ITALIANS CROSS ABOUT CRUCIFIXES
arah
Part of the Swiss People's Party's argument against minarets is that
they are a symbol of political power - more than they are about
religion.
Now with a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights against the
use of crucifixes in Italian schools, the same claim is being made for
this symbol of Christianity.
Soile Lautsi wants to give her children a secular education and
objected to the presence of a crucifix in every classroom at their
school in northern Italy.
A law dating back to the 1920s requires crucifixes to be hung in
Italian schools.
The European Court said the compulsory display of a symbol of a given
religion in public buildings violated the rights of parents to educate
their children as they wished.
A law from the 1920s requires crucifixes to be hung in Italian
schools
The ruling has produced an angry response from politicians and church
leaders who say the crucifix is much more than a religious symbol in
Italy.
Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said the crucifix was a "symbol
of our tradition", not a mark of Catholicism.
The Reverend Frederico Lombardi said the European court should not
interfere in what was a profoundly Italian issue, and said it was
wrong to imply that the crucifix could be a sign of division or
exclusion.
Soile Lautsi's case is similar to one brought in 1995 by a parent in
the German state of Bavaria.
A German constitutional court decided it was against religious freedom
for crucifixes to be imposed in classrooms.
The Bavarian parliament came up with a new law, requiring the removal
of crucifixes - but only if a parent insisted.
The US Supreme Court has also had to decide whether religious symbols
break the constitution, and its separation of church and state.
It recently ruled against the positioning of framed copies of the 10
Commandments in two courtrooms in Kentucky, because they had a
"predominantly religious purpose".
However, the court did acknowledge that even the 10 Commandments -
taken from the Book of Exodus in the Bible - could be displayed, if it
was done to illustrate the country's legal history.
It said a monument outside a government building in Texas could
continue to display the Commandments, which the Bible describes being
given to Moses by God.
But even without court rulings some Italian Christians suspect that
long-established traditions are under threat by the changing
atmosphere.
Among the casualties, they complain that schools are abandoning
nativity plays for fear of offending people from other faiths.
