The Cross , Christianity and human rights

Fr Mark Montebello suggests Christians should not insist on the Cross being displayed in public places because "the Cross itself does not allow disrespect or separations and, as such, must not be used in any public place where its presence can suggest as much".

Fr Montebello's praiseworthy Christian attitude of "turning the other cheek" however misses the danger to the constitutional protection of everyone's fundamental rights, irrespective of one's religion, caused by the controversial judgement of the European Court of Fundamental Human Rights of the Council of Europe in disallowing the Cross from public school classrooms.

We all have to appreciate that the question of the Cross in the classroom is one that strictly involves the state and not the Church.

The judgement challenges the authority of the state's Constitution to identify those values, and the symbols that represent them, which unite the Maltese in one state, sharing common goals and ideals. In other words, it questions the very constitutional order of the state.

Malta is definitely not a confessional state. The very first article of the Constitution declares that "Malta is a Republic founded on work and on the respect of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual".

Chief among the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual is the freedom from being discriminated against on the basis of one's creed or religious belief. So the state is prohibited by our supreme law from allowing any discrimination on the basis of religion. It has the positive duty of preventing religious intolerance in all its forms and manifestations.

A confessional state would not be burdened by such a fundamental duty. On the contrary, a confessional state would be obliged to impose the state religion on all of its citizens to the exclusion of all the other forms of creeds.

The unanimous condemnation expressed by the political parties, and the vast majority of Maltese public opinion, to the Lautsi case proves that Malta is not a confessional state. Otherwise, they would have welcomed it.

This brings us to Fr Montebello's thinking. The Court justified the complaint of a parent that the Cross caused "emotional distress" to students not professing the Catholic faith. This is the most disturbing part of the judgement where the freedom of religion is concerned.

The intolerance of the parents of a pupil reached the alarming level whereby the very sight of a symbol of a religion by her child becomes the cause of grave "emotional distress" and this even though her child was not forced to attend lessons teaching the Catholic doctrine nor was the child forced to attend any religious ceremonies.

The Court is wrong.

The classic test to see if tolerance, say, on the basis of colour exists, consists in not even acknowledging the difference in colour of the skin of another individual. It lies precisely in having black and white persons all sitting together in an office without there even existing remotely any reference to the difference in colour. So if one person were to state that the presence of a black person in the room caused him "emotional distress", then for there to be racial tolerance would the room have to be composed of only white persons?

As Foreign Minister Tonio Borg has correctly pointed out ,the judgement, if confirmed, would itself become the very cause of religious intolerance particularly in those countries where the state has successfully managed to integrate the creeds of persons as to accept and cohabit with the religious symbols of other religions.

The principle of tolerance dictates that the solution lies elsewhere. Who can possibly object to have the symbol of another religion displayed in some part of the classroom in order to ensure that the child feels part of the community she is now in ? Would not Fr Montebello agree to this solution?

The state would be living up to its constitutional duty of observing article one of the Constitution in the child's regard without showing any intolerance to the symbol that to most has become a national symbol in the same manner in which many adopt the Church wedding even though they may never intend to enter a Catholic church afterwards.

The Lautsi case has vindicated that a child now looks for any sign of the Catholic faith around her to have it removed from her sight instead of educating that same child to learn to fight for the right of her classmates to have the symbol they believe in present in class together with that of her own belief.

This applies more so if the parents of the child be atheists because, in all those states in which the state adopted intolerant atheist ideologies, the Cross and all other religious symbols were not just removed from the classroom but also from the churches and private homes.

The Mahatma Ghandi preached religious tolerance when India was rife with religious intolerance and exhorted the reading of the Holy books of all religions. The European Court would have us reading none in the name of the freedom of religion!