London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Buttiglione: ‘Here I Am’

Rocco Buttiglione has announced plans to found a movement to campaign for Christian values in the European public sphere. For my friends on the home side of the pond who haven’t been keeping up with the Buttiglione controversy, here’s the gist:

The European Commission is composed of commissioners who are in charged of their respective departments. Italy nominated Rocco Buttiglione – a father of four with a long record of political service in the Italian parliament for the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats party as well as in the European institutions who speaks English, French, German, and Polish in addition to his native Italian – to a position as commissioner. Buttiglione was very frank in admitting his adherence to the Catholic faith (even the unpopular bits of the Faith) and the European Parliament unprecedentedly voted to reject his nomination.

“The only thing I cannot do is to change my principles against my conscience for political convenience,” Buttiglione said. “They have said that for defending my religious beliefs, I cannot be a European commissioner.”

Buttiglione told a packed hall in Milan a few days ago “if they want a Catholic witch to burn, then here I am.”

The Left have been trying to disguise it as a “triumph of parliamentarianism.” Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, however, says that “It was not to the credit of Europe’s diversity and tolerance that a candidate was rejected because of his religious beliefs.”

So now Buttiglione is saying that Christians in Europe need to go on the offensive and reclaim the public sphere. “Facing such things, we have to react otherwise they could one day say: as you are Catholic, you cannot be a university professor or teacher.”

Buttiglione said he has been bowled over by the support he has received by phone, post, and e-mail from not just Italy but all over the European Union, and from a significant number of Jews and Muslims as well. And America, he claims, is showing Europe the way forward.

Writing in Il Foglio: “In Europe, our intellectuals were always convinced that modernity brings with itself the extinction of religious faith. Now America, the most advanced country in the world, shows us that religion may be and indeed is a fundamental element of a free society and modern economy.”

Is this perhaps a turning point in Europe’s social, political, and moral decline? Hard to say, but we can only wait and see.

Published at 10:06 am on Wednesday 10 November 2004. Categories: Church Politics World Tags: , , .
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