Here is another thing I found over on Drudge. The Yahoo News headline reads Pope Urges Public Displays of Faith
"May there be more commitment, on the part of Christians, to give witness with more force to the presence of God in the world," John Paul wrote. "Let's not be afraid to speak of God and to carry on high the signs of faith."
As the article mentions this is directed towards the French law of banning all overt display of religious artifacts, including burkhas, crucifixs and yamakas. Spain is also trying to strip itselfof it's overt Catholicism.
The Spanish government sparked a furious row yesterday after it emerged that it had drawn up a timetable to halve state funding of the Roman Catholic Church and to ban crucifixes from public buildings.
The Socialist government has already pedged to confront the Church ideologically and fiscally and to transform Spain into a fully secular society by scrapping the Church's "privileged position in society".
Spain is doing this because the Catholic stands in the way of the "progressive" policies of Socialist Spanish.
[...]Mr Zapatero plans an entire programme of social reform, including equality for homosexuals, allowing women to inherit the Spanish throne, liberalising abortion laws, lifting restrictions on embryo research and cracking down on domestic violence.
Of course the Roman Catholic Church has no problem with the throne policy and cracking down on domestic violence, but I did not want to cherry pick the quote. Back to the Yahoo Article,
"Those who contend that public reference to faith can infringe the rightful autonomy of the state and civil institutions or that it can even encourage attitudes of intolerance are wrong," he [Pope John Paul II] said.
I don't know enoug about formalized "separation of church and state" in Canada, but I was watching an interesting program on C-SPAN earler this week about religion and American politics (Real Player required). Both speakers agreed that concept of seperation of church and state is completely misunderstood in American culture. In the Bill of Rights we find the following:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Which means that the federal or state governments cannot establish a church, such as the Church of England. It does not mean that churches have no place in the public sphere or should be banned from public buildings or the laws of a nation cannot be built upon a religious tradition.
I feel better now.
