Náboženské otázky současnosti – Besancon Alain (2019)

Everywhere we observe a rise in interest in religion. This is undoubtedly true for Judaism and Islam, which are increasingly asserting themselves in France. Christianity was, according to the concordat signed by Napoleon Bonaparte, 'the religion of the majority of the French.' From an outside perspective, it is now in a state of free fall. Do these religions even know what they are? What significance do they attach to their orthodoxy? By this term, I mean the central point, guaranteed by sacred texts and the opinions of scholars, in which each religion reveals itself in its coherence and its own originality. I do not intend to reject orthodoxy, even though I may be highly critical. Has religion retained the ability to perceive reality? In my other books, I have dealt with Russian orthodoxy and the orthodoxy of Protestantism. In this book, I write about Catholicism. How has Catholicism grasped the major events of our time, communism, Islam? At the entrances to cathedrals, a woman with her eyes covered by a blindfold represents the synagogue. We will see that the church often later bound itself with the same or a similar blindfold. These questions are among the most serious, meaningful, and important that a contemporary person could and should ask. I have tried to address them from the perspective of a historian.