InterreligiousD:AFavart_esp.qxd
18/01/2008
16:37
PÆgina 6
First, his conception is a resolutely theistic conception, identifying religion with God and vice versa: No man is much good unless he believes in God and obeys His Laws. So every Scout should have a religion. Thus atheists have no place in B.-P.’s Scouting. In more recent years this attitude has come to be controversial. In 1969 Michel Rigal, then Secretary General of the International Catholic Scouters’ Conference, in his report to the World Conference at Helsinki on “Scouting and Religious Training” summed up the controversy in the following way: “BP is extremely hostile to atheists and atheism. For him, an atheist is a presumptuous being, essentially lacking intelligence and humility. Nowadays, atheism cannot be dealt with in such a cursory manner. [...] Even the Catholic Church and the Pope Paul VI himself adopted a more nuanced position towards atheists. The secretariat responsible for non-believers published a fundamental document entitled “The dialogue with the atheists”. On the other hand, one cannot deny that atheism has certain greatness in at least two ways: 1) the first form of greatness of the atheist - and I personally experienced this time and again - is that he does not accept faith as a kind of consolation like, for example, a child needs her doll or sings little songs in order not to be afraid. The atheist does not accept what he cannot verify. He only admits what he is able to experience- He thinks that it is better to come out of it all the worse and alone rather than to entertain an illusory confidence in a groundless belief. Such an attitude cannot be characterised only as arrogant and presumptuous; indeed it is often upright and exacting. 2) modem atheism is also connected with a certain form of scientific and technical culture that, on the other side, is the honour of human intellect. Science and techniques do not, by nature, produce atheism, but, in a first stage, the atheist accepts a sort of reduction of his mind and identifies human intelligence as limited to analytic intellect or experimental investigation”. The resolution of the World Conference and the constitutions of several Scout organisations today allow atheists to take the Scout Promise and join the world brotherhood of Scouts provided they believe in a “spiritual reality”.
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In fact, the fundamental divide today seems to be not so much between these “spiritual” atheists and the “non-spiritual” atheists, but between the atheists seriously engaged in the search of a sense of life and the agnostics or the simple unbelievers; and, on a