In St Mark's account of Christ's passion there is a moment when the unfolding drama reached a veritable peak. This is when the high priest exasperatedly asked the Lord: "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" To this Jesus answered: "I am."

Upon hearing the unutterable, Caiphas rent his clothes while rhetorically asking the assembly present what other proof was needed to condemn the prisoner for such blasphemous words. Christ's fate had just been sealed.

Belief in the divinity of Christ and in his passion, death and resurrection has always been the hallmark of what every Christian believes in. During the first three centuries of Christianity this belief and the steadfast refusal of Christians to pay homage to the gods of the Roman Pantheon or even to the emperor himself led to the savage persecution of Christians.

Today, in our supposedly enlightened Western society, which in its rampant neo-paganism resembles Rome's society of 2,000 years ago, Christians are indeed similarly persecuted, minus the blood. All they hold dear is continuously offended, derided and insulted on television, in newspapers, in films and even in the theatre.

Moreover, in the last few years, it is not only the Catholic Church, usually the main target of this hostility, but the person of Christ himself that is being attacked. There seems to be a carefully orchestrated campaign to cast doubts on the divinity of Christ and on the veracity of his words without being told what new information has been discovered to initiate such doubt.

The sad truth is that those responsible, be they lay people, biblical exegetes or even theologians, who write, often in erudite terms, implying doubts about Christ's divinity have simply, and tragically for themselves, lost their faith.

There is also another manner in which Christ's divinity is dimmed and obscured. This is when the impression is given that Jesus is just another religious leader quite similar to many others throughout the centuries or that belief in Christ or any other religion is equally valid. It is not. Christ, unlike Moses, Mohammed or Buddha, who were, as it were, searching for a way to salvation, presented himself as being salvation itself. He claimed divinity and spoke of himself as being "The Way, the Truth and the Life" and the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Jewish covenant.

The current influx to many Western countries of people from other cultures and religions is often being used as a pretext to do away with symbols which remind us of our Christian faith. Thus, a veritable war is going on not only against the Crucifix, but also against the Christmas crib, the Christmas tree, now sometimes referred to as the winter tree, and, incredibly enough, even against Christmas carols.

Those who champion the removal of Christian symbols from public life often use the excuse that this might offend the religious sentiments of people of other creeds. Those who reason in this manner should remember that no Christian minorities living in Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu countries would ever dream of insisting that the religious symbols belonging to those countries offend their religious sentiments and therefore should be done away with. The truth is that behind all this supposed political correctness there is a growing intolerance towards those who do not conform to the prevalent Western mentality on some issues, especially those pertaining to sexual morality or life and death issues - divorce, abortion, same-sex relationships, euthanasia, etc.

The price for non-conformity to what the majority believes is to be called fundamentalist, reactionary, obscurantist, or even homophobic. A case in point is the current local controversy on the image of the statue of the Baptism of Christ on the euro coin.

In the Gospels Christ never condemned the use of money in itself but only servitude to it. "Thou shalt not serve God and Mammon." The government, having promoted the poll for the choice of the image on the euro, can never be expected to be taken seriously or trusted if it refuses to comply with the will expressed by the majority of those who voted.

The secularists' dream has always been to have religious belief, especially Christianity, practised as privately, as invisibly and as innocuously as possible. However, the true follower of Christ can never acquiesce to practise his faith privately and to whisper his belief in an undertone.

Even more, he will not conform to what the majority believes if this goes against the tenets of his faith. He will follow his Lord, who was called "a blasphemer, a drunkard and a glutton", no matter what and without any ifs or buts remembering always what his Master had insisted his followers should be "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world".

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