The first 'court of the Gentiles'
a la Benedict XVI to open in Paris
An idea broached by the Holy Father in his address to the Roman Curia last December,
as a place for dialog between Catholics and non-believers, it is part of the Churh\ch's
wider project for a 'new evangelization' in Europe.
ROME, June 24, 2010 – As the Italian judiciary investigates the affairs of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples when it was under Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the Vatican is preparing to create a new dicastery dedicated to evangelization not in missionary territory, but in Western countries of ancient Christian tradition where the faith has been most weakened or has virtually disappeared.
The idea is not entirely new. After Vatican Council II, a secretariat for nonbelievers was created and lasted for a few years, entrusted to Austrian Cardinal Franz Kõnig. Now it is coming back in the more solid form of a pontifical council.
Benedict XVI has discussed it with a few cardinals, including Ruini, Scola, Bagnasco and Schoenborn. A "motu proprio" is expected to create the new council and to define its makeup and duties.
Meanwhile, however, there is already concrete action toward the goal of dialog with those 'without faith'
[but in search of it], through the initiative of an older pontifical council - the Council for Culture headed by Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi.
The initiative is called "Court of the Gentiles" from an idea launched by Benedict XVI, in his pre-Christmas annual speech to the Roman Curia last December 21, and its aim is to open a systematic dialogue with men who are willing to approach God "at least as Unknown."
It takes its name from the part of the Temple complex in Jerusalem to which non-Jews were allowed, and from which Jesus drove out the merchants and the money-changers.
Now that the Italian judiciary is cracking the whip against business dealings by some of the old Vatican Curia, it is even more striking to reread the words the Pope used to explain his project, last December 21:
Here, I am reminded of the words that Jesus cites from the prophet Isaiah, that the temple should be a house of prayer for all peoples (cfr Is 56,7; Mk 11,17). He was thinking of the so-called Court of the Gentiles, that he would clear of all external business so that it could be a free space for Gentiles who wished to pray to the one God, even if they could not take part in the mystery, in whose service the interior of the Temple was reserved.
A space of prayer for all peoples - this meant persons who recognized God from afar, so to speak; those who were discontented with their pagan gods, rite and myths; those who desired what is Pure and what is Great, even if God would remain for them the 'unknown God' (cfr Acts 17,23).
They should nonetheless be able to pray to the unknown God and thus be in relation with the true God, even in the midst of many obscurities.
I think that even today the Church should open a kind of 'Court of the Gentiles' where man can in some way connect themselves to God, even without knowing him, and before they can find access to his mystery, which is served by the internal life of the Church.
To the inter-religious dialog, we must now add a dialog with those for whom religion is an extraneous matter, to whom God is unknown, but who neverhteless do nto wish to remain simply without God, but to approach him even as an unknown God.
To understand better the conceppt of a "Court of the Gentiles," an appropriate exegete is certainly Archbishop Ravasi, a biblicist of worldwide fame and with a vast network of personal contacts with men of culture who are more or less removed from faith.
Ravasi published the article that follows in the June 2 issue of
L'Osservatore Romano.
In it, he announces that the inaugural event of the "Court of the Gentiles" will take place in Paris in March of 2011, in three settings specifically chosen for their lack of religious affiliation: the Sorbonne, UNESCO, and the Académie Française.
The initiative has already drawn expressions of interest from numerous personalities, beginning with Julia Kristeva, a semiologist and psychoanalyst highly attentive to dialogue between believers and agnostics or atheists.
In an interview published last February 25 in
Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, Ravasi described the current forms of atheism with which the Church wants to dialogue:
Attention must be paid to the different forms of atheism, which cannot be reduced to a single model.
On one side there is the great atheism of Nietzsche and Marx, which unfortunately [?] has gone into crisis, constituted by an explanation of reality different from that of the believer, but with its own ethics, a serious and courageous vision, for example, in considering man alone in the universe.
Then there is an ironic-sarcastic atheism that takes aim at marginal aspects of belief, or at fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. This is the atheism of Onfray, Dawkins, and Hitchens.
In the third place there is an absolute indifference born of secularization, summarized well by the example that Charles Taylor gives in A secular age when he says that if God were to come to one of our cities today, the only thing that would happen would be that they would ask to see his papers."
Magister posts a translation of Ravasi's OR article on
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1341494?eng=y
Photos are from a contemporary scale model of the Temple of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.