Religious freedom and secularism

Two recent Zenit interviews are worth taking a look at. "On Religious Freedom in the World" carries an interview with Attilio Tamburrini, director of the Italian section of Aid to the Church in Need. In addition to surveying the state of religious freedom in India, the islamic world and China, he speaks of the role of aggressive secularism against increasingly beleaguered christian minorities in the west, e.g., France. Lest one conclude that these are isolated examples in a world where religious freedom is largely protected, Tamburrini notes that "the only country that has an organization which is concerned with religious freedom at the institutional level is the United States." Would that Canada might manifest a similar concern.

The second article is a two-part interview with theologian Tracey Rowland on "Benedict XVI, Vatican II and Modernity." Of particular interest is her explanation of two tendencies within Roman Catholic thought, viz., the so-called Catholic Whigs and the Augustinian Thomists, with their contrasting views of modernity. Pope Benedict would appear to fall into the latter category, from Rowland's perspective. Rowland teaches at the same institution as my favourite Catholic theologian, David L. Schindler, who speaks well of my friend Alvin Plantinga and whose weighty writings tend to be more comprehensible to neocalvinists than to many of his fellow Catholics.