EU Court Orders Italy to Remove Crucifixes from Schools - Italians in Uproar

[Niccolo and Donkey]

Crucifix ruling sparks uproar in Italy

Reuters

Gilbert Reilhac and Philip Pullella

November 3, 2009

The European Court of Human Rights ruled today that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classrooms, sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

“This is an abhorrent ruling,” said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals. “It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history.”

The court ruling, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls, a common sight that is part of every Italian's life, could disturb children who were not Christians. Italy has been in the throes of national debate on how to deal with a growing population of immigrants, mostly Muslims, and the court sentence is likely to become another battle cry for the centre-right government's policy to restrict newcomers.

The Vatican spokesman said he would not comment until he knew more about the ruling but Italy's powerful bishops' conference said the ruling “evokes sadness and bewilderment.”

Members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government bristled, weighing in with words such as “shameful,” “offensive,” “absurd,” “unacceptable,” and “pagan.” But condemnation crossed party lines. Paola Binetti, a Catholic in the opposition Democratic Party, the successor of what was once the West's largest communist party, said: “In Italy, the crucifix is a specific sign of our tradition.”

The case was brought by an Italian national, Soile Lautsi, who complained that her children had to attend a public school in northern Italy, which had crucifixes in every room. Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said crucifixes on the walls of tens of thousands of classrooms “does not mean adherence to Catholicism” but are a symbol of Italy's heritage.

“The history of Italy is marked by symbols and if we erase symbols we erase part of ourselves,” Ms. Gelmini said.

Ms. Lautsi, the woman who filed the suit, said crucifixes on walls ran counter to her right to give her children a secular education and the Strasbourg-based court ruled in her favour. “The presence of the crucifix ... could be encouraging for religious pupils, but also disturbing for pupils who practised other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities,” the court said in a written ruling. “The State (must) refrain from imposing beliefs in premises where individuals were dependent on it,” it added, saying the aim of public education was “to foster critical thinking.”

Pierferdinando Casini of the opposition Union of Christian Democrats party said the ruling showed that European institutions were “spineless,” noting the failure to mention the continent's Christian roots in Europe's constitution.

Mario Baccini, a senator in Mr. Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, said the court had “gone adrift in paganism.”

Two Italian laws dating from the 1920s, when the Fascists were in power, state that schools must display crucifixes. Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, said such rulings were leading to “a Europe without an identity.”

Only a handful of politicians defended the court, including some members of the Democratic Party, as well as members of the communist party and atheist groups.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

The march of the secularists continues unabated as they mildly ape the Marxists who torched churches and attacked priests and nuns.

“This is an abhorrent ruling,” said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals. “It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history.”

Rocco Buttiglione led the charge to enshrine Christianity into the EU Constitution, but was rebuffed. This is part of the fallout from that.

[mladikov]

“The State (must) refrain from imposing beliefs in premises where individuals were dependent on it,” it added, saying the aim of public education was “to foster critical thinking.”

'Imposing' beliefs and allowing religion a place in the public sphere are two entirely different things. Nobody is forcing students to venerate or pray in front of the crosses or to accept them as anything other than a reminder of the faith traditionally held by many Italians. Lawsuits like these are always stalking horses for the secularist agenda; there is little question of whether or not the plaintiff is genuinely motivated by humanitarian concern.

[Ambassador Chapuys]

Curious enough, Socialist Spain has said they would not apply this and let each individual school decide for themselves.

[Grapple]

I wonder if they delayed this ruling until after the Irish voted?

[RuneX2]

The European Court of Human Rights is an illegitimate entity that has been corrupted by its own power. I do not acknowledge its legitimacy.

[Petr]

Originally Posted by Ambassador Chapuys

Curious enough, Socialist Spain has said they would not apply this and let each individual school decide for themselves.

They apparently don't have the guts to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. From Michael Burleigh's book Sacred Causes (2006):

pp. 127-8, 129, 132, 134

Anarchist and left-wing anticlericalism enabled the highly fissiparous right to regroup, while also reconnecting millions of ordinary Catholics whose sensibilities had been offended by mobs which, in May 1931, sacked and burned about one hundred Church properties in Madrid and other cities, allegedly in response to earlier monarchist provocation. Opprobrium spread to a government, including its Catholic Republican members, which not only refused to stop the incendiaries, on the ground that "all the convents in Madrid are not worth the life of one republican," but needlessly ordered the removal of all religious symbols from schoolrooms. 7

Republican Spain had become part of a "terribile triangolo" whose object was the eradication of religion. 10 Anticlericals in the Cortes responded in kind, with snide remarks about the "Mercantile Society of Jesus", while the Socialist leader Azana crowed that with these 1931-3 measures Spain had ceased to be Catholic.

In the Republican-held areas, nearly seven thousand clerics were murdered, the majority between July and December 1936, in anticlerical atrocities that eclipsed those of the Jacobins.

Anticlerical violence certainly had a tradition in Spain, with a total of 235 clerics being killed in 1822-3, 1834-5, 1868, 1873, 1909, 1931 and 1934, not to speak of five hundred or so churches being burned down over the same period. 22

Petr

[Elvis Hitler]

That photograph of soldiers shooting at a statue of Jesus comes to mind

[Ambassador Chapuys]

[Elvis Hitler]

^^ is that for real or war-propaganda? What is the story behind it?