Church in the World

Buttiglione forms 'theo-con' campaign

Rocco Buttiglione, Italy's Europe Minister who was forced by the parliament in Strasbourg to withdraw as a candidate for EU commissioner because of his views on homosexuality, marriage and the family, has begun a campaign for Christian values in Europe.

Launching his 'theo-con' campaign [theological-conservative, as distinct from neo-con, or neo-conservative] at Milan's Teatro Nuovo last Saturday, Buttiglione said he felt like a 'Catholic witch', but that he regarded the events leading to his withdrawal as a 'gift from God'.

'If they [the European parliament] want a Catholic witch to burn, then here I am,' he said. 'Today in Europe one must be politically correct about everyone except Christians.'

Buttiglione, 56, is a friend of Pope John Paul II and father of four daughters. He is also a member of Communion and Liberation, a charismatic movement that aims to integrate faith and life through insisting on the centrality and real presence of Christ.

In a television interview this week, Buttiglione went into detail about his plans. 'I have no intention of forming a new party,' he said. 'Rather I want to build up a movement, a network of connections between all the people who have supported me and among all those who want to defend freedom.'

He said he had received calls and letters from supporters in Italy, Spain, Britain and Germany, 'asking me not to let these issues drop but to carry them forward with political and cultural initiatives'. In Italy, he said, support came from Jews and Muslims as well as from Catholics.

Buttiglione believes that his private views on personal morality were used to block his appointment last month, even though they bore no relevance to the job of justice commissioner for which he was nominated. He also believes that MEPs with an anti-Christian agenda deliberately misrepresented his views.

The whole episode, he says, is evidence of a 'creeping totalitarianism' in Europe, in which the Left seeks to marginalise those who espouse traditional values, rather than engage in discussion with them. It is time to mobilise to protect the freedom of Christians, he says.

Buttiglione was widely reported as describing homosexuality as a sin. In fact, he told the parliamentary committee vetting him 'Many things may be considered immoral which should not be prohibited. I may think that homosexuality is a sin, and this has no effect on politics, unless I say that homosexuality is a crime.'

The word 'sin' does not belong in the political sphere, he said. It was his questioner, not Buttiglione himself, who first used the word. For politicians the problem was discrimination, not sin, and Buttiglione was 'emphatically against discrimination'.

The situation in the parliament was 'very serious, as they have said that for defending my religious beliefs, I cannot be a European commissioner', Buttiglione said later.

It was important to react to such things because 'they could one day say, as you are Catholic, you cannot be a university professor or teacher'.

Buttiglione has taken heart from the re-election of George W. Bush as President of the United States. Evangelicals and the majority of American Catholics have resisted the individualism that is the legacy of the culture of the Sixties and Seventies, he says. They have instead affirmed the idea of the family. The Democrats, he believes, have been perceived as a party without a soul, believing in minority rights but with no ideas for the majority. The choice for Europe, he thinks, is to go the way of America at least in its rejection of secularism, or to decay.

A poll published on 7 November in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica indicated that Italians may share Americans' views on some moral issues. Demos-Eurisko reported that only 32 per cent of Italians polled were in favour of same-sex marriages and only 21.2 per cent backed adoptions by homosexual and lesbian couples.
Referenda on same-sex marriages were defeated in 10 states out of 11 in the recent American elections.
James Roberts and Peggy Polk