Posted on by Mark Movsesian

How French Catholicism Accepted Liberalism

Princeton University Press has published a posthumous work by the late  Cambridge lecturer Emile Perreau-Saussine, Catholicism and Democracy: An Essay in the History of Political Thought (Richard Rex trans. 2012). The publisher’s description follows.

Catholicism and Democracy is a history of Catholic political thinking from the French Revolution to the present day. Emile Perreau-Saussine investigates the church’s response to liberal democracy, a political system for which the church was utterly unprepared.

 Looking at leading philosophers and political theologians–among them Joseph de Maistre, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Charles Péguy–Perreau-Saussine shows how the church redefined its relationship to the State in the long wake of the French Revolution. Disenfranchised by the fall of the monarchy, the church in France at first embraced that most conservative of Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Same Name, Different Case

American law and religion scholars know the case of St. Nicholas Cathedral, a Supreme Court decision from the 1950s, about which Rick Garnett has  written recently. Briefly, the case involved a dispute over a Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York between two parish councils, one loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate and the other loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), a group that broke away from the Communist-dominated Patriarchate in the twentieth century. It turns out that a similar dispute has been making its way through the French courts. Since the fall of Communism, the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR have reestablished communion, and the Patriarchate has been reasserting its right to church properties around the world, including St. Nicholas Cathedral in Nice (above), an impressive, onion-domed structure, reputedly the largest Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe. The local parish council objected to returning St. Nicholas to Moscow and a six-year legal battle ensued. The battle ended last week, when the local council sadly turned over the keys to the Patriarch’s representative. The story is here, from a local paper (in French).

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bayart on the Secular and the Laic in France and Turkey

An interesting piece in Le Monde by Jean-François Bayart (Centre Nationale de la Récherche Scientifique) on the meanings of laïcité, more (as with the Pera book) as a piece of cultural anthropology than for the substance of the views expressed.  The author’s sense and description of the differences between French and Turkish laïcité are particularly worth reading in this respect.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Nemo, “Qu’est-ce que l’Occident?”

I’ve recently been enjoying a gem of a little book by Philippe Nemo (ESCP Europe) , Qu’est-ce que l’Occident? (“What is the West?”) (puf 2004).  The book is an attempt to describe in what “the West” consists, arriving at 5 distinct contributions: the invention of the city and of science by the Greeks; law and humanism by Rome; the prophetic ethics and eschatological time of the Bible; the Papal Revolution of the 11th to 13th centuries (here there is reliance on Harold Berman); and finally the great liberal democratic revolutions of Europe and the United States. 

Here’s a passage from the beginning (6-7) which sets the terms of the project (please forgive the bumpy translation):

What is the West?  Does this civilization or this culture — let us not try to distinguish the two terms — have a unity that is deeper than its geopolitical divisions?  Does it have common values and institutions which make it one and the same world, distinguishing it for yet some time from the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arab-Muslim, or African worlds, or from worlds reputed to be close such as the East-European and Russian Orthodox, Latin America, or Israel?  If yes, does a deep solidarity exist within the countries of the West which would justify the political unification, of one kind or another, of this ensemble (the European Union and the American empire being, in this respect, two false good ideas)?  And if, in this civilization, certain features of the universal had once been achieved, of which the disappearance or the weakening would affect humanity in its ensemble, should one defend that civilization, not only against military threats but also against the risks of distintegration by the rapid expansion of communitarianisms or cultural blending?   

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bowen’s “Can Islam Be French?”

Princeton University Press has just published the paperback edition of Can Islam Be French?: Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State (first published in 2009) by John R. Bowen (Washington University St. Louis).  The publisher’s description follows. — MOD

Can Islam Be French? is an anthropological examination of how Muslims are responding to the conditions of life in France. Following up on his book Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves, John Bowen turns his attention away from the perspectives of French non-Muslims to focus on those of the country’s Muslims themselves. Bowen asks not the usual question–how well are Muslims integrating in France?–but, rather, how do French Muslims think about Islam? In particular, Bowen examines how French Muslims are fashioning new Islamic institutions and developing new ways of reasoning and teaching. He looks at some of the quite distinct ways in which mosques have connected with broader social and political forces, how Islamic educational entrepreneurs have fashioned niches for new forms of schooling, and how major Islamic public actors have set out a specifically French approach to religious norms. All of these efforts have provoked sharp responses in France and from overseas centers of Islamic scholarship, so Bowen also looks closely at debates over how–and how far–Muslims should adapt their religious traditions to these new social conditions. He argues that the particular ways in which Muslims have settled in France, and in which France governs religions, have created incentives for Muslims to develop new, pragmatic ways of thinking about religious issues in French society.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Paris Bans Prayer in Streets

Here’s an under-reported story: starting this month, Paris has banned praying in the streets. The ban apparently results from concerns about crowds routinely overflowing mosques and blocking traffic during Friday prayers. Surprisingly, from an American perspective, the  government is not justifying the ban as a neutral time, place, and manner restriction applicable to all public gatherings.  Rather, according to news reports, the government is justifying the ban as a necessary restriction on religious expression as such. Public prayer “hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens,” Interior Minister Claude Guéant is quoted as saying. “Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism.” The Minister vows that force will be used on Muslims — and adherents of other faiths — who violate the new rule.

I wonder whether the Minister is being quoted out of context. Although it’s certainly reasonable to keep the streets clear, it doesn’t seem reasonable to single out religious gatherings in particular. And, notwithstanding the Minister’s comments, I’m not sure that French secularism, or laïcité, requires such a ban. Laïcité is a complex concept, but both the Conseil d’État and the Conseil Constitutionnel have indicated that, as a legal matter, laïcité does not generally require bans on public religious expression. (For helpful discussions of laïcité as a legal concept, see CLR’s recent symposium, Laïcité in Comparative Perspective, in the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies). Wouldn’t it have made more sense to ban all crowds that block public streets without a permit? One irony: notwithstanding the concern for secularism, the government is allowing one large Muslim congregation that was blocking the streets to use a public fire station for prayers until the congregation can build a bigger mosque. — MLM