Church in the World

Anti-Christian bias ‘on rise in Europe’

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt - 18 December 2010

A body set up by the bishops’ conferences of Europe in October to monitor discrimination against Christians across the continent has produced a report that charts widespread and increasing anti-Christian activity and legal judgments.

Reporting on the years 2005 to 2010, the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrim­ination against Christians in Europe released its report in Vienna on 10 December, a date timed to coincide with a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on Freedom of Religion held in the Austrian capital from 8-10 December, and also Human Rights Day. The Observatory, based in Vienna, was set up in October by the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) to defend the rights of Christians and to monitor prejudice and injustice.
The report begins by underlining that Christians in Europe increasingly “face radical secularism and extreme political correctness, both of which limit fundamental freedoms”. It admits that in other regions outside Europe Christians are confronted with “blatant persecution even to the point of martyrdom” but points out  that this does not mean that discrimination against Christians in Europe is a “minor issue”. Already in 1983, the report recalls, Pope John Paul II pointed out that there were “more sophisticated punishments, such as social discrimination or subtle restrictions of freedom, possibly leading to a kind of civil death”. It also quotes Pope Benedict XVI speaking in London’s Westminster Hall on 17 September, when he referred to “those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or relegated to the private sphere”.

Recognition of the phenomenon is growing, the report says, and governments are increasingly aware of it. In March 2009, for instance, the director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Janez Lenarcic, said after a meeting in Vienna on discrimination against Christians, “What came out clearly from this meeting is that intolerance and discrimination against Christians is manifested in various forms across the OSCE area … including violent attacks against persons, property and places of worship, as well as restrictions to the right to freedom of religion or belief [and] inaccurate portrayals of Christian identity and values in the media and political discourse”.
Increasingly, there have been undue pressures on and interference in church affairs, the report states, going on to offer a long list of examples of Christian rights being denied, Christianity being marginalised or hate crimes against Christians being committed.

The United Kingdom features prominently. In April 2010, for example, a street preacher called Dale McAlpine was arrested in Cumbria after stating to a passerby that homosexuality was a sin. Mr McAlpine was charged with breaching section 5 of the Public Order Act by allegedly using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. The charges were later dropped. On 19 March 2010 another street preacher in Glasgow, the American Baptist Shawn Holes, was arrested, kept in a cell overnight and fined £ 1,000 for telling a passerby, in answer to a direct question, that homosexual activity was a sin. The gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell condemned the arrests in both cases. And in February 2010 a Sex Education Bill was passed in Britain that will require both religious and secular schools to give children information on how to obtain abortions. (Catholic schools will be allowed to give this information in the context of their Catholic ethos.) The report also describes the January 2008 ruling in Britain that a British Airways employee, told she could not wear a small Christian cross at work, had not been discriminated against.  “The court ruling of January 2008 upholds the prohibition for Christian but not for other religions’ symbols,” the report comments.

The report recommends that European governments monitor the growing phenomenon of intolerance against Christians and take appropriate measures.

On the day the report was published the Archbishop of Vienna and president of the Austrian bishops’ conference, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, appealed to Christians to “break the spiral of silence” on Christian persecution and to join a protest march in Vienna’s inner city that afternoon.

The Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, said the report was a “document that merits attention” because it offers a “long and circumstantiated series of examples of intolerance towards Christians in Europe”. Speaking last Saturday on Centro Televisivo Vaticano, he noted that Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Westminster Hall, had manifested his “concern at the increasing marginalisation of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place ... even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance”. Fr Lombardi said: “The English listened with attention and respect. Let’s hope everyone does.”