by Paul Eliefrom Georgetown University
Weekend of Freedom in Rome
For 300 years the Pontifical University Urbaniana — a k a the Urban College — was located in the palace at the top of the Spanish Steps. For the past century it has been on the Janiculum Hill, between Vatican City and Trastevere: and that’s where several dozen scholars are meeting today and tomorrow for a major conference on Christianity and freedom organized by my Georgetown colleagues Thomas Farr and Timothy Samuel Shah.
As the Advent reflection I cited earlier this week points out, what we conceive of as “freedom from” is often better understood as “freedom for.” But Farr and Shah all through their work have kept in view the simple fact that for tens of millions of believers worldwide — and that’s putting the figure modestly — there is no “freedom for” anything because there is no “freedom from” persecution by anti-religious rulers or majorities. More regularly than we may suppose, the believers who lack such freedom are Christian believers, and the conference will explore the topic by placing the freedom of citizens in the context of freedom as it has been understood through Christian history — the history that began at the catacombs not far from the Urbaniana and led up to the declaration of the place as a pontifical institute by John XXIII shortly before Vatican II.
Shah summed up five myths about global Christian persecution on Foxnews.com earlier this week. Myth four, in his formulation, is this: “Christianity has been a net nuisance, bringing persecution onto itself.” That gets a certain attitude just right in just a few words.
That’s part of the catacomb of San Stefano above.