The pillars of culture

“In Europe there are more faithful than we expect”, Michael Kuhn wrote in the October issue of “Europe infos”, the monthly publication of COMECE (Commission of the Bishoops’ Conferences of the European Community) and of OCIPE (Catholic Office of Information and Initiative for Europe), with an op-ed by Stefan Lunte and an information sheet by Johanna Touzel on the elections of the European Parliament scheduled for June 4-7 2009. Pluralist and varied religiosity. According to “Religionsmonitor 2008”, the international survey presented the past few weeks by the Bertelsmann Foundation, “75% of Europeans can be defined as religious”. “Belonging to a religion isn’t simply a formal element, rather, it represents a concrete part of daily life”, Kuhn declared. There are remarkable differences from one country to the next: in Poland and Italy for example, “religiosity is considered more important than in Germany, Austria or France”. According to this “varied and pluralist religiosity”, says the author of the article, “religion can duly be considered as a factor contributing to the definition of European identity”. At the same time, “according to these findings, the Church and the religious communities ought to understand ‘religion’ as a pluralist and cross-border phenomenon and view it as a mission to be integrated in their commitments and their ecumenical undertakings, and that it involves the social and political spheres”.To the service of whom? After over one year, “the balance drawn by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights consists in a series of reports and a disappointing relationship with civil society”. This is the picture conveyed by Joanna Lopatowska, who described how the Agency “took up the torch of the European Observatory on acts of racism and xenophobia”. The 2008 Report, whose purpose consists in “presenting good practices that could serve as a source of inspiration for authorities, local communities and organizations in the fight against discrimination”, was published “in three languages only, thus limiting its diffusion”, she claimed. Furthermore, the Agency, whose charter envisages “the obligation to consult NGOs and other civil society institutions that are active in this sector”, held “two public consultations” from “mid-July to mid-August, in the very midst of summer vacations”. “The agency can indeed function also without taking into account external points of view – Lopatowska concluded – but in this case, who is it serving?” “Sunday without work”. “If the EU decided to link the preservation of Sunday to the new directive on working hours – affirmed Thomas Pickartz -, it would provide an unprecedented contribution to the improvement of the living and working conditions of European citizens”. Pickartz pointed out that the draft-modification of the directive, envisaging a minimum rest from work of 24 running hours, which add up to the 11 hours of daily rest, and that will undergo euro-parliamentary debate in mid-December, “fails to indicate which day of the week the 24-hour rest refers to”. In fact, he pointed out, 15 years ago, this day “included Sunday”. The EU’s commitment for “no-work Sunday didn’t last long”, since in 1996 the European Court of Justice ruled that the norms upholding this principle “were of no worth”. Nonetheless, he continued, “a number of elements point to the fact that compared to other days of the week Sunday has a greater impact on workers’ health”. According to the concept of global health defined by the WHO, “mental wellbeing, along with the ability to establish relations and having a social life, are part of man’s health, along with his spiritual development”. Pickartz referred to a number of EU documents underlining the importance of work-family balance. Hence the hope that “no-work Sunday, one of the pillars of European culture”, will be integrated into the new directive.A bioethical reflection. “The European Commission is working on a draft-directive regarding the donation of organs for transplants”, while the European Patents Office is currently examining a directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. To this regard, the debate focuses on “the possibility of patenting cell lines from human staminal embryo cells. Katherina Schauer drew attention on the delicacy and the complexity of bioethical questions while wishing for “a pro-dialogue atmosphere”. She equally referred to the recent publication of the Bioethics Commission of COMECE on this particular subject.