Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The Catholic Church in two thousand years has achieved within herself the most colossal integration of peoples and cultures, from east to west, never allowing herself to be trapped by nationalism, ever resurgent. The secret: their conversion to God. Without this conversion any sort of integrative process of different cultures and values, instead of an enrichment will be a formidable obstacle to harmony, as we see in Europe today. Integration, as rightly requested by Harry Hagopian, a lawyer of the Armenian diaspora, a leading expert in international law and rights, postulates religious and political reciprocity, from the construction of churches, synagogues, mosques, to political and interpersonal “rights”. Nevertheless it deserves to be examined further to understand what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar: man's freedom to act according to conscience and to worship Him, belongs to God. We know that this freedom flourished and took root in countries of Catholic tradition; the same is true for the dignity of the human person, man and woman. No one in the west today would think reasonably of preventing a non Christian from building a place of worship for his own religion. Our juridical culture defends this. The West has matured many rights, and also presumed such; but Muslims disagree. Not everyone knows that Muslims do not recognise the Universal Charter of Human Rights, they have coined their own.
So the question remains unsolved in relations between Christians and Jews and Muslims, respectively in Israel and in Muslim countries, not to mention Islamic nations; secular states, except for Syria, with several reserves, no longer exist. Unequal relations, for Jews formed to non-confessionality undeclared but practised by the State of Israel, for Muslims consequent to dhimmitude, that is submission ratified by the Koran towards Jews and Christians. Therefore it is evident that one calls for reciprocity. In Muslim societies, we are told, churches are not allowed, or only on certain conditions; in secular Turkey for example, the facade of the church may not face the street and bell towers are not allowed.
What should we think? Jesus was for reciprocity: offering the other cheek and bearing persecution. In our times we deceive ourselves into thinking this could be avoided with dialogue; indeed, that to speak of persecution and martyrdom is politically incorrect, yet, until the end of the world, this is the “reciprocity” to which Christians are destined. Jesus asked of everyone he met, conversion to God, take ten steps with one who asks you to take five, forgive in order to be forgiven, definitively, to use an immeasurable measure, “pressed down, shaken and overabundant”: the measure of love.
Having said this, Christians with civic responsibilities and with them men and women of goodwill, with reasonableness and realism, will not fail to promote the rights of Christian minorities in those countries and demand, in a legal and peaceful manner, all that should be demanded. Given that reciprocity is a right which cannot be contradicted from the legislative point of view, either with regard to rules of relations among peoples or with regard to the individual “Person”: nevertheless with a degree of disenchantment, may we be allowed to say; the Christian cannot forget what Christ said: “they persecuted me and they will persecute you ”; and: “if your justice is not superior to that of the scribes and the Pharisees…”. Then, they will not forget the “superiority” of justice, that is of the Christian faith. The Pope says in the encyclical Spe salvi: “In the history of humanity, it was the Christian faith that had the particular merit of bringing forth within man a new and deeper capacity for these kinds of suffering that are decisive for his humanity. The Christian faith has shown us that truth, justice and love are not simply ideals, but enormously weighty realities. It has shown us that God —Truth and Love in person—desired to suffer for us and with us…. in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon” ( 39).
Therefore Christians will claim in primis, the religious freedom that comes down from God who creates us free and above all they will pray for it, as we do on Good Friday, but they will learn to “offer up” the great and small sufferings of every day, to insert them “into Christ's great com-passion” and so “somehow became part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race”. (40). Instead, reciprocity they will leave to Caesar, to the civic and political authorities, and if they do not concede it, “they will inflict them – as it was said paradoxically by J. H. Newman – with the duty to persecute them”. (Agenzia Fides 26/2/2009)
