|
Europe and Sunday Laws Official Designation Sparks Debate – Europe
Italian religious and political leaders have been caught up in a heated debate about the observance of the Sabbath. The European Union has set up the policy that every member-state must have one day of rest during the week. But the policy explicitly states that the designated day needs to be Sunday, since for reasons of “religious pluralism” a nation’s government might choose another day. In Italy, the designation of Sunday as a “day of rest” was first set in 1993. That policy was changed in 2000, however, when – in order to grant more flexibility for employers – the nation required only that every employer provide workers with a 24-hour rest period each week. But by August 2003, under the new European policy, Italy will again be required to fix a certain “day of rest.” In an interview with the daily Corriere della Sera, Bishop Giancario Bregantini – who heads a committee dealing with social issues for the Italian bishops’ conference – remarked that attitudes on the observance of the Sabbath are “already bad enough” without a change in national policy. He said that any move away from the Sunday rest would be “a perverse act.” And Cardinal Pio Laghi, the former prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, asked La Repubblica: “How can you overlook the fact that Sunday is a special day for millions of Europeans?” The Catholic World Report, February 2003
Prophecy Research Initiative |