NOM BLOG

On the Reawakening of Christian Humanism in France (to Protect Marriage)

 

Sandro Magister is an expert observer of European culture and tradition, he writes for the Italian newspaper L'Espresso about what is happening in France to protect marriage:

"No one would have bet on it. But after decades of invisibility and torpor, the French Catholic Church has returned vigorously to the public scene.

It was a minority and a minority it remains, in a country where less than 5 percent of the population goes to Sunday Mass, and where baptisms of children are increasingly rare.

But it is one thing to give up, to and another to be creative. That of "creative minority" is the future that pope Joseph Ratzinger himself has assigned to Catholicism in secularized regions. The Church of France is putting this to the test.

The turnaround came all of a sudden. One sign of foreshadowing was, in mid-August, the prayer that the archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois (in the photo), had raised to Our Lady of the Assumption: "May children and young people cease to be the object of the desires and conflicts of adults, in order to enjoy fully the love of a father and mother." A furious controversy exploded, in a France on the path to legalizing marriage between persons of the same sex, with the possibility of adopting.

... To Minister Taubira, who told [the Cardinal]: "We are not touching the Bible," the cardinal rebutted that not even he was bringing this into discussion: "It is a question that concerns man, and this is enough."

And this is precisely what is new. Against the law on gay marriage a resistance is mobilizing that is not confessional, but humanistic, of men and women with the most varied visions of the world."

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