‘Religious freedom – the path to peace:’ that’s the title of Pope Benedict’s message
for World Peace Day, celebrated by the Church on January 1st each year.
Released by the Pontifical Justice and Peace Council at a press conference in the
Vatican on December 16th, the message opens with a dramatic reminder of the recent
attack on the Cathedral of our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad, a glaring example of
what happens when religious freedom is denied.
While Pope Benedict condemns
religious fanaticism and fundamentalism, he also warns of what he sees as the equally
dangerous threat of secularism and hostility towards religion in civil or political
life. Religious fundamentalism and secularism are alike, the message states, in that
both represent extreme forms of a rejection of legitimate pluralism and the positive
secularity of states. Philippa Hitchen spoke with Cardinal Peter Turkson, president
of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Council, to find out more about this year’s World
Peace Day message…
Listen.......
Pope Benedict
has spoken at length about religious freedom on past occasions, notable during his
visit to the United Nations in 2008 – is there anything strikingly new about this
message?
I think the novelty that this message brings is probably the context
and the time it’s taking place. Naturally, when he visited the UN, it was basically
to do with what the UN as an institution stood for, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and he referred to that as the UN helping give a language, an ethical structure,
for all nations to work by. This time we’re just taking one of those human rights
declared by the UN, Article 18, about what we refer to as religious freedom. And it
has come up these days in the light of so many things happening. For example, the
issue of secularism is rendered if we talk about God or religion less than tolerantly
and what about religious practise and expression? All of that is increasingly being
pushed into some private domain with nothing for the public arena. And without religious
freedom and what it stands for, this respect for the dignity of the individual and
how it gives expression to this dignity in seeking after God, after truth, and manifesting
this in human relationships, if we were to circle this out of human existence, then
the world would be poorer for that. The second factor we may talk about is the
incidence of religious pluralism which also comes with its slightly intolerant forms,
one form of expression not being able to cope with another in a world which is increasingly
making an experience of plurality of these religious expressions. Increased mobility
of people is just exposing people to expressions of culture and religion which they’ve
not been used to before. Instead of this opening up people to dialogue and enriching
each other and seeing how together they can marshal the force of religion to do something
good for humanity, rather there has been a tendency to exclusivism, and that again
leading to some forms of intolerant conduct and behaviour, sometime degenerating into
fundamentalist positions and persecution of other religious groups.
The message
says secular fundamentalism is as serious a threat as religious fundamentalism?
It
is. It’s easier to identify religious fundamentalism because you can see where it’s
coming from, from its traits. Secular fundamentalism is more difficult to deal with
because it becomes a pervasive culture in which people live and that gets expressed
in its forms of governance, so that imperceptibly you have governments assuming and
adopting certain positions that are not so friendly to the human spirit and human
growth. …..It doesn’t make the headlines like an attack in Iraq but….secular fundamentalism
is also diminishing the lifestyle and the quality of life of so many people. If people
need to be free and express themselves and aspire after those things which respond
to their innate nature and character and are afraid or embarrassed to do this in public,
then you have people living in a psychotic type of life style. Some states are
describing themselves as religious states – if it were possible to talk about the
‘Catholic republic of Ghana’, for example, then it would mean right away you kind
of identify as citizens only those who are Catholics and if you are happy to have
non-Catholics there, they’d be citizens of second class. That's what happens with
all these state religions, that’s a subtle form of persecution.
This message
is addressed to all people of good will, but it’s a direct challenge to government
leaders and legislators, isn’t it?
It is – you look at the title religious
freedom and the tendency is to think this is just about faith or religion. But if
religious freedom is recognised as a response to basic expression of a personal dignity
of individuals, then it doesn’t just refer to those who kneel in church and pray,
but a basic expression of the human spirit ultimately is the longing of the spirit
for what is true about its relationship with other people and with God.….We go on
from there to realise this is rooted in the fact of our creation in God and that relationship
gets expressed in religious terms ….but it’s very positive for all people because
it leads to the construction of a decent social order which ultimately makes for the
good of humanity – that’s what this message is all about.
The message defends
the rights of people to change their religion or not hold any beliefs at all?
This
is a very subtle aspect of this subject matter. When we talk about religious freedom
we recognise the UN came up with this in Article 18, freedom of conscience means to
believe or to change or whatever. When, however, in the Catholic church we talk about
religious freedom, we don't talk so much about being able to chose between A and B,
…but it is first and foremost this basic innate longing of a person to seek for the
truth – that for us is the basic sense of religious freedom and when you have this,
the truth is won. So true religious freedom is an aspiration after the absolute truth,
not a choice between A and B because they are equally good. One can change from
a lower appreciation of truth to a higher appreciation… not all truth is saving…so
the missionary church has to offer a truth which saves…that’s how the Catholic teaching
on religious freedom ‘perfects’, if we may use that expression, the formulation of
this in the UN declaration.
But the message also underlines the importance
of dialogue with other religions on this issue?
The message recognises the
different pursuits of truth can bring us all to bring our resources to work for the
common good…the different pursuits of dialogue with non Christians and with other
Christians all have this as their objective. From our different religious perspectives
we can come together to address common issues, the environment or whatever
So
dialogue should be focused more on cooperation for common concerns than theological
enquiry?
Sometimes clarifying certain theological issues open the way wider
to be able to bring together these resources…sometimes skewered perceptions keep us
apart, prejudices are there and they sometimes keep us apart
The theme of this
message is announced in July but it opens with this very timely example of the attack
in Iraq?
What happened in Iraq has pushed strongly to the forefront the very
many other circumstances we’ve been witnessing around the world. You’ve heard of cases
in Nigeria, you had cases in southern Sudan, the ongoing battle, the case in the Balkans
– different religious clashes have always been there, but that of Iraq as it were,
holds up the tent and says ‘look, that’s the naked face of this religious intolerance
and how it can lead us to be really murderous and give vent to the worst sentiments
within us’.