To see or not to see (a cross)

Like Soile Lautsi, I too would like 'my children' to grow up in a secular society made up of free-thinking people rather than sheep and shepherds. Unlike her, however, I think the European Court of Human Rights's ruling on crosses is an ass. It is sanctimonious and based on misunderstandings of how religious representations work.

I happen to be writing from Cambridge, where standard practice is to say Grace, in Latin, at formal meals. By way of some fieldwork for my readers, yesterday night I asked the don who had just said Grace, and who is known to be as religious as a pigeon on a bell tower, if he felt like a hypocrite.

His answer was that he didn't, that hypocrisy implies wilful pretence and deceit. I then asked why pray to a God one doesn't believe in. He said he hadn't really prayed to anyone, just uttered an arcane formula of sounds that embedded him in an 800-year-old tradition (in the case of Cambridge). It helps that Grace is said in Latin, of course, in the sense that it contributes to the divorce between utterance and meaning.

I find this a fairly refreshing approach to religion. If anything, it takes things a little less seriously and questions the belief that symbols always have to mean, and imply, something much bigger. They don't.

It would be wrong to assume that just because someone mutters something in Latin, they are likely to turn the other cheek, try to walk on water, or hand over their inheritance to the poor. Likewise, it is wrong to think that crosses in classrooms imply the indoctrination of children into a set of beliefs.

As a child and later teenager, I spent most of my waking life in Church schools. We were surrounded by crosses and religious imagery of all shapes and sizes. And yet, I cannot remember a single time when one of us actually turned to a cross and prayed, except, of course, in the school chapel. Cross or no cross, we somehow recognised classrooms as profane spaces meant for learning, and chapels as sacred spaces meant for praying.

My point is that normal people whose chips are closer to ketchup than to necks, will deal with symbols according to context. At certain times and in certain places they will take them seriously. At others they won't - not out of 'disrespect', but simply because there is a time and place for everything. There are crosses in our law courts, but I wouldn't advise anyone to tell a judge 'judge not lest ye be judged'.

But the wigs at ECHR have no time for menial irrelevancies like discerning schoolchildren and judges. True to the god they depend on, who tends to sneak treaties and legislation past populations, they believe they know best at all times. They also have a terribly moralising understanding of religion.

I call it so because the ECHR seems to assume that symbols should mean something to everyone. I remember a priest who used to tell us that we shouldn't go to Mass unless we understood and meant every word of the Liturgy. That was silly but acceptable, because a priest's job is to moralise. Not so a judge's.

Besides, I honestly can't see how the ruling can work. How on earth is one supposed to insulate people from the visuals of Christianity, in Europe? Bar Indian temple cities and a few other examples, I can hardly think of a visual context so shaped by religious imagery as that of European cities.

The first images that come to mind when one mentions Barcelona, Rome, Zürich, Florence, and the rest, are those of churches. The museums in all of these are bursting at the seams with religious images, and most of their squares are linked to some church parvis.

And yet, contemporary European cities are possibly the most secular and liberal places on earth. Their inhabitants have drawn the distinction. Unfortunately, they're now being patronised into believing they could never do so.

I have so far been jovial in my argument. However, the consequences of encouraging people to take symbols seriously can be nasty as well as counterproductive. What usually happens is that the boundaries of reason that usually exist around symbols (the ones that allow a judge to do their job while standing before a cross) begin to get fuzzy.

The ECHR ruling is not even about Malta, and we've already seen the declaration of several crusades on the online comment boards. As I write, a 'Dun Pawl' seems to be pushing for some sort of Night of the Bright Lights on the feast of Christ the King.

The argument goes well beyond Malta and this individual ECHR case. Later this month, for example, the Swiss will be asked to vote in a referendum on mosques. Specifically, the issue is whether or not to give permission for the building of minarets, which many hold would alter the skylines of Swiss cities.

The implication is clear. Many feel that altering the visuals of the city (the Stadtbild) means tampering with notions of identity, rooted as they are in Christian European tradition. Funnily enough, among the most vociferous are types who have never bothered very much with steeples.

People like Lautsi who can't stomach the sight of a cross are rather like the authors of the Church proposals for the 'restoration' of feasts. They think that religious images exist for a single purpose, i.e. to lead the flocks to God. Strange bedfellows indeed - but then religious fervour, whether for or against, does tend to cloud one's judgment.

mafalzon@hotmail.com