The First "Court" of Believers and Atheists Will Open in Paris

It was called for by pope Ratzinger, by the name of "court of the gentiles." It will be inaugurated by his minister for culture, Archbishop Ravasi. It will be a place for dialogue with those far from God, the first act of a wider project of new evangelization



by Sandro Magister







24.6.2010

ROME, June 24, 2010 – As the Italian judiciary investigates the affairs of the congregation for the evangelization of peoples, during the years when its prefect was Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, at the Vatican a new – more sober – office is being created, dedicated to another kind of evangelization: not in missionary territory, but in the countries of ancient Christian tradition in which the faith is most weakened or has 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: from Ruini to Scola, from Bagnasco to Schönborn. A "motu proprio" will determine its makeup and duties.Meanwhile, however, there is already concrete action toward the same goal of dialoguing with those without faith, through the initiative of a pontifical council with a long track record, the council for culture headed by Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi.The initiative is called "Court of the gentiles." The idea and the name come from Benedict XVI, who launched them on December 21, 2009, in the speech with which he extended Christmas greetings to the Roman curia.The idea of pope Joseph Ratzinger – according to whom the question of God is the "priority" of his pontificate – is to open a systematic dialogue with the men who are farthest from God, so that they may approach him "at least as Unknown."As for the formula "Court of the gentiles," Benedict XVI took that from the Gospels, from the passage in which Jesus drives the moneychangers from the temple.Now that the Italian judiciary is cracking the whip against the business dealings of the old Vatican curia, it is even more striking to reread the words the pope used to explain his project, last December 21:"I am reminded of the words that Jesus quoted from the prophet Isaiah, that the temple should be a house of prayer for all peoples (cf. Isaiah 56:7; Mark 11:17). He was thinking about what was called the court of the gentiles, which he cleansed of extraneous business so that it could be the space available for the gentiles who wanted to pray to the one God there, even if they could not take part in the mystery, for service of which the interior of the temple was reserved. A place of prayer for all peoples: by this was meant the people who know God, so to speak, only from afar; who are dissatisfied with their gods, rites, myths; who desire the Pure and the Great, even if God remains for them the 'unknown God' (cf. Acts 17:23). They needed to be able to pray to the unknown God, and so be in relation with the true God, although in the midst of obscurities of various kinds."But in order to understand more deeply the meaning of "Court of the gentiles," one worthy 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 the newspaper of the Italian bishops, "Avvenire," 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."_____________"I think that the Church should also open today a sort of 'court of the gentiles' where men can in some manner cling to God, without knowing him and before they have found the entryway to his mystery, which the interior life of the Church serves. To the dialogue with the religions it must above all add today a dialogue with those for whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown, and who nonetheless would not like simply to remain without God, but at least to approach him as the Unknown."These words, addressed to the Roman curia by Benedict XVI on the occasion of the Christmas greetings of 2009, have produced concrete effects: a Vatican dicastery, the pontifical council for culture, has given rise to an institution, called "Court of the gentiles," in order to open a serious and respectful dialogue between believers and agnostics or atheists.The inaugural event will take place in Paris in March of next year, simultaneously in multiple locations: the Sorbonne, UNESCO, and the Académie Française, according to different perspectives. Various personalities have already expressed interest, including the semiologist, psychoanalyst, and author Julia Kristeva.We would first of all like to explain the symbol used by the pope, an expression that is not clear to everyone, although many are aware that in ecclesiastical language the word "gentiles" designates the non-Jews, or the pagans who had come into contact with Christianity: the term is derived from the Latin "gens," in the sense of foreign nationality in contrast with the "populus romanus" (in Hebrew, they were the "goy/goyim," present 561 times in the Old Testament; in Greek, "èthnos/èthne," a word that is used 162 times in the New Testament). It is well known how hard Saint Paul fought to open the doors of the new faith to them, without requiring that they be circumcised and therefore Judaized, as some representatives of the original Christian community (the Jewish Christians) were demanding. But what reality does "Court of the gentiles" evoke?In this regard we must refer to the blueprint of the temple of Jerusalem, above all in the typology offered by the imposing edifice ordered by King Herod starting in the year 20 before the Christian era, and destroyed in the year 70 by the Roman armies of Titus. There, in fact, in addition to the areas set aside for women, for the Israelites, for the priests, and for the sanctuary properly speaking, an area was opened for pagans who were visiting Jerusalem. This was the "Court of the gentiles," an "aulè" in Greek, which may be referred to in the book of Revelation when in the symbolic measurements of the temple given to John it is declared: "But exclude the outer court (aulè) of the temple; do not measure it, for it has been handed over to the Gentiles (èthne), who will trample the holy city" (11:2).Concrete proof of the existence of this special enclosure is found in a stone measuring 60 by 90 centimeters with an inscription in Greek, discovered in 1871 by the French archeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau and now kept at the archeological museum of Istanbul (another similar marker, but only fragmentary, was found in 1953). On it is written a prohibition similar to the modern signs warning of "danger of death" or of restricted military areas: "No foreigner (alloghenès) may penetrate beyond the balustrade and the boundary that surrounds the sacred area (hieròn). Anyone caught in flagrante will be the cause of his own ensuing death."The philoroman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, a witness of the events in the Holy Land in the first century, in his book "Jewish Antiquities" confirms this testimony by speaking of two courts: the first was that of the gentiles, separated from the second – that of the Jews – "by a few steps and by a stone balustrade where there was an inscription prohibiting entrance to foreigners under penalty of death" (xv, 417).?In his other most famous work, "The Jewish War," the same historian notes: "Those who crossed that area to reach the second court found it surrounded by a stone balustrade, three cubits high and of fine workmanship. On it, at equal intervals, were placed stones recalling the laws of purity – for access to the temple – some in the Greek language, others in Latin, so that no foreigner might enter the holy place" (v, 193-194).It is curious to note that, from what can be gathered from the wording of the prohibition, the death penalty was automatic, without a normal trial but with a sort of lynching entrusted to the Jewish crowd. Something of this kind is evoked in connection with the risk run by Saint Paul at the temple of Jerusalem: the mass of faithful try to kill him, because he is suspected of having "brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this sacred place." In fact, he had been seen shortly before in the company of a pagan, a certain Trophimus the Ephesian, drawing suspicion that he had taken him past the "Court of the gentiles," into the sacred area off-limits for the pagans (see the passage from the Acts of the Apostles, 21:27-32).Nonetheless, it would be the apostle himself who would strike a hard blow against this bitterly "separatist" conception when, writing to the Christians of Ephesus, he would declare that Christ came to "break down the dividing wall of enmity" between Jews and gentiles, "that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile both with God, in one body" (Ephesians 2:14-16). That symbol of apartheid and of sacred separation which was the wall of the "Court of the gentiles" is, therefore, eliminated by Christ, who wants to eliminate the barriers to a harmonious encounter between the two peoples.It is this further Pauline clarification that gives meaning to the metaphorical application of "court" as suggested by Benedict XVI. Believers and nonbelievers stand on different ground, but they must not close themselves off in sacred or secular isolationism, ignoring each other or, even worse, hurling insults or accusations at each other, as the fundamentalists on both sides would like. Of course, this must not mean downplaying the differences, eliminating the different conceptions, ignoring the disagreements. Each one has his feet planted in a separate "court," but thoughts and words, actions and decisions can face each other and even come together.Resorting to a play on words with similar sounds – but not etymologies – Christians and gentiles might adopt the technique of the duel (from the Latin "bellum"), in a sword fight like that of the atheist and the Jesuit in the film "La Voie Lactée" by Luis Buñuel. What the project called "Court of the gentiles" wants to propose is, instead, a duet (from the Latin "duo") in which the voices may be at opposite ends of the scale, like a bass and a soprano, and yet are able to create harmony without renouncing their own identity; that is, leaving the metaphor behind, without losing their color in a vague ideological syncretism.In this encounter between the two "courts," one initial decision is that of purifying the two basic concepts. On one side, the "gentiles" must rediscover the intellectual nobility expressed by the great atheistic systems (we think of a Marx or of the famous parable about the death of God in "The Gay Science" by Nietzsche), before they were encapsulated in political-ideological systems or plunged into skepticism and the idolatry of things, or degenerated into disdainful, sarcastic, and childishly irreverent atheism.On the other side, faith must rediscover its greatness, manifested in centuries of lofty thought and in a comprehensive vision of being and existence, avoiding the shortcuts of devotionalism and fundamentalism, and revealing that theology has a rigorous epistemological status of its own that is parallel and specific with respect to that of science: one might think of the "theory of the two levels," independent and not conflictual, proposed by Stephen Gould and seconded by Francisco Ayala, both thinkers and scientists.But in addition to this, the overlapping of the different voices can take place around common themes – even if these are approached and resolved with different results – like ethics, anthropology, spirituality, the ultimate questions about life and death, good and evil, love and suffering, truth and falsehood, peace and nature, transcendence and immanence.This path can even lead to the question of the Unknown, the "Àgnostos Theòs," the unknown God, to whom Saint Paul referred in his famous speech in the Areopagus of Athens, recalled in the passage from Benedict XVI that we cited at the outset.Just as, in fact, the believer can sometimes wander in the "Court of the gentiles," under a sky stripped of presence and barren of God, waiting for the divinity to break his silence and his absence, so also the atheist can sometimes say with the poet Giorgio Caproni: "Ah, my God, my God. / Why do you not exist?" A question that Zinovyev, the Russian author of "The Yawning Heights," expanded upon like this: "I beg you, my God, try to exist, at least a little, for me, open your eyes, I beg you! . . . Make yourself see: living without witnesses is hell for us! So I cry out and wail: My Father, I beg you and I weep: exist!"Without expecting conversions or reversals of existential journeys, but above all avoiding diversions into emptiness, into banality, into stereotypes, gentiles and Christians – whose "courts" are adjacent in the modern city – can discover consonance and harmony even in their diversity; they can leave aside solely self-referential language and lift up the gaze of a humanity that is often bent too much only on the immediate, on superficiality, on insignificance, toward Being in its fullness. A little like Fr. David Maria Turoldo suggested in one of his "Last Songs": "Brother atheist, nobly pensive, / in search of a God / I don't know how to give you, / let us cross the desert together. / From desert to desert let us go beyond / the forest of the faiths, / free and naked toward / the Naked Being / and there / where words die / may our journey end."_____________The speech on December 21, 2009, in which Benedict XVI made the proposal:__________English translation by Matthew Sherry , Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.__________