British writers warn in July 2009: Groups are gaining success in their campaign for a “state where religion is only allowed in private” writes Daily Telegraph commentator Ed West. Mr West points out that it is now commonly accepted that someone’s religious faith can “neutralise” their opinion on issues such as abortion. “Never mind that there are perfectly rational reasons for having these beliefs”, he adds. And Tim Montgomerie, the editor of a Conservative blog, warns of “a secular fundamentalism that is trying to push people of faith outside the public square”, and this “new intolerance of Christianity would be very bad for politics as whole.”
See also: www.christian.org.uk/news/20090724/secularist-elite-will-not-tolerate-faith-in-politics/
Harvard Researcher Edward Green on professional risks for non-Christians taking Christians standpoints in the Washington Post, March '09: "We liberals who work in the fields of global HIV/AIDS and family planning take terrible professional risks if we side with the pope on a divisive topic such as this. The condom has become a symbol of freedom and -- along with contraception -- female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html
Tony Blair warns that Christians must speak out in 'aggressively secularist' age
Tony Blair in March, 2009: "…in general terms in British society there is a risk that people see faith as a personal eccentricity … I hope and believe that stories of people not being allowed to express their Christianity are exceptional or the result of individual ludicrous decisions. My view is that people should be proud of their Christianity and able to express it as they wish. … The real test of a religion is whether in an age of aggressive secularism it has the confidence to go out and make its case by persuasion." His wife Cherie Blair said in a Channel 4 documentary: "Everywhere you look today churches are being closed, Christians are often being marginalised and faith is something few people like to discuss openly."
Feb. 22, 09: British Labour MP and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Hazel Blears attacks the "creeping tendency" of political correctness which has led to Christians being targeted for practising their beliefs.
Read full story at:
UK House of Commons, February 09: Mr Jackson (Peterborough) calls for a debate on "systematic and institutional discrimination towards Christians". He said: "We saw last week the case of Mrs Petrie who was suspended by North Somerset Primary Care Trust and only reinstated after a media furore…. This week we see anti-Christian zealots in Devon who are on the verge of suspending a lady who works in a school for defending her and her daughter's Christian beliefs. … Does fairness and equality only apply to people who are non-Christians in this country?"
Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdö condemns all forms of Christianophobia at the opening of the plenary meeting of the Council of European bishops’ conferences in Budapest on Oct 1st of 2008. The international community must fight Christianophobia with the same determination as they would fight hatred against members of other religious communities, he said. The cardinal emphasized that Christianophobia could be spotted also in untruthful media reporting on the Catholic Church, portraying only a “caricature” of the Church.
Read the full story (in German) here:
www.kathweb.at/site/database_detail_nosecurity.siteswift
Don Feder, JD, Media Consultant, stated during stated a hate crime symposium already in 1999: “...Hate crimes are an attempt at thought control... According to this mind-set, widely embraced by the left, dissent from the homosexual agenda generates antigay violence. Thus, refusal to accept the movement's dogma is itself a species of hate crime... Soon, instead of punishing expression that accompanies a crime, we'll be penalizing pure speech. Evangelicals, traditional Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Mormons -- any group that clings to Judeo-Christian morality and isn't willing to knuckle under -- will be a target."
Today, we see how right he was. We have collected several cases of penalized expression: insult (Germany, Lerle); malicious mail (GB, Atkinson); incitement and disrespect towards homosexuals (Sweden, Green), public insult aggreviated when critical of one’s sexual orientation (France, Vanneste).
James MacMillan, one of the conductors of the BBC Philharmonic orchestra, said on September 30th, 08, at a lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Sandford St Martin Trust: "The ignorance-fuelled hostility to religion, widespread among secular liberal elites, is in danger of colouring society's value-free 'neutrality' in ways that are both bland and naïve. … They are also impractical, unattractive and, I suggest, oppressive. A true sense of difference, in which a genuine pluralism could thrive, is under threat of being reduced to a lowest common denominator of uniformity and conformity, where any non-secular contribution will automatically be regarded as socially divisive by definition. … The campaigning atheists, as opposed to the live-and-let-live variety, are raising their voices because they recognize that they are losing; the project to establish a narrow secular orthodoxy is failing. … A smug ignorance, a gross oversimplification and caricature that serves as an analytical understanding of religion, is the common intellectual currency. The bridge has to be built by Christians and others being firm in resisting increasingly aggressive attempts to still their voices."
Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, addressing a conference in northern Italy, spoke on the occasion of attacks against Christians in India that have left at least 13 people dead. He claimed that religious freedom was a vital part of international relations and human dignity and that "in order to promote this dignity in an integral way, so-called 'Christianophobia' should be combated as decisively as 'Islamophobia' and anti-Semitism."
August 29 2008
(source:http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLT61932620080829)
UK Bishop O'Donoghue was accused by secularist British MPs to establish religious "fundamentalism" in his schools (full story see here). As we find his answers very insightful, we reiterate them on this page:
Bishop O'Donoghue, March 08: "Every school has a philosophy. And a philosophy which puts God at the centre and morality as objective, is no less powerful than that which says God is irrelevant and morality is up to the individual choice."
"They (the MPs) see me as a fundamentalist and that is a pejorative word these days with connotations of terrorism, violence and irrationality. I will say I reject these connotations."
"Interfax", January 25, 2008. Brussels, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in European international organizations, has drawn the attention of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to the increase in the crime against Christians in Europe.
"We often hear about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and very little is said about Christianophobia, which is gaining strength in many European countries," Bishop Hilarion said during a meeting between Barosso and representatives of the Orthodox Churches to the European Union.
Among the forms of Christianophobia in Europe, Bishop Hilarion mentioned the removal of Christian symbols from the public sphere, the denigration of Christianity and refusal to recognize the Christian heritage of Europe, the persecution of people who openly express Christian convictions and who choose to live according to Christian moral standards."
Mentioning the recent discussion of the matter in the British parliament, Bishop Hilarion called for a similar discussion in European international organizations and called on representatives of the European churches to take part in it.
Rome, January 11th, 08: Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, Vatican's secretary for relations with states, condemns Christophobia, Islamophobia and Antisemitism at a talk at St. Croce University. See article http://www.zenit.org/article-14180?l=german (only available in German).
UK, December 5th, 2007: MP Mark Pritchard introduced a debate in the House of Commons on 'Christianophobia'.
Official transcript:
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071205/
halltext/71205h0001.htm#07120550000001
BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7125521.stm
UK, December 2nd, 07: Writer Cristina Odone comments on intolerance against Christians in the UK:
"Picking on Christians, still a majority in Britain, is objectionable, but a lot less lethal than picking on transsexuals, say, who number only a few thousand. The kind of attitude shown by the RCI could, if directed at a smaller group, drive it underground - if not to extinction. Intolerance can push even the meek and mild into aggressive mode. Encountering a closed mindset is so exasperating that after banging your head against the wall for a while, you start contemplating all kinds of other ways to get your message across. This is not a justification of violence, but a reminder that even the most loyal citizen will drop out of a society where their religion is consistently mocked or harassed. ..."
Full text:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2220462,00.html
Author and radio talk show host Dennis Prager in July 2007:
"Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism should be just as subject to criticism as conservatism or liberalism. However, the only religion the West permits criticism of is Christianity. People write books, give lectures and conduct seminars on the falsity of Christian claims, or on the immoral record of Christianity, and no one attacks them for racism or bigotry.... The head of the Anti-Defamation League announces that conservative Christians are the greatest threat to America today, and no one charges him with racism or Christianophobia."
Writer George Weigel says that Europe is suffering from "Christ(ian)ophobia," and he believes that the continent's low birthrate is due, in part, to the widespread unbelief in God. www.zenit.org/article-11770
A senior United Nations Official, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, in June 2007: “Christianophobia has always existed, alongside anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. But its current growth is, paradoxically, not being noted in international discussions. Spectacular cases of hostility to Christians are currently occuring outside Europe in India, Nigeria and other countries but has reached its deepest ideological expression in the West. Here in Europe there is suspicion towards religious practices, as well as a rise in intolerance expressed by the slow marginalisation of citizens who confess any faith. The challenge to the whole continent is to find a balance between defending secular principles and upholding religious freedom”.
May, 16, 2007 (Interfax) - A Russian Orthodox bishop has accused the European Union of turning a blind eye to anti-Christian practices in EU countries. In insisting on tolerance, EU leaders slam Islamophobia and anti- Semitism but often ignore various anti-Christian practices, Hilarion, bishop of Vienna and Austria and the representative of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church to European organizations, said at a meeting in Brussels with members of European religious communities. He cited alleged efforts to oust the church from public life as one such practice. http://www.interfax.ru/
Jewish writer David Joel Horowitz argues that if one fails to take decisive action, Christians will become “the Jews of the 21st century, the scapegoats of choice of the world's thug regimes.” (in: Protecting persecuted Christians, Christian Century, Dec 2, 98)
In 1983, Pope John Paul II mentions in his “Lourdes Speech” besides ‘common forms of persecution’ not to overlook “more sophisticated punishments, such as social discrimination or subtle restrictions of freedom, possibly leading to a kind of civil death.” He speaks of “a materialistic and religiously indifferent climate, which suffocates all spiritual efforts”. Believers ought to be courageous “to keep a clear vision, stay faithful and use their freedom well”.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, issued a rallying cry to the faithful, saying that the liberal consensus had now evolved into a "worrying and aggressive" ideology. "In politics, it seems to be almost indecent to speak about God, almost as it were an attack on the freedom of someone who doesn't believe," he said. (The Daily Telegraph, Nov 20, 2004).
Vatican „minster of foreign affairs“ Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo spoke about Christianophobia during a press conference on December 3rd, 04, at the occasion of a UN conference on religious freedom. He asked that UN documents on human rights mention in the future Christianophobia together with Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism.
‘There is often a sort of Christophobia in the intelligentsia and opinion-formers in our society,’ says Cardinal Murphy O’Connor says, ‘but England urgently needs to hear the Christian message (in Spectator, 30 June 2006).
Europe is not safe from religious persecution, warned Vatican Cardinal Paul Poupard - although, he said, modern-day attacks on believers may take more subtle forms. Speaking to the Italian daily Avvenire, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture observed that in Europe today: "Christians are mocked for their faith; many young couples are ostracized socially if they want a lot of children; those who oppose same-sex 'marriage' are considered intolerant."
All these "forms of persecution, hidden or overt, will bear their fruits," Cardinal Poupard said. The French prelate explained that an aggressive secularizing trend in Europe would eventually lead to more direct attacks on religion. Pointing to the thousands of Christians who died for the faith in Europe during the 20th century, he predicted: "This century will have some, too, in some countries."
As evidence of the growing hostility toward Christianity in Europe, the French prelate cited "the categorical rejection of a reference to the Christian roots of Europe in the preamble to the constitution for the European Union." That rejection, he argued, was a refusal to acknowledge historical reality. It is, he continued, "more than simple anti-clericalism," because it seeks to eradicate the evidence of Christian faith (Rome, July 7, 2004, CWNews.com).
One of the reasons why a reference to Europe’s Christian roots was rejected was, according to Jewish Professor of International Law (NYU) Joseph Weiler, European laicité: “European laicité, as distinct from American secularism, is not simply an “I don’t happen to believe in God.” It is a kind of faith in itself. It is a positive hostility to religion, which in Europe means Christianity. This is why I did not hesitate in my book to speak about Christophobia.”