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A GPS for Christians in Public Discourse

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A GPS for Christians in Public Discourse back to table of contents 1 / 330 Exiting a Dead End Road A GPS for Christians in Public Discourse © 2010 Kairos Publications www.kairos-pr.com ISBN: 978-3-9503055-0-0 With the kind support of the Novae Terrae Foundation www.novaeterrae.org “The Holy Spirit does not descend into the City of Man in the form of a dove. He comes only in the endlessly energetic spirit of justice and love that dwells in the man of the City, the layman.” John Courtney Murray Table of contents Introduction Editor’s note How to Read This Book 1 Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeev Foreword 3 What’s Wrong With the West? Gudrun Kugler No Successor for Don Camillo – On the Marginalization of Christians in Europe 7 Michael Prüller Understanding the Secular Crisis of Christianity 23 Cardinal Christoph Schönborn Christianity – Alien Presence or Foundation of the West? 51 Robert George, William Saunders What’s Wrong With the West? 70 David Quinn Building a Berlin Wall Around Christianity – The Attempt to Quarantine Religion and How to Resist it 83 Luca Volonté Torquemada’s Conspiracy – The Lunar Eclipse Which Hit Rocco Buttiglione 99 Flavio Felice Thinking Europe in a New Way 119 Understanding Rights Talk Jakob Cornides Rights Talk or Natural Law? 129 Fr. Jean-Pierre Schouppe Freedom of Religion in the Jurisprudence of the Court of Strasbourg: 138 JaneCollective Adolphe and Institutional Profiles the International Bill of Human Rights and the Convention of the Rights ofMarriage the Child and the Family, Rights of Parents and Children: Reflections on 152 Jakob Cornides Fiat aequalitas et pereat mundus? How Anti-Discrimination Policy Undermines the Law 163 F. J. Borrego Borrego Problems of Frivolity in the European Court of Human Rights 181 Exiting a Dead End Road Marguerite Peeters Dealing with Political Correctness 197 Mats Tunehag Towards a Better Understanding of Freedom of Speech 209 Rocco Buttiglione Towards a Correct Understanding of Freedom and Tolerance 223 Ombretta Fumagalli-Carulli Holding Universal Truths in a Pluralistic Society 236 Francesc Grané Looking at the Media from a Christian Perspective 250 Fr. Kizito Chinedu Nweke Theism – Antitheism – Atheism in Europe: Their Philosophical Analysis Towards Disagreeing to Agree 265 Archbishop Charles Chaput Living Within the Truth: Christian Mission in the New Order of the World 283 Austin Ruse More Talladega, Less Sorbonne: How an Evangelical Spirit Could Save Europe 305 Joseph Weiler Ways out of the Ghetto 312 Authors 319 Thanks and References 330 How to Read This Book This is a GPS, a guide for Christians in public discourse. You do not need to read a guide from cover to cover, even though that would be very useful! But to it. For this purpose we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the table of use a guide well, you have to know where to find what you need when you need contents and begin to read the chapters which could be helpful for you. The readers of this book are busy people to take a break from accomplishing the never-ending and ever-growing items on our ‚to . We know how diffult it is do‘ lists. But sometimes it is exactly this break that is necessary for feeding our brains, for inspiring us with that idea we were searching for, and for helping us to focus with renewed energy. And here is the good news. To read one of our chapters will take you, on the average, not more than half a concentrated hour. Do take some of these half-hours. They will serve you well. A great professor once said that there is nothing more valuable than a book with markings and underlinings. Over the course of the years, when turning back to books we had read long ago, we discovered the immense value of his not easily able to remember a thought or a passage that one once found useful. advice. In a world characterized by an immeasurable flow of information one is Read this book with a marker – and contrary to what your parents have taught you: scribble all over it! We are proud that this publication was written by great thinkers of various Christian communities addressing themselves to Christian leaders and intellec- tuals of all denominations. - erate and give answers in a unified way Christians of different denominations need to coop , instead of looking at their differences, - when facing such fierce opposition in public discourse in the West today. ent countries. Naturally, their perceptions of the situation as well as their pro- In this book you find more than twenty distinguished authors from ten differ posed solutions vary as do their backgrounds. Some ideas will excite you, oth- ers will make you angry. Some thoughts might convince you at a second glance. back to table of contents 1 / 330 This is good, because it will create fruitful thought and discussion. The opinions the contributing authors or of those who collaborated in the publication of this expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, book. with us. And who knows, the meaning of the term GPS, the Global Positioning Have a good read, and a good reflection. If you wish, share your conclusions System, might turn for you into Go Preach the Savior. Martin and Gudrun Kugler, Editors Vienna, November 2010 back to table of contents 2 / 330 Foreword by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeev of Volokolamsk This book is a collection of publications on discrimination against Christians in Europe. This problem is deliberately hushed up in the ‘free continent’. For - cial. However, the book cites numerous concrete facts pointing to discrimina- many this affirmation may seem strange, untrue, exaggerated and even artifi tion against Christians, violations of their rights to freedom of expression and conscience and ultimately to the free expression of their faith. It is sad that these developments are taking place in today’s Europe to the big words of some politicians about their absolute respect for human rights and dignity. Paying lip service to the primacy of human rights, they actually trample on them by invariably adopting essentially anti-Christian legislation. A few years ago, France adopted a law forbidding people to wear religious at- tributes in public places. At that time, it applied only to schools and public insti- tutions. There is no guarantee that tomorrow this category of public places will include hospitals, army barracks, railway stations and public transportation. In November 2009, the European Court of Human Rights complied with the claim made by Ms. S. Lautsi against the Italian State, insisting that the pres- - ular education to their children. In the European Parliament, there have been ence of Christian crucifixes in schoolrooms violated parents’ rights to give sec repeated calls to declare illegal the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church to - allow only male priesthood. Readers will find in this book many more exam which Christians are subjected in their countries without having committed any ples of this kind and find out details and consequences of the discrimination to crimes. Responsibility for persecuting Christians today is to be borne not only by politicians. Many mass media today allow themselves to resort to inadmissible rhetoric with regard to notions held sacred by Christians. Filmmakers produce back to table of contents 3 / 330 - tempt to provoke believers into responses going beyond legal boundaries. Jour- sacrilegious films; some pop-singers openly mock at the Holy Cross in an at nalists seek to persuade their listeners, viewers and readers that Christians are aggressive and wicked. At the same time, there is no voice of the discordant choir of ‘human rights activists’ who make daily statements about the infringe- ment on human rights in various parts of the world. Doesn’t it look like they protect the rights of a certain category of persons in which Christians are not included? Or is the insulting of believers’ religious feelings no longer a violation of human rights? It is especially deplorable that international Christian orga- nizations keep silent, too, about the discimination against Christians in Europe It is impressed on people that religions are the causes of divisions and enmi- while they could indeed use the means at their disposal to rebuff these attacks. ty between nations, that faith encourages the inferiority complex, that it sup- presses personal freedom and will. It is noteworthy that the criticism of re- ligion has failed to work out anything new since the time of Nietzsche, while becoming apparently incapable of any dialogue, intolerant and more aggressive. It is quite clear that we have found ourselves face to face with a powerful and well-planned program of ousting Christianity and religion as such from the life of not only European but also every society. As the most secularised continent, that attacks against Christianity will only increase. Europe occupies the first place in this list. It would be quite logical to suppose Believers who lived in the Soviet Union know from their experience the tac- tics and strategy of antireligious propaganda with all its stereotypes and clichés used in the hope to have ordinary people to come over to its side. Therefore, - - looking at the rhetoric and vocabulary of today’s ‘fighters against religious ob tators and propagandists of the Soviet time revived to life. Today’s aggressive scurantism’, we do not find anything new. On the contrary, we see in them agi atheism is fully coupled with the propaganda of amorality and sexual laxity – which can eventually lead the European civilization to crash. European Christians, regardless of our confessional affiliation, must join their back to table of contents 4 / 330 from becoming regular and natural. With the help of the mass media it is possi- efforts to prevent the precedents of discrimination against the Christian faith ble to impress on society that the Church and Christianity are not obsolete rel- icts of the distant past, nor a regressive and aggressive force opposing all that is new, creative and alive.
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