SWITZERLAND


Public religious symbols defended


THE CONTROVERSY over religious symbols in the public domain has resurfaced in Switzerland after two court cases concerning crucifixes in school classrooms, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. Ordering religious symbols to be removed from public institutions as had been the case recently in Switzerland “violates the freedom of belief and conscience of a certain circle of persons”, the President of the Swiss bishops’ conference, Bishop Norbert Brunner of Sitten/Sion, told the Swiss Catholic church paper Der Sonntag. Freedom of belief and conscience, Bishop Brunner insisted, meant that everyone had the right to practise his or her belief in public. He added that religious symbols were an expression of “the public character” of every religion. “We in Switzerland have been formatively influenced by Christian culture and to have Christian symbols in our public institutions is only natural,” he said. In the canton of Lucerne,


crucifixes were recently removed from the classrooms of two children after their father complained that they were against “religious neutrality”, and in the canton of Wallis a teacher was dismissed because he refused to hang a crucifix in his classroom. The Swiss Christian Democratic People’s Party (CVP) now want Christian symbols put under the protection of the Swiss constitution, CVP president Christophe Darbellay said.


■ROME: Pope Benedict XVI has pointed to St Charles Borromeo as a model for much-needed reform in today’s Church, saying that the sixteenth-century


Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan rightly saw that all true reform is based essentially on interior conversion, beginning with the clergy, writes Robert Mickens.


GERMANY


Europe ‘underestimated’ Islamic problem


Christa Pongratz-Lippitt In Vienna


EUROPEAN POLITICIANShave grossly underestimated the prob- lems Europe is experiencing with Islam, according to the new pres- ident of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal-designate Kurt Koch. The Swiss cleric told the


German daily Die Welt that Germans should not try to ignore the considerable differences between religions. His remarks were in similar vein to points raised by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a meeting of younger members of her Christian Democratic Union Party at Potsdam near Berlin. “Multikulti [multiculturalism] – the concept that ‘we are now living side by side and are happy about it’, does not work ... This approach has failed, totally ... We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here,” she told the meeting on 16 October.


The German Chancellor pointed out that simply “subsi- dising” immigrants was not good enough, and Germany had the right to “make demands” on them, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning prac- tices such as forced marriages. When Cardinal-designate Koch


was asked in his newspaper inter- view to advise Germans who were only now becoming aware of a large Muslim presence in their communities, he said Germany should “see reality with open eyes” and “not just sweep the very real differences between religions, which are also cultural differ- ences, under the table”. One notable difference between


Islam and Christianity, he said, was that in the course of its history, Christianity had had to learn that only the consistent separation of state and religion could give the Church adequate space and a place in society:“Muslims cannot under- stand this because for them politics and religion … are one. A huge focus of conflict is still buried here.”


In Germany, anti-immigrant feeling has been rising in recent months, especially since the pub- lication of a best-selling book in September, by Thilo Sarrazin, a prominent German politician and banker. The book, translated as Germany Does Itself In, claims that Muslims are undermining German society and that Islamic boys in Germany are being “taught to be violent”.


Cardinal-designate Koch also


told Die Welt that in Switzerland, politicians had not taken citizens’ concerns about Islam seriously. He alluded to last year’s referen- dum in which 57.7 per cent of voters, contrary to their Churches’ advice, said they wanted no new minarets to be built.


Koch said that for a long time


before then the Swiss Council of Religions, made up of Christians, Muslims and Jews, tried to alert the Swiss federal parliament to problems connected with Islam that led to the referendum, “but it just passed the buck on to those responsible for construction laws”.


Three die in Islamist attacks on Christian homes IRAQ


A SPATE of bomb attacks on Christian homes in Baghdad on Wednesday killed at least three people and wounded 26. The attacks come less than two weeks after 44 Christian worship- pers, two priests and seven security personnel died in the seizure of a Baghdad church by Islamist gunmen and the ensuing shoot-out when it was stormed by troops. “Two mortar shells and 10 homemade bombs targeted


“In every age this is the


Church’s primary and most urgent task: that every member converts to God,” the Pope says in a four-page letter to Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, marking the fourth centenary of St Charles’ canonisation. “[Borromeo] was aware that a serious and credible reform had to begin with the pastors, in


34 | THE TABLET | 13 November 2010


the homes of Christians in differ- ent neighbourhoods of Baghdad between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m.,” an interior ministry official told the AFP news agency. A defence ministry official listed additional attacks. “Since Tuesday evening, there have been 13 bombs and two mortar attacks on homes and shops of Christians in which six people were killed and 33 injured,” the official said. “A church was also damaged.”


order that it would have beneficial and lasting effects for the entire People of God,” the Pope writes of St Charles. In his letter, released by the Vatican on the saint’s 4 November feast day, Pope Benedict suggests similarities between the era immediately after the Council of Trent in which Charles Borromeo was bishop and our


On 3 November, the Islamic State of Iraq – an al-Qaeda front group –claimed responsibility for the massacre at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Deliverance Church on 31 October and warned it would step up attacks on Christians. “These operations, which tar- geted Christians, came as a continuation of the attack that targeted the church,” an interior ministry source told Reuters on Wednesday.


own post-Vatican II era. He cites “divisions and doctrinal confusion”, “the obscuring of the purity of faith and morals” and the “bad example” of priests. “Even in our own days, the ecclesial community … shows herself in need of purification and reform. May the example of St Charles spur us [on],” the Pope writes.


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