Hendrik Hoet 0104

Question: What is your view of secular law as we know it in our society?

Hoet: Speaking again for myself, and perhaps also for the Jews: we as Christians in the West have helped to build that law. We grew up in it, although there has been the occasional resistance to it from the Catholic Church – and now I am speaking for the Catholic Church – against democracy, against the French revolution, against civil rights etc. Nowadays, and especially since the Vatican Council, we can see that the Catholic Church accepts the current system of law, with the freedom to criticise if its limitations become apparent. I think that we can say the same for Judaism. The Jews also grew up in this system, and have helped to build it. The Muslims, however, clearly have more trouble with it. They have their own system of law, the Sharia. Christians and Jews have accepted a separation between church and state - for the Jew you would have to say synagogue and state. This has become paradigmatic: the distinction between religion – the church as an institutionalised religious system – and the state. For Muslims this is not yet evident.

Question: Do you not think that one of assets of a secular state is that it can allow for a trialogue such as the one you are conducting? Wouldn’t this be much harder to do in a society where religion and state are not separated?

 Hoet: Yes, just look at the Middle Ages, and even later. There have been organised dialogues, in Paris, in Spain, between Jews and Christians, or Catholics. But there the goal of the people who organised it – namely the Catholics, the Christians – was to convince the Jews of truth of Christianity. The aim of the dialogue was to show that the Jews were wrong. And when the Jews defended themselves better than the Christians, the dialogue was simply stopped. So indeed, a serious dialogue is only possible there where both partners in the dialogue can talk freely.

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