On Sept. 12, Pope Benedict XVI visited Paris, the first stop on a pilgrimage to Lourdes to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette Soubirous. In planning the trip to Lourdes, the Holy Father had decided to make an official and formal diplomatic stop in Paris to meet with French officials, including the president, Nicolas Sarkozy. And he used the occasion to address an elite audience of diplomats, politicians and intellectuals at a restored French monastery which has become a cultural and educational center.
The first filed news reports of the pope’s trip came from members of the press aboard the Alitalia plane taking the pope from Rome to Paris. They asked him whether he thought that the people of France were losing their Christian identity because of the country’s strict secular separation of church and state. This secularism has been part of French culture for a long, long time. The pope (expecting the question, I am sure) replied that this “laicism” does not contradict the faith and he even added (strikingly): “I would even say that it is a fruit of the faith … Religion and faith (are) not political….Politics and the state (are) not a religion. The two of them should be open to each other …Christians should live according to the great (Christian) values, values that are fundamental for the building and survival of our states and society.”
The pope was met at the airport by the French president and his wife, church bells pealing throughout Paris. Then an official celebration took place in the great Hall of Celebration at the center of government, the Elysee. Here President Sarkozy reiterated a theme he had voiced several times before (which must have been music to the pope’s ears): “It would be crazy to deprive ourselves of religion, a failing against culture. I call for a ‘positive secularity,’ which offers our consciences the possibility to interchange. Positive secularism is an invitation to dialogue…, an encouragement to religion.”
I doubt that the Elysee has heard words like that very often in the past. France used to be called the “eldest daughter of the church,” because of the early Christianization of the Roman Province of Gaul and the subsequent spread of Catholic culture throughout the land.
Today 60 percent of French people identify themselves as “Catholic” but probably only 10 percent go to church regularly and only 11 percent say religion is important to them. The strict and rigid separation of church and state is a cultural tradition in France. So it was refreshing to hear Sarkozy’s words.
Because the first reports of the trip from reporters on the papal plane were about the topic of “secularism,” I thought this would be the precise topic of the pope’s address to the assembled dignitaries at the former monastery, the College of the Bernardines. But it was not. He spoke about monasticism and monks as forming the roots of European culture. The monasteries of France, he said, were the places where the treasures of ancient culture survived and where at the same time a new culture took shape. The question the pope asked was: How did this happen? His answer was simply: the monks did not intend to create a culture nor to preserve the ancient culture but “quaerere Deum” (“to seek God”). Their guide in this search was the Bible, the word of God. And thus by “inner necessity” the search for God demanded a culture of the word — books, library, schools. Because the monks sought God as a community, liturgy developed, music was required and the beginning of the great tradition of Western music took place. The longing for God and the search for him included implicitly the development of a culture.
The Holy Father developed further some of these themes. And then he concluded his speech with these words: “To seek God is today no less necessary than in former times. A culture which tries to drive the question concerning God into the subjective realm, as being unscientific, would be the capitulation of reason, a disaster for humanity. What gave Europe’s culture its foundation — the search for God and the readiness to listen to him — remains today the basis of any genuine culture.” If a society accepts that, was the pope’s implicit message, then it has a positive secularity.
And then the pope went to Lourdes to pray.
Father John A. Leies, SM, STD, is president emeritus of St. Mary’s University and was formerly head of the Theology Department there.