Cardinal Sfeir exposes attempts to Islamicize schools
Beirut (AsiaNews) For Lent the Lebanese Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, released a public statement to Christians and the entire population dedicated to "to the homeland and values".
In his Feb. 20 message the head of the Maronite Catholic Church urged all Lebanese to "to cooperate in a clear and open manner."
Cardinal Sfeir pointed to problems riddling Lebanon's ruling class: corruption, nepotism, bribes and the impossibility of making "free decisions" ( hinting at Syrian occupation and pushiness).
The patriarch also said that in order to make living together work under a democratic system people must have the right to "demand rulers to explain themselves."
Cardinal Sfeir also touched upon one of the sorest wounds in the country's contemporary society: the education and training of future generations of Lebanese children. The latter is a serious issue in a country where drug use, alcohol abuse and gambling are ever the more widespread, reaping a particular ill-effect a family's ability to raise children freely, in an environment without such vices and bad influences forever one of Lebanese society's strong points.
The cardinal alerted Lebanese faithful to attempts to Islamicize public and private education by allowing ISESCO (an Islamic version of UNESCO: Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to operate in the country and exercise its influence on the Lebanese school system.
Such Isalmicization of education, he said, is "a threat not only to schools but to all of Lebanese culture."
To promote Islamic education as an absolute ideal for schooling throughout the country is to be ignorant of the fact that "(in Lebanon) there are two religions, two cultures and two civilizations at work, pertaining to Christianity and Islam," said Sfeir. "But both together form one people."
The patriarch stressed during the homily he delivered last Sunday in Bkerke that one of the real problems in contemporary Lebanese society is the disappearance of the middle class, a phenomenon Sfeir attributes to the failure of the government's postwar polices.
"We are deeply grieved by the fact that the middle class has ceased to exist, thereby dividing society among the large majority of those who go starving and the small minority which is over fed." (PB)
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