Some time ago you expressed concern that a British law intended to secure equality could imply that the Roman Catholic Church might not be legally able to refuse ordination to women or gays. The French government (probably to be followed by others such as Denmark) is considering banning the Burka or complete veil worn by some Muslim women. Is this equally worrying from the point of view of religious freedom?
The motivations given for banning the burka are various, ranging from considering it as a religious symbol implying in particular a concept of gender relations, to regarding it like the mask or stocking that burglars wear to conceal their identity.
In fact, in France, only 1,900 women are said to wear the burka, out of the more than five-million-strong Muslim community, but there are both true stories and jokes about burglars who disguise themselves in burkas to carry out their business more efficiently.
Actually, the garment began as a kind sand-mask in the desert in pre-Islamic times. The Arabic word is derived from a root meaning to patch up (like the Maltese raqqa) and is nowadays used to refer to an outer garment enveloping the whole body, while the rectangular, semi-transparent face veil attached to the headscarf is called niqab.
Westerners often find it amusing when a burka-clad lady removes it on going indoors and reveals a brilliantly made-up face. Ninety per cent of burka wearers in France are under 40 and most of them did not bring over the habit with them but have adopted it as a political and cultural statement.
The Koran itself says nothing about the burka or niqab but there are specific injunctions about modesty in behaviour (hijab) and dress. Pertinently, Cardinal Vingt-Trois, the Archbishop of Paris, remarked that burka wearing was the exact extreme, polar opposite of the exhibitionistic quasi-nudity adopted by many Westerners. Both were expressive of a concept and attitude towards the body which could be called religious.
That, however, was not in itself entitlement to practise it, just as religion cannot be used to justify cannibalism or rejection of blood transfusion. State regulation of clothing needs to be discussed in terms other than those of religious freedom.
What, then, do you think about the French government proposals, as well as the contorted and inconsistently applied local laws concerning decency of dress?
Cardinal Vingt-Trois believes the same attitude should be adopted by the State to both styles of covering or displaying the body. Like the writers of the 200-page report by the French parliamentary committee on the burka but unlike the proponent from Nicolas Sarkozy's party of a law that will come up in the French Parliament after the regional elections in March, the cardinal does not believe that legislation is a practical way of tackling such matters.
He favours encouragement of a manner of dressing that corresponds to the nature and dignity of the human body.
In fact, the French parliamentary committee goes further. It proposes disallowing the burka in public places and public transport, but not with punishment for trespassers. They will lose the benefits of the public services.
It seems to me that such measures can be justified on the ground that identity-concealing garb is inappropriate in contexts when facial expression and transparent body language is important for the ordinary course of social communication.
I am less convinced that they are reasonably grounded, as the exclusion of headscarves in schools in 2004 was, because burkas are religious symbols. Their display should only be banned when they manifestly go against well-established human values.
How wide is agreement with the views of Cardinal Vingt-Trois and yourself on this issue?
I heard a famous jesuit, Paul Valladier, an expert on Church-State relations, say on KTO, the Parisian Catholic television station, that he regarded the burka as offensive to the status of women in France and as blasphemous in a Christian perspective. My impression is that most right-wingers would agree with Valladier, but those on the centre and left would be on our side, although with a large variety of different nuances.
I myself think the most important question to delve into is the motivation that is leading intellectual Muslim women to resort to the burka. Is it a comprehensible response to the contemporary Western European loss of the sense of sacredness of the body?
Unfortunately, we cannot hear the views of an even more famous Jesuit expert on political-religious relations, because Jean-Yves Calvez passed away earlier this month. Fr Calvez had greatly impressed me when I was a student at the Jesuit College at Oxford, Campion Hall, and the newly ordained Fr Calvez published his first book on Marx, which led to his being invited to lecture on Marx in the Soviet Union itself and throughout the world.
Even in those years, Calvez was arguing not for revolution, but for a radical reform of the capitalist system, by raising awareness of its structural tendency to widen the gap between rich and poor if no corrective measures on the free market were put in place.
Calvez was the assistant of Fr Pedro Arrupe when he was General of the Jesuits, and he has written both an excellent biography of the model priest that Arrupe was, and of the problems that arose with Pope Paul VI mainly because of the Jesuit idea of abolishing the difference between priests and non-priests in their order, which the Pope judged would diminish priestly vocations.
His exposition of Catholic social thought is still probably the best available. His articles on Christian-Muslim relations in the Jesuit periodical Etudes also still provide the perspective which allows the most balanced view of even the burka question and its deeper implication.
Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.