OxBlog

# Posted 10:13 AM by Patrick Belton

FOOTNOTE TO A SPEECH: As longtime readers will know, I do not lack sympathy for either France or the Catholic Church, having spent substantial time in each. But I was rather fascinated by President Chirac's speech of welcome to John Paul II at the latter's arrival in France.

I've so far only found selections from the speech on CNN, but it includes the line 'France and the Holy See are joined in the fight for a world which places Man at the centre of every enterprise.' This strikes me as entirely in line with the humanist, sternly laic tradition of the Fifth Republic, but it is so strongly removed from the thought of the Pontiff in his encyclicals as to raise the question of whether it was meant as a snub.

If it was, the motivation might be somewhat understandable - given the facts of French history, it would place a French president in an odd position to seem too deferential to a visiting Pope, or even personally religious. I'm more perplexed really by the extent to which the media has neglected to comment on this fascinating showdown between two worldviews, one anthropocentric and the other theocentric - and represented by two no less symbolically intriguing figures than a Pope and a president of the country which first brought you the French Revolution and the tradition of laicism in state affairs. Wherever you fall in this argument, it cuts to the core of modernity, and from either perspective seems a rather sad thing to ignore when so memorably fleshed out.

(See related Spoof article: 'Pope: French Catholics Must Move to the Vatican').

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