Articles by CNA Daily News

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French president presses Muslim leaders to embrace ‘republican values’

December 2, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

CNA Staff, Dec 2, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- In the wake of several suspected Islamist attacks in France this year, President Emmanuel Macron has asked the country’s Muslim leaders to sign a “charter of republican values” agreeing to a rejection of Islam as a political movement.

According to the BBC, Macron’s proposed charter is one part of a wider government strategy to curb foreign influence and prevent violence and threats from extremists.

Macron has, since his 2017 election, emphasized support for secular government and has criticized what he calls “Islamist separatism,” encouraging the nation’s Muslims to integrate into French society. As part of legislation that Macron has introduced to tackle extremism, homeschooling would be restricted.

The charter will, among other things, state that Islam is a religion and not a political movement, the BBC reports.

Members of the French Council of the Muslim Faith agreed in November to form a national council of imams, and the CFCM is set to meet with Macron this week to discuss the proposed charter. The CFCM will be charged with accrediting imams.

France is home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority, at around 5 million.

The debate over the charter and the “French values” it contains continues following at least three suspected Islamist terrorist attacks during 2020.

In mid-October, a Muslim student beheaded teacher Samuel Paty after Paty showed his class a cartoon depicting Muhammad.

Eyewitnesses said that suspect Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov shouted “Allahu akbar”— Arabic for “God is great”— as he murdered Paty near the middle school where he taught. The 18-year-old Russian national of Chechen origin was shot dead by police shortly after the murder.

Public schools in France held a minute of silence in tribute to Paty Nov. 2, and some classrooms held discussions on freedom of expression.

The discussions of freedom of expression led to the police investigation of at least 17 minors, one of whom is Catholic, the New York Times reported.

The justice ministry said 14 minors were interrogated in police stations or held in custody. Some of their families were questioned about their religious practices.

One 16-year-old near Marseille was arrested for continuing to listen to music on headphones during the minute of silence.

Another Islamic attacker on Oct. 29 killed three people inside Notre-Dame de Nice. Police shot and arrested the perpetrator, Brahim Aouissaoui. Aouissaoui reportedly arrived in Europe in late September, first at the Italian island Lampedusa before traveling to France.

Other attacks took place in France Oct. 29. In Montfavet, near Avignon, a man waving a handgun made threats and was killed by the police two hours after the Nice attack. Radio station Europe 1 said the man was also shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the CFCM, condemned the terrorist attack and asked French Muslims to cancel their festivities for Mawlid, the Oct. 29 celebration of Muhammad’s birthday, “as a sign of mourning and solidarity with the victims and their loved ones.”

Macron introduced sweeping anti-radicalization legislation following the attacks, which is set to be debated in the French cabinet Dec. 9. Restrictions on homeschooling are among the provisions of the bill.

Other provisions of the bill include stricter punishments for those who intimidate public officials on religious grounds; extending national identification numbers— which most students in France already have— to homeschoolers to ensure that students are attending school; and a ban on sharing personal information that allows people who want to harm a person to find them, a practice known in the U.S. as “doxxing.”

The concept of laïcité, or secularism, has been a fixture of French law since 1905. At that time, the Third Republic officially established state secularism, causing a subsequent wave of anti-Catholicism, which included the end of government funding for religious schools, mandatory civil marriage, and the removal of chaplains from the army.

The principles of laïcité have evolved over the years to apply to private citizens as well as the government, and in recent decades been applied to Muslim women who wear hijabs or other religious garb in public.

During summer 2016, the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, ruled that the burkini ban in the town of Villeneuve-Loubet “seriously and clearly illegally breached fundamental freedoms,” including freedom of belief. 

On Nov. 30 this year, the French Council of State ruled that a proposed 30-person limit on Masses and other forms of public worship is a “disproportionate” government measure and must be modified by Dec. 2.

The country’s Catholic bishops welcomed the decision Nov. 29, saying in a statement that “reason has been recognized.”

France has suffered over a dozen Islamist terrorist attacks since 2015, including a January attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, and a series of coordinated attacks in Paris during November 2015 that killed at least 130 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.

Father Jacques Hamel was beheaded by supporters of the Islamic State while offering Mass July 26, 2016. Following Paty’s killing this year, religious leaders gathered at a memorial to Hamel and laid a wreath in Paty’s honor.

In England, multiple Catholic bishops have expressed concern that the government’s push for “British values” in schools, meant to counter Islamist extremism, could instead harm sincere religious believers and burden Catholic schools.


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News Briefs

‘Mary on the Mantel’? Think ‘Elf on the Shelf’, but Catholic 

December 1, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Denver Newsroom, Dec 1, 2020 / 02:55 pm (CNA).- For the past 16 years, Elf on the Shelf has become a tradition, both hated and loved, for families in the days leading up to Christmas.

Based on a book and accompanying doll, the elf is a scout for Santa Claus, who watches children’s behavior during the day and reports back to the North Pole every night. There are rules about how to interact with the elf and a myriad of ideas for the things he can do.

Whether Elf on the Shelf is a “footless creep” or a beloved tradition, the concept sparked the idea for Mary on the Mantel, a Catholic spin on the traveling doll that aims help children enter more deeply into Advent.

Erica Tighe Campbell, founder of the Catholic lifestyle products company Be A Heart, was pregnant with her first child last year when she came up with the idea of creating a Mary doll.

“I was doing my baby registry, and..I saw a closet for a doll, and I thought, ‘What doll needs outfits?’” Campbell told CNA.

“Then I started thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, wait, Mary has so many outfits in all of her different apparitions. What if there was a really beautiful Mary doll that looked like other things that are selling?’”

The outfits could help teach children about Mary and her messages in the different apparitions she has made, Campbell added.

“On feast days, you could talk about the different apparitions with your children by getting out her Guadalupe dress or getting out her Fatima dress, and recognizing that she is the same person, but she appears to us differently,” Campbell said.

Campbell said she wanted the doll to help foster a deeper relationship with Mary for children.

“I wanted my daughter to have a doll to teach her about the comfort that Mary brings,” she said.

“In my own life, Mary’s motherly love and care is what has brought me through so many difficult times. As a child, going through things with my family in high school, I would always turn to the Hail Mary, that was my go-to,” she said. “And as I’ve grown as a woman, I really look to her yes…saying yes to God, even when things are uncertain.”

Campbell made her first Mary doll this year, with a simple blue veil and linen dress, available in three different skin tones.

The idea to use the Mary dolls for “Mary on the Mantel” first came from her web developer, who is the father of four children. He suggested that Mary somehow replaced Elf on the Shelf.

Campbell started thinking of ways to tweak the idea of the traveling elf to better suit Advent, and about the ways Christians can prepare their hearts for the coming of Jesus at Christmas.

“Elf on the Shelf reports back to Santa if girls and boys are good or bad, and really in my own spiritual life, I have had to kind of undo that theology of ‘I’m good when I do this and I’m bad when I do this, and God is watching,’” Campbell said.

God is not like Santa, she said, in that he’s not a “transactional God, where as long as I’m doing good, then I will reap the rewards of a gift under the Christmas tree. In my own parenting, I didn’t want to pass that message along to my children.”

“And so I started conceptualizing: what could Mary do instead of being this watchful tattletale? That’s going to create a friendship with her? How do we teach children to be friends with Mary?”

“I started thinking about what Mary was doing, even before they got the census announcement? She was probably preparing her house, preparing all of these things. She went on a trip to see Elizabeth. There are so many ways that we can recognize the personhood of Mary, and talk about that with our children – that she was a girl, she had normal daily tasks that she needed to do.”

In late November, Campbell posted to social media, announcing the idea for Mary on the Mantel – a Mary doll that would show up in different places around the house every morning of Advent.

Instead of Elf on the Shelf’s brand of mischief, Mary would be caught doing things to prepare for the coming of baby Jesus, like washing baby clothes, or reading a pregnancy book, or planning her journey to Bethlehem for the census.

“I have this image of Mary taking our hands and leading us to her Son, a little bit like how I imagine for my own self, having the baby and wanting people to meet her,” Campbell said.

“We get to prepare ourselves for Christmas, and putting up our Advent wreath and our Christmas tree and cleaning the house and wrapping presents – that is similar to our preparation. We prepare homes just as a mother prepares her home to welcome her new baby.”

Instead of reporting on the children’s bad behavior, every morning Mary would be found with a message encouraging children to do a specific act of kindness each day. The notes can be left in Mary’s tote bag, which comes with each ‘Be A Heart Mary’ doll.

“How do we really become like the people who are prepared to meet the baby Jesus in the manger? We can do acts of kindness for others,” Campbell said. Because the parents can write whatever message they want and place it in Mary’s bag, they can choose acts of kindness that are tailored to their child’s development and what they are capable of accomplishing.

“There are simple things to do. You could read a book to your sibling, or you could do a chore without being asked, or you could write letters to your grandparents, or call a friend, little things like that,” she said.

“Children could go through their toys and find toys that they don’t play with that are still good, that could be donated to another child who needs them. But the parents are in control, so it doesn’t get overwhelming.” Mary’s linen dress has room for paper towel or tissue stuffing to make her belly “grow,” Campbell added, as Christmas nears and she prepares to give birth.

And for parents struggling to come up with new ideas, Campbell’s blog post on the idea includes long lists of ideas of activities that the Mary doll can do, and ideas for age-appropriate acts of kindness.

The Mary on the Mantel project can be done with any Mary doll or figurine, Campbell added. After her Mary on the Mantel post, the Be A Heart dolls sold out, though Campbell is hoping to have more in stock soon.

Campbell is also planning the first dress for Mary, which will be the Our Lady of Guadalupe dress. And she has plans for a St. Joseph doll, a baby Jesus doll, a donkey for them to ride on, and more.

The Mary on the Mantel tradition also differs from Elf on the Shelf in that parents do not have to put Mary away once Christmas arrives, Campbell said. In fact, the Mary doll is meant to be a companion all year long.

“We really just think that journeying with Mary is an important way for children to enter into the Advent season,” Campbell said.

“It allows for something fun, and something that parents can do that’s not super complicated, hopefully, and that kids can wake up and be excited for, and be excited about doing things for other people every day,” she said. “I’m interested to see what comes of it as people use their own imaginations with it.”

 


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