Anti-Christian group drops bid to end baptisms in Italy
Anti-Christian group drops bid to end baptisms in Italy
ADF-allied attorney represented Catholic Church
GROSSETO, Italy — A group promoting anti-religious causes has dropped a legal bid to end baptisms in Italy after an Alliance Defense Fund-allied attorney became involved on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and a bishop.
“It’s unthinkable to ask the government to force the church to abandon one of its sacraments to appease a radical, anti-religious agenda, yet that’s what this activist group did,” said ADF-allied attorney Gianfranco Amato.
“All parents have the right to raise their children in their religious tradition, which obviously includes participation in the historic rituals associated with that religion,” said ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco. “This was a preposterous lawsuit, and we are pleased that it has been dropped. Americans should be aware that such lawsuits may seem far-fetched, but they really are happening…and foreign legal decisions are increasingly cited in American courts.”
The Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics filed suit in an attempt to end the baptism of children in Italy. The group claimed that the practice encroached upon their religious freedom and violated principles stated by the Italian Constitutional Court pertaining to free will and personal privacy regarding religious decisions.
UAAR also claimed that because the law does not allow the parents to enroll their children in certain organizations, such as trade unions, the law also “does not allow, as well, that the parents may decide their children become members of a religious association.”
The plaintiff in the case, who sought to erase his name from a baptism register as a form of “debaptism,” withdrew his petition just before a hearing was set to take place. Amato convinced him to drop his lawsuit based on the fact that legal precedents would not support the UAAR’s demands.
“According to Italian law, the demand to remove a name from the register must be made by an individual with a personal interest, rather than by a private association such as the UAAR,” said Amato. “Also, it was easy to demonstrate that the group had no legal leg on which to stand.”
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
3 Comments
Erroneus observaion: not anti-Christian, but only citizen who believe in freedom of religion and freedom of no-religion. So, baptism of children is not freedom ’cause the choice is not a free will.
This news is plain false.
The Italian UAAR never tried to forbid the magic ritual of baptism.
Sorry, but this article is false through and through, and it smacks of catholic propaganda.
The UAAR doesn’t even think of forbidding or outlawing baptism or “put an end” to it.
They want to end the automatic legal effects of baptism. The Italian jurisprudence (case law) states that a baptised person becomes a “subject” of the relevant religious denomination and must be “subjugated” and “obey” to its religious hierarchy. Hence, almost the entire population of Italy is in principle “enslaved” to the Catholic Church.
This is absolutely unacceptable, as the baptism is performed at an age that doesn’t allow any form of will and through a RELIGIOUS ceremony that SHOULD have no civil effects in a LAY country. Can you decide anything when you are 15 days old?
The Church is unwilling to give people this information, and even less prone to allow their “faithfuls” to perform a “confirmation ceremony” when they are 18 and understand what they’re doing.
There are millions of people in Italy that cannot give two hoots about the Church’s “values” and “doctrine” and who never turn up at mass. Yet they don’t know that the Church has been using their baptism certificate to beef up its ranks in a virtual manner, so to appear as the # 1 religion in Italy and – as such – claim the right to be allowed the greatest influence on the Italian politics.
The UAAR wants to put an end to this legal dirty trick.
Regards.
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