Pope Francis died. If the news grieved me – he had a good head, he loved football, so many reasons to appreciate it -, however, I have been completely unable to measure the scope of this disappearance. And for good reason, I do not hear anything about the Catholic religion, to Christianity, to everything that comes from the Church and its mode of operation. How could I, by the way? Of all my years spent in high school to try to learn everything and almost anything, especially anything else, never an opportunity has been given to me to take a close interest in religion, in all religions. As if, basically, the subject had no importance.
Which is after all, quite extraordinary. For years and years, we are forced to study subjects as exciting as the foreign trade of China during the cultural revolution (1966-1976) or reproduction in the toads of Amazon, but of religion in general, we are told so little that, become adult, we know nothing about her if not some vague and vain general.
However, whether we like it or not, religion shapes the imagination of individuals. It is the pillar around which our societies have been built and even if it has lost influence, it still remains an identity marker of incomparable power. How could we understand the other if the latter articulates his thinking around concepts that largely escape us? How to dialogue if we do not know the very basics of his belief, this kind of narration specific to religious fact that cement souls in their deepest singularity?
Religions are the childhood of humanity. It does not matter whether we are believers or not, our relationship to the world, to life, to death or time stems from their principles, from their teachings. Even the atheist, in his fierce opposition to any form of religiosity, ends up sketching the contours of a dogma itself as powerful as religion. All, we are beings crossed by beliefs that strive to give a framework to life as it takes place on earth, with its mysteries, its doubts, its infinite questions.
To what fabulous treasures, to what extraordinary stories, to what sumptuous wealth we turn our backs when we exclude the teaching of religions from the school framework! What precious tools we deprive ourselves to try to understand what animates the heart of our neighbor, of this other which, by the circumstances of its birth, has a cultural heritage different from ours.
So much so that most of the time we go in our lives, indifferent to each other. Worse, our ignorance leads us to project fantasies and preconceived ideas on religions which appear to us animated by fiery intentions intended to decimate ourselves until the last. Instead of trying to understand, we are content with clichés, shortcuts, presuppositions which maintain a confusion immediately used by malicious minds eager to oppose one community to another.
Reducing an individual to his sole social dimension obeys part of his personality and allows fantasies to prosper like weeds on a field never cleared.
If only, from a very young age, we learned the principles at work, for example, in the three monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), if we took the time to examine them in depth throughout our schooling, if we familiarize ourselves with their precepts, their history, their concept, we would be much better armed to distinguish the true, to unmask the false propatals The degree of veracity of such a remark disseminated in great cries on social networks, all this background noise which serves as soup for the most freed populist discourses.
It’s about learning to understand. Isn’t that there, after all, the primary mission of the school? I hear that the defense of secularism constitutes an unshakable dogma of the French Republic, but in what a study exceeded in religions, from the most common to the most exotic, would constitute an obstacle to its full exercise? Reducing an individual to his sole social dimension obeys a whole part of his personality and allows fantasies to prosper like weeds on a field never cleared.
The school must open up to religion through the continuous learning of its history. Not to praise your charms or conquer spirits, but in order to strengthen living together. Even in a secularized society like ours, we continue to behave according to rites, codes, laws, an intellectual journey inscribed in the depths of the sacred texts. Studying the Talmud, the Koran, the New Testament, all this mathematics of the soul, should be an absolute priority.
