for a long time by the international powers to radically change the Christian and national identity of the European peoples. These powers use the enormous moral potential of the Church and its structures to more effectively achieve their anti-Christian and anti-European goal. For this, the true concept of humanism and even the Christian commandment of charity are abused.And identity, in this case religious, is also the guest stone of the vicissitudes around the forms of dialogue to be adopted with the Muslim religion. There is a link between the two phenomena, a link. The “traditional front” has no doubts.
Abu Dhabi’s historical turning point
Why are there so many alarms about the Abu Dhabi joint declaration among traditionalists? In the text, which Francisco signed with the soul of Al-azhar, also says the following: “Pluralism and the diversity of religion, color, sex, race and language are a divine will, with which God created the human being. This divine Wisdom is the origin from which the right to freedom of belief and freedom derives. to be different. That is why we condemn forcing people to adhere to a certain religion or culture, as well as imposing a style of civilization that others do not accept. ” Here, that “pluralism of religions” represents the expression that traditionalist Catholics simply do not digest. Beyond the common call against terrorism, in that document it is written, in black and white, that the difference between Christianity and Islam depends on God. And certain Catholic hemispheres object to what is established in the doctrine, namely, that Christianity is the only religious denomination strictly dependent on the will of the High One.
Is there a change of course compared to the previous pontificate? We asked Professor Renato Cristin, who is a professor of philosophical hermeneutics at the University of Trieste: “Ratzinger – the professor began – he is the Pope of the Regensburg speech, of a confrontation with Islam based on the affirmation of Christian and Western identity; while Bergoglio is the Pope of Lampedusa’s speech, of an unlimited openness to otherness and an abandonment of identity. In the symbolic distance between Regensburg and Lampedusa – Cristin continued – the difference in attitude towards Islam is measured: on the one hand, self-awareness and distance, even in dialogue, with respect to the Islamic world; on the other hand, the abdication of one’s own identity and the attitude of renouncing Islam, which is essentially a totalitarian religion ”.
The role of multiculturalism in the process of rapprochement
By multiculturalism we understand the tendency to seek another pluralism, that of cultures. A “open society” you must incorporate them, until they are compatible. Here too: traditionalists think that the identity of peoples, in this way, is destined to be degraded, only to be canceled. Cristin always has quite clear ideas about it.
And the pontiff of the Catholic Church, supporting the goodness of multiculturalism, would favor a certain type of process: “The political theology of Pope Bergoglio expresses a spiritual and cultural syncretism substantially alien to the Catholic tradition, as can be seen, for example, in the apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia, which ends up diluting Christian identity in indigenist and pantheistic conceptions, alien and of many forms hostile to the Christian tradition “, said the professor, because of the questions we asked him.
And with the macro theme of multiculturalism, which would be synonymous with welcome and pacification, how do we say it? “In the same perspective, Bergoglio adopted the multiculturalist ideology, as a logical consequence at the sociocultural level of that sociopolitical entanglement between Christianity and Marxism practiced by liberation theologians and, more generally, by all those we define as Catholic, confusing multiculturalism with interculturality, such as distorting the identity of Christianity through the mirage of a dialogue with Islam “, the professor commented.
But a bad habit like this will also have a philosophical-cultural origin, right? “Bergoglio – Cristin thundered – has no interest, neither spiritual nor political, for Europe and its identity, and has transformed the just universalism of the Church into a globalist cosmopolitanism in which identity is a burden that must be shed, in order to make the vision and vision of the Third World. anti-western. This is the cultural premise of his approach to Islam, based on a fallacy and simplification ”. An “approach” that also involves common initiatives.
The common commitment of Francis and the Imam of Al-Azhar
The question of where this “fallacy” lies arises naturally. And Cristin responds: “The fallacy: that Western civilization must dissolve into the indistinct multicultural and multi-religious, and that the Christian and Muslim religions can be placed on the same level, while in reality they have few points of contact which must be sought rationally rather than spiritually. Simplification: Bergoglio – continues the professor – rightly calls for reciprocity with respect to Christian worship in Muslim countries, but this is no longer enough, because reciprocity must today go beyond freedom of worship and demand full integration, full observance of social rules and respect for Muslims in Europe for our traditions. This is what Bergoglio does not do and does not want to do ”.
Cristin’s point of view is clear. But the Pope does not seem to have any intention of changing course. Indeed, the hugs on public occasions between Bergoglio and the imam of Al-Azhar seem to be the prelude to a series of proposals that have already been referred to the competent bodies. The first, the most important, was aimed atHe-she-it and aims to ensure that the “Day of Human Brotherhood” is celebrated every February 4, following the declaration of Abu Dhabi. And the UN, based on what it has learned so far, should be ready to move on.
