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SOCIAL WEEK OF FRANCE: THE INTER-RELIGIUS DECLARATION

Written by Administrator
Monday, 24 November 2008
(Daniele Rocchi, SIR's correspondent in Lyons) "We, as the representatives of the monotheistic religions, feel responsible for speaking together". This is the beginning of the inter-religious declaration, one of the fruits of the Social Week of France, which was focussed on the subject: "Religions, a hope or a threat for our societies?" and ended in Lyons yesterday. The document, signed by Christians, Jews and Muslims, states: "The principle of separating the political and the religious is for us a premise and a condition for any serene religious and political experience. But this premise is not mere neutrality, it must be supported by a respectful attitude, by the wish to get to know and recognise the other, even if we do not share the same faith and the same beliefs". The task that is so urgent now, it goes on, is to "multiply dialogue in any place between believers as well as dialogue with our non-believing brothers". In this respect, "without boasting and without qualms", we invite you to draw from the declaration "the meaning that many of our contemporaries are looking for, when confronted by "multiple causes for restlessness" and by the reduction of man to an "economic consumer". "In the light of our merciful Maker - highlight the representatives of the three monotheistic religions in the Declaration on the 83rd Social Week of France -, our human lives make sense, and we all find a taste for life again. The adventure of our societies and that of humanity also make sense under the glance of God, who loves all His creatures and wants them to be happy". Aware of their responsibilities, religions have "a special message to deliver to our societies", which is summed up as follows: "The holy character of every human being and of life. The equal dignity of men and women, the foreigner that we must accept and welcome. The people in distress that we must respect and help. The family, a source of balance in a humanity we are all personally and jointly responsible for. And finally the Creation that must be neither neglected nor worshipped, but continued and developed by men who are responsible for this gift they have been entrusted with". The inter-religious Declaration of Lyons, signed by Jews, Muslims and Christians, the latter represented by delegates of multiple confessions, ends like this: "Our assertion of a God who surpasses us but wants the best for us and makes us particularly attentive to justice. Our faith, sometimes and despite everything, forces us to take position towards and against everything in favour of justice. Justice does not belong either to us or to anyone else, because it is given us through faith in a fair God. This faith can make us protest vigorously to legal or social developments that we think threaten justice or the holy character of the human being. But the very same need for justice also applies to us. Through our communities, we sometimes give a weakened or false image of God's justice and mercy. We commit ourselves to work day after day to make ourselves more faithful to what God expects of us". The reading of the text, which was begun by card. Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyons, was interspersed with music and ended with the song of the youth of the Movimento dei Focolari. "The time for a new, fruitful dialogue between religions and societies is really ripe, especially for the European ones. Religions are aware of being a minority, conscious of their weakness as well as of the fact they are not the owners of the truth, but that they look for it, as do societies". With these words, Jérome Vignon, president of the Social Weeks of France (Ssf), summarised to SIR the conclusions of the 83rd year of the historical initiative that ended in Lyons yesterday afternoon. Taking his cue from the subject, "Religions, a hope or a threat for our societies?", Vignon said he believes that "nowadays there is not religion on one side and society on the other; we are religious in the society we belong to". However, we must not neglect the problems of the current societies, "which are broken up, which lose their unity and are affected by fear. And fear encourages the fundamentalist element in religions which causes them to break up". According to the president of the Ssf, "the religious feeling makes us think and act in the certainty that we are not the repositories of the truth but that we pursue it through contacts with the other brothers with whom we move along the way to the truth". At the end of the Week, the subject and the date of the next one, the 84th one, was announced: it will be held in Paris (Villepinte) from November 20th to 22nd about "New forms of solidarity". © SIR

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