Archbishop of Sydney

Christian Unity

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
5 May 2002

News reports mentioned that Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of a far-right political party in France who will go into the second-round run-off election for the French presidency against Jacques Chirac, has claimed St Joan of Arc to symbolize the vision of France he represents.

Many people in France, both believers and non-believers, were outraged at Le Pen's audacity in appropriating Saint Joan, their greatest national heroine, to his extreme brand of politics. Others were not surprised.

Joan of Arc was a peasant girl who, acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years' War. A year later she was captured and burned as a heretic by the English and their French collaborators. She was declared a saint only in 1920, over 500 years after her death.

To some, the fact that Le Pen has claimed St Joan is not nearly as strange as the fact that the Church should declare a soldier a even if one of the first female soldiers a a saint. Le Pen's use of St Joan might be divisive, they claim, but religion has always been a divisive force, and has regularly been a major source of war and violence.

The reality, of course, is a bit more complicated. The war Joan of Arc fought in was not a religious war and while people might speak of religion as a cause of war it is perhaps more accurate to say that criminals and opportunists will use religion to justify war if they can.

Nevertheless history offers many examples of religious conflict, even between different groups of Christians. The example best know to most Australians is the ongoing conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

There is a distinction between the actions of Christians which contradict what they claim to believe, and those actions which arise from failing to follow their beliefs. A Christian who violently attacks someone else is clearly a different case to a Christian who, finding himself attacked, declines to turn the other cheek.

There is a well-developed theory of self-defence and just war in the Christian tradition. So it is not so strange that from time to time a soldier might be named a saint.

Christianity is not a war-like religion. Typically it has not been spread by the sword. And while after the Reformation Catholics and Protestants fought each other one for some time, those days are by and large behind us.

One of the great blessings of the last 50-60 years has been the rise of friendship and co-operation between Christian denominations, and also, here in Australia at least, between Christianity and other religions such as Islam. The ebbing of religious hostility and prejudice is something we should be grateful for.

This week the different churches join together to pray for Christian unity. It is something that all of us should support, because it is a reminder of how far away Australia is from places like Northern Ireland. And while it is hard to imagine us slipping back to the bad old days, important achievements should never be taken for granted.