Word: courtly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...four enduring myths about Supreme Court nominees...
...latest religious vestige to be targeted is the crucifix that still hangs on the walls of many Italian public schools, a fixture the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights has now ruled is a violation of religious and education freedom. The Italian government announced it would appeal the Nov. 3 decision that would force Italy to pay a €5,000 ($7,400) fine to a mother in northern Italy who fought for eight years to have the crucifixes removed from her children's classrooms. Though the European court's decision does not call for the immediate removal...
...Vatican, whose influence in Italy has helped maintain a role for Catholicism in public schools, including hiring church-approved teachers for religion hour, lashed out at what it called the latest "ideological" ruling from Strasbourg. "The court wanted to ignore the role of Christianity in forming Europe's identity, which was and remains essential," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement on Nov. 3. "Religion gives a precious contribution to the formation and moral growth of people, and it's an essential component in our civilization. It's wrong and myopic to try to exclude it from education...
...poll question. But the largely rhetorical battles like the one over crucifixes mask the reality that Italian life is ever more secular, and the ethnic and religious fabric is in fact undergoing major changes with the arrival of immigrants, including many from Muslim-majority countries. Buttiglione, who called the court's decision this week "abhorrent," referred to the role of immigrants in Italy today, apparently also to the plaintiff in the crucifix case, a Finnish-born mother of two married to an Italian native. "Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history," said Buttiglione. "Those who come among...
...Still, the Strasbourg court cannot be accused of discriminating against Christianity in particular. In 2005, the human-rights court upheld a then long-standing ban on headscarves in public buildings in Turkey, a law that has since been eased by the current ruling Muslim party. And of course, beyond the halls of its European institutions, the city of Strasbourg is also in the heart of the ever more secularized French Republic, where students are forbidden from wearing headscarves or any other religious symbol in public schools. To U.S. and U.K. sensibilities, this ban continues to seem as strange as crucifixes...