How the Catholic Church made its peace with Charlie Hebdo

[cbayer]

http://theweek.com/article/index/274725/how-the-catholic-church-made-its-peace-with-charlie-hebdo

The satirical magazine began as an enemy of the French clergy. But under the aegis of Enlightenment liberalism, they found common cause.
By Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry | 6:06am ET


Charlie Hebdo was famous for skewering the church. (Illustration | Images courtesy Facebook.com/CharlieHebdo)

I was brought up to hate Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo's genesis was not as a generic humor magazine, but as a part of a specific strain of the French left, the anticlerical left, which was defined specifically by its hostility to religion and, historically, my religion, Roman Catholicism. Think of Bill Maher as a very milquetoast version of the French anticlerical left.

Until the Danish cartoon affair, when Charlie Hebdo began to suffer the ire of jihadism, and responded with its masterful and felicitous trolling, it was much more likely to make my faith the target of its crude attacks. Even though Charlie Hebdo lampooned everything, it had a particular interest in attacking religion as the most stupid and despicable thing on the face of the planet.

In France, the battles over separation of church and state often ended up in the streets — and often turned bloody. During the French Reign of Terror and the Paris Commune many Catholics were martyred, but even democratic governments oppressed religion. The French Third Republic for several years banned religious schools, forcing many families into exile. Catholicism lost, and France got the hard-secularist bargain that it is so well known for.

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[TexasMommaWithAHat]

1. Very good article

and it's not lengthy if anyone wants to read it.

Thanks for posting.