By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A new study on religious tolerance has revealed an alarming increase in discrimination against Christians as a result of the encroachment of secularism into European society.
CNA/EWTN News is reporting that the 40- page report issued by the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe contains dozens of examples of religious intolerance toward Christianity taking place throughout Europe.
For instance, a veteran family judge in Spain was fired, barred from practicing law for 18 years and fined the equivalent of $25,000 for delaying the adoption of a little girl by the lesbian partner of the girl’s mother.
In another case, administrators of a Protestant-run public hospital in Germanywere forced to strip all the crucifixes from the walls after a Muslim patient complained.
Spain’s socialist government fined a Christian television station in Spain 100,000 euros for running advertisements supporting the traditional family.
Even though this kind of religious persecution used to be associated with communist dictatorships or regimes run by religious extremists, these incidents of gross intolerance of Christianity are being fueled by the rise of secularism in European societies.
“Religious freedom is endangered especially with regard to its public and its institutional dimension,” said Dr. Gudrun Kugler, the Observatory’s director, to CNA. “We also receive many reports on the removal of Christian symbols, misrepresentation and negative stereotyping of Christians in the media, and social disadvantages for Christians, such as being ridiculed or overlooked for promotion in the work place.”
Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi said the new report “deserves attention.”
“It is a base on which to judge the dimensions and the nature of the phenomenon of intolerance and discrimination” he said in an editorial aired on Vatican television.
In many cases, the catalyst for this discrimination are anti-discrimination laws which are applied in ways that “causes indirect side-effect discrimination of Christians,” the report stated. “Hate speech legislation has a tendency to indirectly discriminate against Christians, criminalizing core elements of Christian teaching.”
In some cases, the Church has been penalized for what it teaches even within its own institutions. For instance, in 2009, the Catholic University of Milan was sued because it refused to renew the contract of a professor who openly declared sin to be “fiction” and said “Jesus was through and through a bad human being.” He also told his students that the Gospel was the “most frightening message ever made known to mankind.” A human rights court in Italy ruled that the school violated the professor’s right to freely express his opinion, “effectively placing the professor’s rights to speech above a Christian institution’s rights to preserve and promote its identity through its hiring practices,” CNA reports.
The report also cited a rising number of “hate crimes” committed against Christians and Christian symbols, including a rash of arson and desecration of churches across Europe.
This latest study comes only weeks after the 56-nation Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe met in Astana, Kazakhstan, where the Vatican’s top diplomat, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, drew attention to the alarming rise in the persecution of Christians.
“It is well documented that Christians are the most discriminated and persecuted religious group,” he said in an address to delegates.
“The international community must combat intolerance and discrimination against Christians with the same determination with which it fights against hate with respect to other religious communities,” he added.
Fr. Lombardi said the new report is an opportunity for reflection and commitment “not only from those who work for the defense of Christianity and its values, but also of all honest people truly desirous of protecting the values of tolerance and freedom of expression and religion.”
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