Europe: After the attacks in Paris, security and a stay at an abbey...

After the attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, security measures have been reinforced in Rome and at the Vatican. Security checkpoints have been set up in the tourist attractions, places of worship, and of course around St. Peter's Square.

With the upcoming Jubilee of Mercy scheduled for December 8, the Italian Minister of the Interior, Angelino Alfano has announced a military reinforcement of 700 men in Rome. And the 130 police officers and 110 Swiss guards on Vatican territory will be on the alert all through the Holy Year, while drones conduct an overhead surveillance of the crowds.

In an interview with the French newspaper La Croix on November 15, 2015, Cardinal Pietro Parolin admitted that the Vatican could be a target "because of its religious significance." But for the Holy See's Secretary of State, the jubilee of mercy comes at just the right time: "It is the perfect time to launch the offense of mercy. It is understandable that sentiments of vengeance may exist after the attacks, but we must really fight against them (...)".

No "sentiment of vengeance" for Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran either; he believes "the danger would be to let hatred germinate, and that is where Christians must show the power of love." In an interview with the press agency I.Media on November 17, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue admitted that the terrorist attacks "do grant little credibility to interreligious dialogue," but he insisted that "the majority of Muslims are not like that."

"The question remains as to the connection between Islam and violence," wrote Apic all the same on November 18, 2015, in echo to a statement from Bishop Guy Harpigny, bishop of Tournai, on CathoBel, the official website of the Catholic Church in French-speaking Belgium. He declared on the same day that "in Islam, there are all sorts of texts justifying abominable acts." Nonetheless, he explained a little further down, "that is not Islam." The Belgian prelate did however consider it legitimate to "cast a critical look upon what is happening and to ask the Muslims whether they agree or not with these acts."

According to the AFP, 400 "Muslim leaders" in France met on November 29 before the great auditorium of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris, in answer to a call launched by the French Council of the Muslim Cult (FCMC). The president of the FCMC, Anouar Kbibech, spoke of a "historical meeting" and condemned the "barbaric acts that can claim no religion, no cause, no human value."

That is not the opinion of Moroccan journalist and islamologist Abdellah Tourabi. He believes that "the disciples of the Daech apply the Koran to the letter, make the Hadith their daily life and wish to fully reproduce the first known political form of Islam, the caliphate. Their universe may be a fantasy and anachronistic, but it is a reality that existed 14 centuries ago. It would be blindness to deny or refuse to admit it." He expressed his point of view in the Morrocan journal Tel quel on November 20, stating that "our refusal to look this truth in the face, and to recognize the part of violence in Islam and wish to go beyond it draws us into a spiral of hypocrisy and denial of reality."

Fr. Hervé Benoît refused to fall into any such denial, denouncing not only the culture of death of the authors of the November 13 attacks, but also that of the victims of the Bataclan. In a tribune published on the website Riposte catholique on November 20, under the title The (plucked) Eagles of death love the devil!, the Lyonese priest sees in them "the living dead", the "poor children of the bobo generation". He presents their "assassins, these hashish zombies" as their "siamese brothers", showing the points the attackers and the attacked had in common: "the same lack of roots", "the same amnesia", "the same infantilism", "the same lack of culture"... And he continues: "the former filled themselves Christian values gone mad: tolerance, relativism, universalism, hedonism...", the latter with "Muslim values gone even more mad at their contact with modernity: intolerance, dogmatism, the cosmopolitanism of hatred..."

A week after this text was published, Fr. Benoît, who was chaplain at the basilica of Fourvière, was "relieved of his different pastoral charges" by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, and invited to "take a step back" and withdraw to an abbey. In a press release on Twitter on November 27, the primate of the Gauls explained that "in our context, it is inacceptable for Christians, and especially priests, not to apply themselves always to their utmost to maintaining among men peace and concord founded on justice." The same day, the website change.org published the news of its success: the website's petition for the "priest to be deposed" had collected 42,040 signatures...

On November 28, Riposte catholique recalled Cardinal Robert Sarah's words during the last bishops' synod on the family: "A theological discernment allows us to see two unexpected dangers of our times (almost like two 'beasts of the Apocalypse'), situated at opposite poles: on the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism against religious fanaticism (...). Several clues allow us to see the same demoniac origin behind both movements." And Riposte catholique asked: "Should Cardinal Sarah be sent to reflect on his words in an abbey?"

(sources: apic/lacroix/telquel/twitter/ripostecatholique/afp – DICI no.326 Dec. 4, 2015)

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