Transcending oneself” “” “

Multicultural, multiethnic cities, that are increasingly the land of immigration and the goal of different peoples: the challenge of living together is now an inseparable part of many European cities. What difficulties are created by this meeting between different peoples and how can our daily knowledge of other peoples enrich our own culture? Christians, Buddhists, Muslims: in a world where cultural and religious differences interact each day, at school, in the office, in television, is dialogue possible between them? These questions were recently discussed in Lille – capital, together with Genoa, of European culture 2004 – where the diocese organized a forum as part of the cultural events being promoted by the city for this European year. INHABITING a shared SPACE. The new French law on the secularism of the State, which among other things bans the use in school of visible religious signs, such as the Islamic headscarf or the Jewish kippah, has broken the spell of an integrated multiethnic society in France, revealing instead how many difficulties and tensions lie hidden behind globalization. The “Stasi” Commission that contributed to the drawing up of the new law has clearly recognized that “our society has become profoundly diverse and plural”. “The image of a homogeneous society in which each citizen was well integrated in proportion as he/she became similar to the society in which he/she was living is now a thing of the past”, points out Msgr. Jean-Luc Brunin, auxiliary bishop of Lille. “The reality of pluralism – he continues – is a permanent challenge that requires that every possible means be sought to ensure that heterogeneous groups may live together in a shared space and form society together”. The bishop explains: “the difficulty for us in France consists in the fact that we are still imbued with the famous French-style model of integration”, according to which “it is required that the individual should integrate himself in our society by repudiating his cultural particularity”. That’s not the way of integration that Christians want to propose in a region that, as a land of immigration, is strongly characterised by the presence of different peoples. “Christians – says Msgr. Brunin – don’t have miraculous recipes that can guarantee social cohesion in a situation of cultural diversity, but they do have the experience that it’s possible to meet each other, listen to each other and live together amicably”. “It is – explains the bishop – the experience of catholicity given to us by life in the Church. The Church is the place of self-transcendence, of communion, of the communication that we all belong to the common destiny of the love of God”. A COMMON DESTINY THAT UNITES. Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, also participated in the forum in Lille. He made an appeal: “Our cities must become places of peace, justice and love, where each person may develop those noble faculties that enable him to grow in humanity”. The problem – as the cardinal recognised – is that Europe is increasingly having to come to terms with multicultural cities where “men and women of different origin live side by side and are called to join together to form a single people”. The meeting between them however often generates unease, rejection, even tension. Is there a principle on which it is possible to found a serene multicultural society, and what contribution can the Church make? “What unites us and what makes unity possible – replies Poupard – is our common human nature and, more precisely, the opening to the universal that belongs to each society worthy of the name… The profound meaning of life, the search for happiness, the need for justice, the hunger for truth, the yearning for beauty, and the search for unity are areas where the message of the Church coincides with the aspirations of men and women and translates the cultures in all their richness of diversity into a source of unity”. “SPEAKING TO THE HEART OF MAN and telling the men and women of our time not to be satisfied with living in a restricted and mundane horizon which, if it can satisfy natural curiosity, cannot quench the thirst for truth and the desire for contemplation that is inscribed in the heart of the human intelligence”: this, according to Poupard, is the commitment that the Church must make. How? In a world disfigured by too much ugliness, the Church “needs to reawaken the sense of beauty”, give “an authentic witness” of Christian life and “work tirelessly so that men may discover that they are all brothers of a single Father, and are called to live in love and build together a real civilization of love”.