{"id":4440,"date":"2006-02-20T23:13:05","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T23:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/christians-islam-and-the-future-of-europe.html"},"modified":"2006-02-20T23:13:05","modified_gmt":"2006-02-20T23:13:05","slug":"christians-islam-and-the-future-of-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/christians-islam-and-the-future-of-europe.html","title":{"rendered":"Christians, Islam and the future of Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sandro Magister’s Denver talk from last week:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

A new cathedral church was built twelve years ago in Evry, to the south of Paris. It is recognized as the masterpiece of one of the most famous architects in the world, Mario Botta of Switzerland. During Sunday Mass, it is half-empty. But the nearby mosque is overflowing with the faithful. The imam of the mosque, Khalil Merroun, asserted in an interview: \u201cThe Catholic Church should not feel Europe belongs to it. The advice I give my Catholic colleagues is to ask themselves why their faithful don\u2019t live their spirituality.\u201d <\/p>\n

But what sort of spirituality inspires the new cathedral in Evry? The church looks like a cylinder cut off diagonally at the top, with a crown of trees at its summit, and a barely visible cross. The interior is almost entirely barren of figurative art. The bare walls, which should pulsate with the transcendent, in reality remain mute, unable to convey the revelation that has come down from God. There are no visible traces of this revelation capable of showing the way to the faithful along their journey. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n

These examples are the reflections in architecture, and sacred architecture at that, of the loss of identity seen in Europe today, which has manifested itself in the failure to mention \u201cChristian roots\u201d in the controversial preamble of the European Union\u2019s constitutional treaty. For a part of European culture today, the public square should be impenetrable against Christianity. And Christianity should be entirely cut off from the European civilization in which it has its roots and to which it gives nourishment. <\/p>\n

But exactly the opposite is happening today in the world, and also in Europe: everywhere there is an impetuous return of religion to the public square. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What follows is an historical survey of Islam within and in relationship to Europe. He concludes with his perspective on the possible future of Islam, Europe and democracy. Difficult, but not impossible, he says.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandro Magister’s Denver talk from last week: A new cathedral church was built twelve years ago in Evry, to the south of Paris. It is recognized as the masterpiece of one of the most famous architects in the world, Mario Botta of Switzerland. During Sunday Mass, it is half-empty. But the nearby mosque is overflowing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nChristians, Islam and the future of Europe - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/christians-islam-and-the-future-of-europe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christians, Islam and the future of Europe - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sandro Magister’s Denver talk from last week: A new cathedral church was built twelve years ago in Evry, to the south of Paris. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}