Can the Church position itself on pension reform? [Parole d’évêque – avec Mgr Papin]

The news is strongly marked by the mobilizations against the pension reform. New demonstrations took place this Tuesday, January 31, in Lorraine and throughout France. Can the Church position itself on this subject, as it can do when it comes to bioethics, for example? Although the subject of pension reform has a more economic connotation, Bishop Papin thinks that the Church has something to say on these issues. “Of course, the mission of the Church is not to position itself on the age of retirement. On the other hand, it is part of its mission to call for social justice, for people who have been weakened by hard work to be taken into account, for our society to give everyone retirement conditions that allow them to live this stage of life. However, we see that for a good number of people, it is a question of surviving.regrets the Bishop of Nancy and Toul.

Beyond pensions, it is above all “a deep unease about work” that emerges from this social movement. “We have changed times. A few decades ago, work was seen as a way to achieve personal fulfillment and contribute to the common good. It was a major place of socialization,” explains Bishop Papin. “Today, work appears as a forced activity, sometimes dehumanizing, which must be shortened as much as possible. As if real life were elsewhere. At the same time as we deal with the question of pensions, we should deal with the question of work”.