L’Église italienne laisse une porte ouverte à Giorgia Meloni car elle ne compromet pas le christianisme

La victoire électorale de Giorgia Meloni s’inscrit dans une montée des mouvements populistes d’extrême droite en Europe. Tous ces mouvements partagent l’hostilité envers les migrants et l’islam, l’euroscepticisme et la défense d’une identité nationale, voire, paradoxalement, européenne. Ils diffèrent néanmoins dans leur rapport au christianisme, même s’ils évoquent souvent l’identité ou les racines chrétiennes de l’Europe.

Une telle référence est, dans le nord de l’Europe, purement négative : elle sert à faire de l’islam l’autre par excellence, mais n’implique en rien la promotion de normes ou de valeurs chrétiennes. Les populistes du nord de l’Europe ont entériné l’évolution de la société et ne mettent pas en avant la lutte contre l’avortement ou le mariage homosexuel, quand ils n’ont pas tout simplement adopté les nouvelles valeurs libérales et féministes (comme le parti de Geert Wilders aux Pays-Bas).

En France, Marine Le Pen se rapproche de ce modèle : elle fait de la laïcité le cœur de l’identité française et ne remet en cause ni l’avortement, ni le mariage pour tous ; les idées de sa nièce « catho-tradi » ne percent pas dans le populisme français, comme l’a illustré l’échec électoral de Zemmour. Il se pourrait que ce modèle, laïque, anti-migrant, illibéral mais libertaire, se répande d’ailleurs vers le sud : le mode de vie des dirigeants populistes est la plupart du temps celui de leur génération, ayant grandi dans la permissivité (même Giorgia Meloni, qui défend les valeurs de la famille, a oublié de se marier et n’a rien d’une femme au foyer, tout en élevant sa fille). Les Églises n’ont donc pas trop de problèmes à prendre leur distance avec ces populistes.

https://www.la-croix.com/Debats/LEglise-italienne-laisse-porte-ouverte-Giorgia-Meloni-compromet-pas-christianisme-2022-09-27-1201235096

 

Buddhists missionaries let prospective converts come to them

In the seminar room in Wat Suan Dok, I found one senior monk, Phra Kyo, standing alone amid a circle of about 15 foreigners from North America and Europe. As soon as he began to speak, Phra Kyo captured the audience’s attention for the next hour with the peaceful and universal nature of Buddhism and its contrast with Christianity.

‘Some of you have been here for a few weeks, a few months already. Have you ever seen a monk outside of the Buddhist temple waving people in with pamphlets talking about Buddhism? Have you ever seen a Buddhist monk knocking on doors telling the Buddha’s teaching?’

The audience laughed and shook their heads. The image of a Buddhist monk actively converting non-Buddhists in this way is somewhat comical. Phra Kyo continued: ‘No, that is not our way. There is no relationship between Buddha and me, just as teacher and student. If a person asks who created the world, the Christian will be happy to respond: “God.” But the Buddhist says: “I don’t care who created the world. But I want to be happy now and relieve suffering.”’

Christian missionaries travel all over the world in order to gain converts through knocking on doors or approaching people in public spaces, or setting up schools, orphanages and hospitals.

Christian missionaries fulfil the Bible’s Great Commission, attempting to emulate the early apostles of Jesus. The Great Commission is in the Book of Matthew (28:18-20), when Jesus proclaims to his disciples: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’

https://aeon.co/essays/buddhists-missionaries-let-prospective-converts-come-to-them

 

Catholics v. the Constitution

According to a Pew Research Center survey in March of this year, 61% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most cases. Even so, the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

No wonder the reaction has been fierce. One Democratic congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for two Supreme Court justices to be impeached for lying under oath during their Senate confirmation hearings. Panicked commentators warn of the end of democracy in the United States. Others blame misogyny and “theatrical masculinity.”

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/radical-supreme-court-catholics-endanger-us-institutions-by-ian-buruma-2022-06

 

How Buddhism has changed the West for the better

When news of Thich Nhat Hanh’s death spread around the world, I saw far more people than I’d have expected say how he affected them, through a talk, a book, a retreat, an idea, an example. It was a reminder of the huge impact Buddhism has had in the west as a set of ideas that has flowed far beyond the limits of who belongs to a Buddhist group or has a formal practice. You could think of Buddhism in this context as one tributary of a broad new river of ideas flowing through the west, from which many have drunk without knowing quite where the waters came from.

A Vietnamese monk who founded meditation centers on four continents and published dozens of books, Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the great teachers who came from Asia in the 20th century, along with Zen monks from Japan and Tibetan rinpoches. He stood out because he came to the west as an explicitly political figure, arguing against the war in Vietnam (though the Dalai Lama’s opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet is certainly political too). His death seemed to me not an ending but a reminder that something far grander than this great teacher began sometime in the last century and continues to spread.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/08/buddhism-thich-nhat-hanh-death

 

Sex Ed, One Instagram Post at a Time

When Nour Emam decided to devote herself to educating Arab women about their bodies, the subject was so taboo that one of her first challenges was figuring out how to pronounce the word “clitoris” in Arabic.

“I had never heard it,” said Ms. Emam, 29, a women’s health activist from Cairo. “No one uses it, so there’s nowhere to find the right way to say it.”

After careful research, now she knows, and so do her hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, where she hosts one of the leading platforms for sex education in the Arab world.

With formal schooling on sexuality minimal to nonexistent in much of the Middle East, and a patriarchal culture that has left many Arab women ignorant and ashamed of their own bodies, Ms. Emam and a growing number of activists have built online platforms to try to fill the gap.

Using the internet to circumvent social taboos and government censorship, they are educating Arab women about their bodies, shattering myths and misinformation, and in some cases changing women’s lives. ​

In Cairo, Ms. Emam, known by the web handle “motherbeing,” has posted hundreds of videos on Instagram and TikTok in which she discusses intimate subjects in a deliberately casual manner, sometimes while she’s cooking. She started a podcast on sexual and reproductive health in March; the first episode, on orgasms, drew tens of thousands of listeners.

 

When One Parent Leaves a Hasidic Community, What Happens to the Kids?

Not many people leave ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Most who do try to keep it secret, because, if everyone knew, the marriage prospects of their siblings could be irreparably damaged. The shame of leaving is very great. It is said that anyone who leaves must be a ruined person—penniless, homeless, probably on drugs, maybe a prostitute, living like an animal, for carnal appetites alone, like the goyim, or else mentally ill.

It’s true that leaving is traumatic. Many people do fall apart at first. There are suicides, and near-suicides. Some who lose their faith would give anything to have it back. Others who think about leaving can’t bring themselves to do it. Leaving means giving up everything you know, and a close, enveloping community where you are never alone, with little sense of what could replace it. Your spouse might divorce you, your parents reject you. You have to be desperate.

Twenty years ago, those who left could feel that they were stepping into a void. They might know no one else who had done what they were doing. There was a network of blogs written by people who no longer believed but continued to go through the motions; some called themselves Reverse Marranos, for the Jews in medieval Spain who faked renouncing their religion in order to survive. But many Haredi communities—their preferred term for ultra-Orthodox, which means “those who tremble before God”—restricted access to the Internet.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/07/when-one-parent-leaves-a-hasidic-community-what-happens-to-the-kids-?utm_social-type=owned

 

In Kenya, Chinese arrivals are targeted by Jeovah’s witnesses speaking Mandarin

Earlier this year, An, a young Chinese professional living in Nairobi, heard a knock at the door. She was expec­ting no one. She had moved in a couple of months earlier, and none of her friends would visit unannounced. She had been warned about the Kenyan capital’s high crime rate, but, curious, she peered through the peephole and beheld, with relief and confusion, two smiling women – one East Asian, one white.
The visitors introduced themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses, telling her in Mandarin that they had heard there was a new Chinese person in the building. An remembers reacting with suspicion, asking how they came to know that, since hers was not a building or neighbour­hood where many Chinese people lived. The Asian Witness laughed politely and apologised for the intrusion, brushing off the question somewhat awkwardly by saying they just happened to “know things”

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3031528/kenya-chinese-arrivals-are-targeted-jehovahs

 

Margaret Atwood’s work illustrates our need to enjoy other people’s pain

A well-crafted worldwide publicity campaign is raising expectations for The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to her Handmaid’s Tale. This, perhaps, is the right moment to take a deeper look into the reasons of our fascination with the dark world of the Republic of Gilead.

Since Gilead is run by Christian fundamentalists, the best way to begin is with theology.

In his Summa Theologica, philosopher Thomas Aquinas concludes that the blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned in order that their bliss be more delightful for them. Aquinas, of course, takes care to avoid the obscene implication that good souls in heaven can find pleasure in observing the terrible suffering of other souls, because good Christians should feel pity when they see suffering. So, will the blessed in heaven also feel pity for the torments of the damned? Aquinas’s answer is no: not because they directly enjoy seeing suffering, but because they enjoy the exercise of divine justice.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-human-rights-slavoj-zizek-a9105151.html

 

China’s brutal Ramzan crackdown on Muslims is of no interest to Pakistan or even US

The month of Ramazan has begun and Muslims all over the world are fasting. From the far-flung near Arctic towns in Norway and Iceland, to the tropical locales of Indonesia and Malaysia, local customs, special foods and spiritual regeneration are all front and centre for fasting Muslims. So, it is nearly everywhere except next door to Pakistan, in Xinjiang, China’s predominantly Muslim province.

One post on the website of the Food and Drug Administration of Xinjiang says “food service places will operate during normal hours in Ramadan”, and more importantly, “During Ramadan do not engage in fasting, vigils and other religious activities”.

According to the Save Uighur website, “China is the only place in the world where Muslims are not allowed to fast. Uighurs and Muslims have been forbidden from fasting for the last three years.” Other reports point out that Ramazan restrictions apply in particular to schools and government offices.

https://theprint.in/opinion/chinas-brutal-ramzan-crackdown-on-muslims-is-of-no-interest-to-pakistan-or-even-us/233618/

 

The Guardian view on abortion: protecting a human right

No law can end abortions, however severe its restrictions and however harsh its penalties. Each day almost 70,000 unsafe abortions are carried out around the world, and they are vastly more likely to happen in countries with strict laws. What such legislation does do is force some women to continue pregnancies against their wishes, while risking the lives and wellbeing of others. Women in the US have seen their ability to terminate pregnancies dismantled piece by piece. Now states are racing to outlaw or dramatically curb abortions with extreme and unconstitutional bills. The aim is to directly challenge Roe v Wade, the US supreme court ruling that established that abortion is legal before the foetus is viable outside the womb, at around 24 weeks. Last Tuesday, the governor of Georgia signed a bill essentially banning abortions after six weeks from 2020. Some described it as a sign that men who wish to control women’s bodies have no idea of how they actually work. More likely, those who pushed hardest for the change understand all too well that many women will not know they are pregnant until it is too late.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/12/the-guardian-view-on-abortion-protecting-a-human-right