Professional paper
Turning the page
Ivan Supičić
Abstract
The article tackles some important questions concerning the chances of Christianism in our time and in the near future in light of considerations of five French authors published in a common work entitled Christians, turn the page (2002). Member of the French Academy, philosopher and historian Rene Remond gives thought to what is, in Christianism, unchangeable and to what should be changed in order for it to survive. The historian Jean Delumeau, honorary Professor at the College de France and member of the Institute, considers the same questions and emphasizes the great possibilities of Christianism, despite its long and heavy history, to adapt itself to modernity. The philosopher Marcel Gauchet explains the very nature of religion in the history of mankind considering Christianism as a »religion of the way out of religion«. Daniele Hervieu-Leger limits herself to consider, from the sociological point of view, in the most part the evolutive processes of religion in France during the last fifty years. And the Jesuit Paul Valadier observes these processes on the European and global level taking into account what is positive in them and what represents a problem. According to him, our contemporaries no longer expect a large intellectual syntheses but rather a practical wisdom for life.
In the perspective of all these considerations it appears that the situation of Christianism merits concern, especially the Catholic Church which is exposed to great criticism. Many people no longer associate themselves with it in searching answers about the sense of life. They look for the »true life« elsewhere. The contemporary mentality affirms the individual freedom of private life and of personal moral consciousness. Questions of a future life are not in our days as they were in the past a great driving force. Subjectivism and individualism are the source of everybody's searching his own experience and personal truth of life. In such a spiritual atmosphere sects and some new religious movements, using man's need for security and immediate »therapeutical« effects in the everyday life, often take advantage of them. Nevertheless, even in such considerably changed religious landscape Christianism is not an obsolete ideology, a marginal option. It is capable of being nowadays a central axis of existence. The faith in Jesus Christ keeps in those who have it the full strength. They know that failure and death do not have the last word. But they know something more: that, inspired by the Gospel, one can live fruitfully today only if he goes down to a considerably deeper level of that which prevails in the multitude. In order not to be obliged to turn the large page of Christianism, true believers should undoubtedly turn quickly the dusty pages of remote habits which make the Gospel's message difficult to understand for contemporary men and women.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
84166
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2004.
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