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London, June 10, 2015
Eight hundredth anniversart of Magna Carta
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is an honor and a joy for me to be given the floor at this Franco-British meeting on the occasion of Magna Carta’s eight hundredth anniversary. I speak as a Roman catholic priest who was for eight years chaplain to the members of the French Parliament, a paradoxical function in a strictly secular state like France, now a teacher of - inter alia - political theology and Cistercian theology at Collège des Bernardins, a place in Paris not without links to the context in which Magna Carta was born.
1.From Carta Caritatis to Magna Carta.
Legend, more indeed than history, claims, in France in any case, that
Magna Carta was drafted by Stephen Langton on French soil, in the
Cistercian Pontigny Abbey. Whatever the details and complexity of the drawing up of Magna Carta , it is not insignificant that a theologian of
Stephen Langton’s caliber, the first one, for example, who divided the Bible into chapters, should have taken an active part in the drafting of the source document for constitutional legality and democracy. Even if the work was done, in fact, after he returned from France, it surely bears the mark of his acquaintance with the Cistercian monastic world. Pontigny Abbey was one of the first “daughters” of Cîteaux, the mother-house of the great movement for monastic reform which began there in 1098. One characteristic of the Cistercian movement is that it gives a new place to the intimate and personal dimension of spiritual experience, thus contributing to what has been cal led “the birth of the individual in the twelfth century ”. In another respect, the rapid development of the network of
Cistercian monasteries brought about the need for a “constitutional” instrument for safeguarding the Order’s unity and fidelity to its initial spirit.
This is how, in 1114, one hundred years before Magna Carta was adopted, a Carta Caritatis was born which defines the Cistercian O rder’s organization and governance. Its chief drafter was Stephen Harding, the third Cîteaux abbot, an English monk born in Dorset around 1060. Thus,
Magna Carta is rooted in a monastic, spiritual and biblical tradition which sets in full light the truly democratic fruitfulness of Christianity.
2. The alliance of Faith and Reason.
I made this brief excursion into history because I wished to underline that religions as such should not be considered a priori as an obstacle to democracy. At the time of his historic meeting in Westminster Hall with

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British Members of Parliament on 17 September, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI forcefully stated as follows: “Religion […] is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.
” The scope of new ethical questions which political leaders must deal with today is so broad that they must imperatively listen in to all religious and philosophical traditions to place themselves at a level truly in line with human dignity.
While debating with the future Benedict XVI in 2004, agnostic philosopher
Jürgen Habermas noted in a similar line of thought: “The neutrality of state power as to conceptions about the world, which insures each citizen equal ethical freedom, is incompatible with making a vision of the secularized world politically universal. Secularized citizens, when playing their part as citizens, have no right to deny the truth potential present in religious images, nor to dispute the right of their believer fellow-citizens to bring their contributions to public debate in religious language .” This implies that
“believer citizens” seriously regard the place of reason in every authentically human experience, including spiritual experience. In
Westminster Hall, Benedict XVI spoke of “a two way process”, when religion and reason mutually purify each other. “This is why, he said, I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.”
3. Guaranteeing the rights of conscience.
“But ultimately, one will ask, what must prevail: religious convictions or rational norms expressed in positive law?
” Catholic tradition does not support immediate primacy of confessional opinions in political matters.
Before the German Parliament, in 2010, Benedict XVI most clearly stated:
“Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from
Revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law.” To say that, however, is not to promote adhesion to norms of positive law without reservation, because they may fail to correspond to the deep nature of man and man’s dignity; they may also be seriously debatable on a rational plane proper. This is why the place for ultimate decisions by citizens is neither their confessional adhesion as such nor their submitting to legal rules whatever they are, but conscience. This is what Benedict XVI had in mind in Westminster Hall when he recalled “the figure of Saint Thomas More, the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose ‘good servant’ he was”. There are cases today when

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“freedom of conscience”, seen as something strictly private, is valued at the expens e of “religious freedom”, in the fullest sense, which assumes the social and collective dimensions of religious adherence. It is important to emphasize that, in view of the social nature of the human person, there can be no authentic “freedom of conscience” without “religious freedom”.
This is why Pope John-Paul II often stated that religious freedom is freedom par excellence , a guarantee for all other freedoms.
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Thus, the religious element, the Christian element in the origins of Magna
Carta leads us to valorize, still today, the possible contribution of religions to the social compact, provided that in them reason and conscience be valued as the ultimate locus for discernment under protection of religious freedom.
Please allow me, in concluding, to recall another anniversary, the “June
18 appeal” by General De Gaulle, from London, seventy five years ago
Thursday next week. It was a grave case of civil disobedience by a
Christian citizen acting in conscience following rational discernment. Like
Stephen Harding and Stephen Langton, British religious on French soil, this French soldier gave testimony in London to the alliance of Faith and reason aiming at service in conscience of everyone’s liberty and dignity.
Thank you.
P. Matthieu Rougé
Professor, Notre Dame Faculty