Croire au relatif : Les catholiques face aux défis de la société contemporaine

Résumé Fr En

L’auteur, sociologue, analyse plusieurs des grands défis que lance la société contemporaine au catholicisme. Ils sont autant de frontières : deux externes et deux autres en son sein. Les premiers, externes, sont d’une part la justice sociale et de l’autre la bioéthique. Les seconds, internes, concernent la nature même d’être église aujourd’hui.

The author analyses four challenges which contemporary society poses to Catholicism. These are in fact four different boundaries: two external ones and two at its very heart. The first, external ones are social justice and bioethics. The second, internal ones, have to do with the very nature of being Church today, on the one hand, what it means to form a community of believers or people intensely involved, without any asymmetry between clergy and the laity, and on the other hand, the continued state of latency in which are suspended the questions of clerical celibacy and women’s access to the priesthood. The latter two questions are in fact only apparently internal, since they reflect very precisely the different ways of understanding and feeling Catholic which manifest themselves in various forms, depending on whether one remains a convinced believer and an activist on behalf of the destiny of one’s own Church, or whether one retains a mental reservation as regards numerous doctrinal and ethical questions that the Church, as the depository of a revealed truth, may consider beyond questioning and non-negotiable.