CATHOLICISM BANNED FROM ITALY
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 08:35AM 
Did you see that Crucifixes have been banned in Italian schools by a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights?
The decision has enraged politicians, with Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini saying: 'This is a death blow for a Europe of values and rights. 'Europe's roots lie in its Christian identity. At a time when we're trying to bring religions closer, the Christian religion gets whacked.
The issue reduces down to the simple fact that a couple of atheists objected to the display of the Cross in schools run by the Italian State. Their objection has won the sympathy of the profoundly anti-Christian ECHR and hence the Cross will be torn down.
Italians who are outraged at this decision are also labouring under the profound misapprehension that they are still a Nation State with sovereignty over what they can and cannot display in their own schools. The ECHR was always aimed at subverting National laws - in this case those with clear Christian roots - and so it is that the eradication of symbols of the Christian faith continues across Euroland.
European Court 
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Reader Comments (20)
ahh the athiest boot of communism. If anything will give the Italians a kick in the eye of what they have joined this will....LOL
Slip sliding away.....
The Atheists precipitated this but others were cheering for this too and will be the main beneficiaries.
Over to you, Mohammad.
I think I've just about heard enough from the Godless loons. Let's be clear, this ruling will stretch further than Italy:
The case was brought by a Finnish woman, Soile Lautsi, who is married to an Italian.
Both are atheists. She had complained that her children had to attend a school in northern Italy which had crucifixes in every room, as laid down in law as a reflection of the country's Roman Catholic heritage.
Now, Italian Christian children will have to sit in atheist citadels, one step removed from their heritage and birthrights (which is the target of these revolutionary fools). You have to say, the "court" is all over the place:
The court rejected arguments by Italy's government that the crucifix was a national symbol of culture, history and identity, tolerance and secularism.
Keeping with revolutionary Leftist tradition, the court is wrong.
And it ordered the Italian government to pay 5000 Euro moral damages to Lautsi.
A reward more like.
>>Italian Christian children will have to sit in atheist citadels, one step removed from their heritage and birthrights<<
More or less in the same position as the US Constitution puts their American counterparts, I'd say.
Ah, those revolutionary fools.
Greetings from Bethlehem.
Just visited the church of the Nativity, pretty underwhelmed by it.
Surprise, surprise - I (a struggling to practice Catholic) agree that public schools are no place to display a crucifix or any religious symbol. If they display a crucifix - perhaps nobody would object to the display of the islamic crescent?
Maybe growing up in the USA has influenced me. I don't recall any religious symbols on display in any of the public schools that I attended - and that is going back a ways! Not a new development at all.
As far as the right of the humans to display their faith in the form of jewelry/scarves/skullcaps - no big deal. But to have a religious symbol on the wall in every classroom is wrong IMHO.
Monica
I pay good money and lots of it to send the girls to a religious school so that they can look at religious symbols all day long! ;-)
If it had come from an Italian institution that would be one thing
But it did not.
I would agree with Monica on the principle of no religious symbols in a public classroom based on our American model. If people want to send their kids to a private religious school, they can.
However, it would be troubling to be part of an international alliance in which independent state sovereignty (forgive my spelling) was trumped on what I would have presumed was a national issue.
I agree that it is troubling that the EU makes proclamations and austerely hands them down to the children - er - member states - the way that they do.
I've been saying it for a long time - get the hell out of the EU!!! Nobody listens to me. *sob*
Monica
Be a good little province and do what you're told.
A Finnish woman emigrates to Italy and sues Italy in an extra-national court to force Italy to change its traditions.
I'm sure she's very popular with the neighbors.
I fell kind of bad - but that's what they get for joining up with the criminal gang in Brussels. It'll be over soon - every member will be bankrupted.
From the article
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini introduced legislation in 1924 ordering all classrooms to display crucifixes. Despite several attempts to have the law overturned in recent years it has stood.
>>However, it would be troubling to be part of an international alliance in which independent state sovereignty (forgive my spelling) was trumped on what I would have presumed was a national issue.<<
Actually, mahons, the crucifix on the Italian wall is also against the Italian constitution, which treats religion more or less the same way as the US. There is the complication of the (infamous) Lateran pacts, but these were revised relatively recently, and Italy now has no official religion.
The European Court of Human Rights has nothing to do with the EU. It predates the EU and covers more countries.
There are at least three issues:
1- Should Italy require schools to display crucifixes in the classroom.
No they shouldn't.
2- Is it a violation of human rights to insist on the display of cricifixes in schools.
Nope and it's judicial activism to pretend that existing Human Rights treaties outlaw this sort of thing.
3- Who should decide what Italy's schools do?
The Italians, not continental courts.
Ross
You frame this issue perfectly
I bet vampire attacks will soar in Italy thanks to the ECHR.
Doesn't the RTE still broadcast the Angelus?
Does the ECHR know about this?
Commies, ecoloons and other assorted trash -
A British court this week put glowball warmening on a par with Chrisitianity:
"Climate change belief given same legal status as religion"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6494213/Climate-change-belief-given-same-legal-status-as-religion.html
An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.
So (commies, ecoloons and other assorted trash) this ECHR judgement - assuming its writ runs to once great Britain and we're extending the principle with the writ - rules out any mention environmentalism in schools and bars them from displaying the drawings of stranded, hungry polar bears that children are (no doubt) encouraged to make - yes?