BY TP O’MAHONY
I’M not at all surprised that 84% of Italians are opposed to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms.
Not all classrooms, it should be added, just classrooms in state schools.
Nevertheless, the ruling sparked anger and was condemned by the Vatican as shocking, wrong and myopic.
Italian politicians, from prime minister Silvio Berlusconi down, have said that crucifixes will stay because they are part of Italy’s Christian culture.
The Italian state is to appeal.
The poll carried out by the Corriere della Sera newspaper showed 84% of Italians want the crucifixes to stay; 14% said they should be taken down and two per cent had no opinion. Those in favour included many who are not practicing Catholics.
My guess is that if this ever becomes an issue here, the public reaction would be similar to that in Italy.
So, could it become an issue here?
The answer is yes – if, and this is a crucial if, the appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (whose decisions are binding) fails.
If that happens, then those schools and community colleges under the vocational education committees would be left with a problem.
The vast majority of schools in Ireland, of course, are denominational schools. And they are recognised by the constitution, so maintaining a specific religious ethos (central to which would be the display of crucifixes) would not be a problem.
That aside, the latest ruling from Strasbourg was foolish, and not only brings the reputation of the court into disrepute, it also damages the wider European project.
This action by a Finnish born atheist in northern Italy is yet another example of political correctness gone mad.
The idea that the education of her children would somehow be impaired by having to sit in a classroom in the presence of a crucifix is ridiculous.
It is as ridiculous as making the same argument about, say, a poster of Elvis Presley.
Although the European Court of Human Rights, which is based in Strasbourg, is not part of the machinery of the EU – it was founded by an older institution, the Council of Europe – all 27 member states of the EU have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Council of Europe was established in 1949 and in Rome in 1950 it adopted the convention.
Nine years later, a Strasbourg-based court was established to supervise enforcement of the convention, which enshrines such key rights as the right to life (article 2), the right to respect for private and family life (article 8), the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (article 9), and the right to freedom of expression (article 10).
A protocol to the convention, agreed in Paris in 1952, deals with the right to education (article 2). It declares that “the state shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”
An Italian woman of Finnish origin, Soile Lautsi, a mother of two, brought the case to Strasbourg after Italian courts ruled against her. Her original complaint was against the state school in her region attended by her two children.
In essence, she complained that her children had to attend a school which had crucifixes in every room.
The complaint was dismissed by a local court which ruled that the crucifix was “the symbol of Italian history and culture and consequently of Italian identity”.
The woman then lost an appeal to the Italian Constitutional Court, after which she turned to Strasbourg. Piffle.