NEWS STORY: Looking to America, Italian Professor Launches Values Movement

c. 2004 Religion News Service ROME _ Rejected as a European Union commissioner because of his traditional Catholic views, Italian professor-politician Rocco Buttiglione has decided to found a movement of “theo-cons” committed to Christian values. “Catholics are the victims of discrimination,” said Buttiglione. “Today in Europe one must be politically correct about everyone except Christians.” […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

ROME _ Rejected as a European Union commissioner because of his traditional Catholic views, Italian professor-politician Rocco Buttiglione has decided to found a movement of “theo-cons” committed to Christian values.

“Catholics are the victims of discrimination,” said Buttiglione. “Today in Europe one must be politically correct about everyone except Christians.”


Buttiglione, nominated as EU commissioner for justice, freedom and security, came under fire for acknowledging that he considered homosexuality a “sin” and believed that the purpose of marriage was to allow women to have children and be protected by their husbands.

Although he contended that his statements were taken out of context and that he did not confuse his personal views, based on church teachings, with politics, Buttiglione bowed to pressure and withdrew his candidacy in March.

After a pause for reflection that included consideration of the way values have recently shaped American politics, Buttiglione decided that perhaps his political defeat could be turned to advantage. In fact, he said at a debate in Milan Saturday (Nov. 6), perhaps it was “a gift from God.”

Taping a television interview on Monday (Nov. 8), he went into detail about his plans.

“I have no intention of forming a new party,” Buttiglione said. “Rather I want to build up a movement, a network of connections between all the people who have supported me and among all those who want to defend freedom.”

Earlier he said he had received calls and letters from supporters in Italy, Spain, Britain and Germany, “asking me not to let these issues drop but to carry them forward with political and cultural initiatives.” In Italy, he said, support came from Jews and Muslims as well as from Catholics.

In Italy, support for came from one unexpected quarter. Giuliano Ferrara, editor of the conservative daily Il Folio and a self-proclaimed atheist, backed Buttiglione’s plan to rally European believers.


Ferrara said that his newspaper is committed to campaign “against illiberal discrimination against a Christian and the obscene attempt to expel the word ‘sin’ from the moral, as distinct from the political, vocabulary of a believer.”

President Bush’s reelection in America, credited in great part to his stand on moral values and the defeat of referenda on same-sex marriages in 11 U.S. states, also gave Buttiglione grounds for optimism.

“America has shown itself to be more religious and attentive to values than Europe, and we can learn something from that because America is obviously the symbol of economic efficiency and a model of modernity,” said Buttiglione.

A poll published Sunday in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica indicated that Italians may share Americans’ view at least on some issues. Demos-Eurisko reported that only 32 per cent of Italians polled were in favor of same-sex marriages and only 21.2 per cent backed adoptions by homosexual and lesbian couples.

Buttiglione, 56, has academic and personal as well as political qualifications to head a theo-con movement.

A leader of the Christian Democratic Union and minister for European policy in the Italian government, he also is a professor of political science at St. Pius V University in Rome, holds a chair in philosophy, social ethics, economics and politics at the Prince of Liechtenstein International Academy of Philosophy and is on warm, personal terms with Pope John Paul II.


“The question is freedom,” he said. “Today in Italy there is a minority that is denied rights because those who are afraid to attack other groups can hurl calumny against Christians.”

Referring to his own experience, Buttiglione said that “powerful forces” have swept up “the entire European Left at least on one occasion.” He said that a “creeping totalitarianism” is stifling all dissent from majority views.

MO END RNS

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