Posted on 12/23/2016 2:35:48 PM PST by marshmallow
PARIS (RNS) The French delight in exceptions to the rule, until one comes along that they don’t like.
One such case has emerged in Alsace, where a Catholic priest has been elected president of the state-run University of Strasbourg.
Michel Deneken, 59, headed the university’s Catholic theology faculty from 2001 to 2009 and was then first vice president of the university before being elected by a wide majority last week to preside over one of the country’s leading centers of higher learning.
His appointment has stirred up a storm of controversy.
Six professors signed an open letter warning that Deneken’s election could increase religious tensions in France and seriously tarnish the reputation of Strasbourg’s university, which has four Nobel Prize-winning scientists on its faculty, because of his “close ties to religious authorities.”
And the Union of Communist Students declared: “The Vatican has seized power at the University of Strasbourg!”
It asked what effect his appointment would have on research in gender theory, certain biomedical experiments and other issues the Catholic Church disapproves of.
Almost anywhere else in France, a theologian could not have even been hired as a lecturer, much less rise to become a university president, because the country’s official separation of church and state bars the teaching of theology in public education.
This church-state separation, enshrined in law in 1905 and known as laïcité, banished religion from the public service — including state-run education — in traditionally Catholic France.
This principle of strict neutrality has long had wide support, and it has become increasingly part of the political debate in recent years as some Muslims have pressured the state to make accommodations for Islam. This made international headlines last summer when resort towns banned head-to-toe “burkini” bathing suits as a violation of laïcité. With presidential and parliamentary elections......
(Excerpt) Read more at religionnews.com ...
Would anyone complain if he was a Muslim. . . or would that be celebrated as a sign of diversity and integration?
Money quote :
“But many people interpret laïcité as a policy of neutralization, so religions must be banned from the public sphere,” he said, adding this aggressive suspicion of all faiths amounted to a narrow interpretation of the law. “
“... narrow interpretation of the law.” One of the primary problems with French politics.
Trump/Pence, MAGA!
Why did the French plant trees along the Champs Elysees?
So 1 million Muslims
could walk to the Mosque in the shade.
No, they planted them because Germans preferred marching in the shade.
They *chopped them down* because the Muzzies wanted sunlight.
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