France: The Bishops thanked by the radical muslims and the “libertarian left-wing”

In a short book published on October 14, 2016, the bishops of France invited their faithful to “rediscover the sense of politics.” Six months before the presidential election, they give in 96 pages “a list of points for Catholic electors to pay attention to” when reading the programs of the presidential candidates. Under the title Dans un monde qui change, retrouver le sens du politique (Rediscovering the sense of politics in a changing world) (Bayard/Cerf/Mame coedition), the work notes a “profound crisis in politics”, “calls for an end to the logic of management in order to rediscover the meaning” and encourages “Frenchmen to get involved”. According to the Swiss information website Cath-info on October 13, 2016, it is a “short, comprehensible and general text, with very few religious references”, that “is written not for Catholics alone, nor for the French alone,” but for all those “living in France”. The bishops invite everyone to “find the path of compromise that starts with different positions and leads men to enter into a true dialogue, to build together something new in which no one abandons his convictions.”

The Muslim Theological Council of France, created in 2015 on the initiative of the Union of the Muslim Organizations of France (UOIF), wrote to the Bishops’ Conference of France to salute this text in which they see fit to “rethink the social contract”. In this missive republished by La Croix on November 1, 2016, these radicals close to the Muslim Brothers saluted a “plea for living together” that denounces “withdrawing into self” and “the deepest fears”.

On October 13, 2016, the left-wing newspaper Libération also spoke of “a welcome text”, praising “the courage” of the bishops in administering “a lesson in Republicanism to much of the right wing, that is caught up in its dizzying identity claims and anti-Muslim overbids.” The French prelates also received the congratulations of the newspaper founded under the aegis of Jean-Paul Sartre: “Sir bishops, please allow the secularist, libertarian and insolent left wing to say sincerely and with no ulterior motives: thank you.” No comment.

(sources: apic/lefigaro/Lacroix/liberation – DICI no.344 dated Nov. 11, 2016)

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