“The crucifixion is the conclusion, the accomplishment of a human destiny. How could a being whose essence it is to love God and who finds himself situated in space and time have any other vocation than the cross?” - Simone Weil
At the European Court of Human Rights two British women are trying to establish their right to wear crosses in public. We have been used to hearing about battles in courts throughout the world concerning the public display of crucifixes (or the Ten Commandments), as well as the wearing of religious symbols in general. The fact that these two women have found their religious freedom curtailed in their work-places in the U.K. (one as a nurse and the other as an employee of British Airways), that they were either suspended or fired and that they lost in court is shocking enough; what is new is that ministers of the British Government are contesting their right in the Strasbourg case and are taking an explicitly anti-Christian stance. According to an article by the Daily Telegraph , the argument goes that since there is no requirement by the Christian faith to wear a cross, employers can ban the cross from the work-place and fire employees who wear it nonetheless.
Article Outline:
Intro
1. The Cross as Leverage against Force – the Archimedian Point
2. Setting the Balance Right – the Significance of Suffering
3. Only the Cross can Illuminate Affliction
4. The Only Answer to Suffering is Love
5. Transforming Evil into Suffering
6. The Cross as Scandal
Marie Meaney received her doctorate and an M. Phil. in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. She is the author of Simone Weil’s Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretations of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford University Press, 2007). Her booklet Embracing the Cross of Infertility (HLI) has also appeared in Spanish, German, Hungarian and Croatian. Before the birth of her daughter, she was a teaching fellow at Villanova University.
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