The greatest challenge” “

The recourse to religion to justify war and terrorism is “blasphemy against God and an insult to man. It is our conviction that hatred, religious fanaticism and terrorism profane the name of God and disfigure the genuine image of man”, said Cardinal PAUL POUPARD , president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, on opening the International Meeting of the Catholic Cultural Centres of the Mediterranean and the Balkans, held in Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, from 7 to 10 July. The meeting was attended by representatives of over 25 countries of Europe, Africa and Asia and had as its theme: “The challenge of a new cultural dialogue in the context of globalization”. The meeting was held in the Napredak (Progress) Centre of the Archdiocese of Sarajevo. Founded in 1902, for the promotion of junior and senior secondary schools, the Centre was reopened in 1990, after the suspension of its activities during the years of Communism. Today it has over 20,000 associates and 66 branches throughout the world. It offers cultural activities of various kind (theatre, choral singing, musical bands, sporting activities, radio stations, press). The Centre’s alumni include two Nobel prizewinners, Ivo Andriæ (literature) and Vladimir Prelog (science). THE CHALLENGES OF ISLAM. The meeting – says a communiqué of the Pontifical Council of Culture – was promoted to discuss the urgent challenges posed to the Catholic cultural centres of the Mediterranean. In particular the focus of the participants was placed on the need to give new impulse to the dialogue between Byzantine culture and Moslem culture, in the light of migration, and to the dialogue with the world of non-believers, which has generated a slow process of cultural secularisation in the West, while in the countries of Eastern Europe it is largely the legacy of atheist Communism. The first challenge is therefore that of immigration from South to North and from East to West, which is causing a “rapid change of the face of Europe. It is – said Cardinal Poupard – a phenomenon of gigantic proportions which offers great opportunities for intercultural dialogue, but which also poses at times the potential danger of destabilization. It is therefore our task to work to ensure that partisan interests be suffocated from the start and that religion be not used as a means of advancing claims that have nothing to do with the believer’s humble and loving relation with God or with his fellowmen”. NO TO TERRORISM. Although he made no explicit reference to the terror attacks in London, Cardinal Poupard spoke in his keynote address of the dramatic experience suffered by the countries of the Balkans just a few years ago and of the “false” religious implications of the conflicts. “We must says so loudly and clearly: the conflict was not religious. But as has sadly and too often happened in the history of mankind, religion was shamefully hijacked to justify unjustifiable nationalistic claims and to foment hatred to serve the personal ambitions of a small minority. We must never tire of repeating the message: religion is the propagator of a noble idea of man. It teaches that each human life is sacred, and that it is a gift of God to reunite all mankind into a single family, in love and in peace”. SECULARIZATION AND EUROPE. The other challenge is that of the “growing secularisation on the northern shores of the Mediterranean”, a process that “contributes to fuel strong tensions and cause far-reaching social changes”. Cardinal Poupard spoke of the “marginalization of religions in public life”, the “implosion of the traditional model of the family”, the rise of consumer society and the “omnipresence of technology in private life”. The cardinal devoted an eloquent passage of his address to Europe. “Without soul, without shared transcendent values in the various cultures – he said – the European nations will be unable to unite in a common project and thus give Europe the chance to respond to her vocation in the world”. These “common roots” must be sought in the Gospel; they are “rooted in the Bible, shared by all the children of Abraham”, and are “in constructive dialogue with the heirs of the philosophy of the Enlightenment”. THE ROLE OF THE CULTURAL CENTRES. “This is precisely the objective – continued Poupard – being pursued by the Catholic cultural centres, which were established and which work to become “public forums, places of meeting and reflection, of study and information, of the exchange of ideas and of the exploration of faith and culture”. “Catholic cultural centres have the ambition to serve contemporary man in his daily life and give him the chance to open his mind to the splendour of the truth, a demanding truth since it transcends the frontiers of immediacy”.