Trust the politicians to play to the gallery and make a big to-do to keep attention away from more relevant topics.Locally, Labour Party leader Joseph Muscat pipped the Nationalists (most associated with the Church, being a Christian Democratic Party) to the post by jumping ahead to defend one of the Catholic Church’s most poignant symbols – the crucifix.
Not that I think it needed defending. I do not believe the Church really thinks that removing the crucifix from the walls of Italian state school classrooms is going to reduce its importance.
The crucifix is the central symbol of Christianity and that cannot be diminished, so let us put this issue in its proper perspective.
In true Latin fashion, most of the Italian newspapers carried the story on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to ban the crucifix from Italian state school classroom walls all over their front pages, and I cannot understand the outrage expressed by most politicians.
As Berlusconi pointed out: “Italy has so many churches, you only have to walk 200 metres forwards, backwards, to the right or to the left and you find a symbol of Christianity.”
So why is he getting so hot under the collar? The conservative Prime Minister, who draws much of his support from the Roman Catholic majority, told a television show that the ruling was an attempt “to deny Europe’s Christian roots. This is not acceptable for us Italians”. You would have thought that the churches were being closed down.
Two Italian laws, which state that schools must display crucifixes, date from the 1920s when the Fascists were in power. Are those the Christian roots to which Berlusconi was referring, I wonder?
The laws have been applied less rigorously since 1984, when Catholicism ceased to be the state religion.
The issue, as it often is, is about supremacy, which the Catholic Church wants to maintain.
Nice move though, Joseph. In Parliament on Wednesday, Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat scooped the moment when he said that he disagreed with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights.
Yet, although it was Dr Muscat who brought up the subject in the House, The Times heading suggested the PM instigated the debate – “The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition this evening expressed their disagreement with a European Court of Human Rights ruling that called for crucifixes to be removed from Italian classrooms.”
The heading also missed the essential word “state”. Not all Italian classrooms are involved.
“To believe in a secular society does not mean doing away with religion, culture and tradition,” Dr Muscat said. He asked the government for its views, reported The Times.
He is right; secular does not mean doing away with religion, culture or tradition, but the European Court’s decision has not challenged this.
All the court decided was that as state schools in Italy are there for the children of all religions, it makes more sense not to have any religious symbols.
The court argued that the presence of the crucifix could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign and they would feel they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion.
Secular means not controlled by a religious body. That does not exclude religion, but it does not allow any religious body domination.
The European Human Rights Court has not decreed that crucifixes should not adorn the walls of Christian schools. The concept is that no religious symbols should be prominent in state schools.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said he agreed with Dr Muscat.
“I disagree with the decision completely, in the most categorical manner; it does not make sense,” he said, adding that it denied the rights of individuals as well as countries.
I would have thought that the decision made a lot of sense. It is not all Italian classrooms, it is public, as in state, schools to which the ban applies.
The individuals in an Italian state school classroom come from different religions. The ruling might deny the right of a Christian individual to have a crucifix in his classroom, but concurrently it also denies the right of any other individual, with different religious beliefs, to have his/her symbols displayed.
In 2005, the Human Rights Court also upheld a then long-standing ban on headscarves in public buildings in Turkey, and students are forbidden from wearing headscarves or any other religious symbol in public schools in secular France.
Anyway, as for rights in the classroom, the individual children do not have any say on what is displayed on the classroom wall. It is, after all, church or state propaganda.
The case was brought by an Italian national, Finnish-born Soile Lautsi (not a Muslim, as some have wrongly assumed) who complained that her children had to attend a public (state) school in northern Italy that had crucifixes in every room.
She argued that crucifixes on walls ran counter to her right to give her children a secular education, and the Strasbourg-based court agreed with her.
And what a can of worms has been released. It is not only the PM who is losing the plot here. What a shambles Archbishop Cremona got himself into over the issue. That a Church representative can be indignant about censorship is outrageous.
He does not find the burka offensive, he said, and he never felt irritated when he saw women wearing it. That statement must have gone down well with progressive women within the Church. I suppose he would quite like to see us women back in the ghonella and walking at least two steps behind the men!
The burka, in case the archbishop does not know, symbolises male as well as religious domination over women, and makes women invisible.
His statement puts paid to Pope John Paul 11’s apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for historically demeaning women.
I suppose, really, that Archbishop Cremona would not mind if we had a similar state to that of Iran, where religion dictates how people live.
“The State (must) refrain from imposing beliefs in premises where individuals were dependent on it... the aim of public education was to foster critical thinking”, said the European Court of Human Rights in its judgement.
“The presence of the crucifix could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign, and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion,” said the judgement.
But many people are ignoring the fact that the crucifix is indeed a stamp of a given religion. It might be “a sign of God’s offer of love, of union and of welcome for the whole of humanity”, as argued by Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, director of the Holy See Press Office, but that is how it is seen by Christians and not necessarily by everybody else.
He, together with almost all the people up in arms about the decision, completely ignores the point that a secular education should exclude religious symbols – that is the crux of the matter.
The crucifix was not considered as a sign of division, of exclusion and of limitation of liberty by the court, as Fr Lombardi put it, but as being contrary to a secular education.
“The State was to refrain from imposing beliefs in premises where individuals were dependent on it. In particular, it was required to observe confessional neutrality in the context of public education, where attending classes was compulsory irrespective of religion, and where the aim should be to foster critical thinking in pupils.”
Most of the outraged comments I have read are either an over-reaction, or are presenting arguments that really do not apply to the issue. I know that the crucifix is a Christian – not national – meaningful symbol that raises a multitude of emotions in Christians, but that should not prevent us from understanding and accepting a logical decision.
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