A Calendar of Events

I've been sitting here for days wondering which story I should work on. Whenever I don't post it is usually because there is a blizzard, a hurricane, or because I'm paralyzed from the mountains of articles staring at me. Maybe it's called "bloggers' block".

Here is an update on a story I did back in December concerning the EU desk calendar (also called an agenda) that is distributed to schools throughout the European Union and that is intended to inform children of cultural and historical events as well as some holidays. The calendar, it turned out, noted all major religious holidays except those of Christianity. An uproar from Catholics resulted in a revision of the calendar, in the form of an erratum, but future editions will contain no religious references at all (see update at the end). In his weekly newsletter Daoudal Hebdo #111, Yves Daoudal takes a closer look at what happened:

December 17, 2010 - The affair was revealed by the excellent reporter for the Daily Telegraph, Bruno Waterfield, a Euro-skeptic. It was then immediately reported in Italy by La Stampa, and in France by... a few blogs (including mine). Bruno Waterfield asked for the reaction of COMECE (Bishops Commission of the European Community) and received the following from Johanna Touzel:

"This is simply astonishing. Christmas and Easter are important holidays for hundreds of millions of Christians and Europeans. It is certainly a strange omission and I hope it wasn't intentional (...)"

Whether the European Commission was warned by COMECE or acted on its own, the fact remains that on December 23, John Dalli, the European Commissioner of Health and Consumer Protection (sic), wrote a letter to COMECE and to the president of the European Parliament in which he reviewed the purpose of the calendar:

(...) "Among the dates noted are those religious holidays that young Europeans cannot be familiar with. Considering that the agenda is not meant to be a complete calendar, it does not mention vacations and events which, like Christmas, are known by all in Europe and are part of the European heritage.

Young people's knowledge of Christian events in Europe was considered as a given: the Commission regrets that this inconsistency led to misunderstandings and promises immediate action."

Two days earlier John Dalli had published a communiqué at the website of his Commission. A brief ten-line text that ended with these words:

"I greatly regret this inconsistency and I promise immediate action."

But the interesting thing was the note at the bottom of the page:

"The agenda is the result of a partnership between the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers and nineteen other directorates-general, as well as the Economic and Social Commission."

But on December 17, a spokesman for the European Commission said to Bruno Waterfield that it had been an "error", adding that John Dalli was going to write to the schools and "acknowledge the error." Now, what emerges from John Dalli's remarks is that it was not in any way an "error", but that it was entirely deliberate and fully thought-out. The idea was to exclude Christian holidays on grounds that everyone knows them. An absurd motive, since unfortunately many European children do not know the Christian holidays. And if you read the text carefully, you will see that it is not the real motive. For John Dalli avoids mentioning the holidays of the other religions. He further beats around the bush by saying that in this agenda one can find an explanation of the difference between the European Council and the Council of Europe. But that isn't in the agenda strictly speaking, rather it is in the ninety pages of propaganda from the European Commission that opens the agenda (yes, ninety pages...) John Dalli does not explain, for example, why ramadan is there but not the Assumption, when it is clear that young Europeans today are more familiar with ramadan than with the Assumption. And there were twenty directorates-general who committed this "error". Twenty directorates-general out of the twenty-seven making up the European Commission. And there was no one in these directorates who noticed that they were pushing the envelope a bit too far and that there was risk of an outcry. They agreed unanimously to suppress the Christian holidays.

"I hope that this omission was not intentional," said the spokesman for COMECE. But if COMECE had done its job, it would have known that it was completely intentional.

In the days that followed the Polish and Italian governments protested the "indecent" agenda that was "contrary to the religious freedom and to the dignity of religions that are a foundation of the European Union." Nicolas Sarkozy's former minister of Housing, Christine Boutin, a practicing Catholic, declared on December 23:

" (...) How can one deny History to such a degree, and deny reality? Christianity played a fundamental role in the construction of Europe. It is the religion of many Europeans today. (...) Europe must become aware of its own Christian roots and of the public role of religion (...) "

Christine Boutin wrote to Laurent Wauquiez, the current minister of European Affairs, who waited three weeks before giving his reaction. Mme Boutin also launched a petition against the agenda, which is what may have triggered Wauquiez' response of January 12:

"In this agenda they talk about many things except our European identity. They talk about Gandhi, the discovery of the tomato in Peru or the Antarctica, but they do not speak about what European identity is. Europe is not a hollow shell, it is a community of values, of great people of History, of great dates. Let us acknowledge this identity. This initiative, well-meaning at the outset, is representative of a Europe that I do not like and that does not like itself: this Europe denies its Christian roots and puts a bashful cloth over what it is. A repressed identity is a vengeful identity. In this agenda many religious holidays are mentioned. This was not obligatory. Hindu holidays, Chinese holidays, Muslim holidays, but not one Christian holiday. What is this about? Are we ashamed of our Christian identity? Are we ashamed that the Europe of church towers was a component of our European identity?"

At this point, Yves Daoudal, all the while praising the speech, wonders about Laurent Wauquiez, who is a minister of a secular Republic that recognizes no religion (except of course Islam, through the creation of the French Council of the Muslim Religion by then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy), and who is political adviser in Sarkozy's UMP party. The UMP is the descendant of the RPR, that placed Jacques Chirac in power, and Jacques Chirac is, in turn, the president who fought tooth and nail to prevent the slightest reference to Christian roots in the draft of the European Constitution, known also as the Lisbon Treaty.

Is Laurent Wauquiez schizophrenic? Or has he been ordered to make a discreet appeal to the Catholic voters? Or has the UMP secretly changed its mind on the subject? We search in vain for a mention of "our Christian identity" in the UMP documents. We search in vain as well in the speeches of Nicolas Sarkozy.

In his article Yves Daoudal also points out that the archbishop of Paris, André Vingt-Trois, did not protest to Laurent Wauquiez about the calendar until January 12, the day Wauquiez himself made his speech and the day the French media put the story in the headlines.

Below, Laurent Wauquiez. According to his biography, he decided to learn Arabic in 2000, and spent several months in Cairo. There, he met Soeur Emmanuelle and her association where he gave French lessons. (Soeur Emmanuelle who died in 2008 was known for her charity work in Egypt with underprivileged children. She was accorded Egyptian nationality in 1991 by Hosni Moubarak.)


Wauquiez participated in the committee that studied "laïcité" presided over by Bernard Stasi. This experience gave him the opportunity to contribute his knowledge of the Arab world and to approach the issue of integration in France, but also to deal with the question of "laïcité" in the schools. (Wikipedia)

Note: The Stasi Commission mentioned above executed the wishes of Nicolas Sarkozy who needed a way around the 1905 law in order to build the mosques that he wanted so much to build. The loophole they found was in the word "cultural". Since a mosque is a "cultural" edifice as well as a house of worship, they were able to justify State and local subsidies towards the construction. The same thing is happening at Ground Zero in N.Y. where they are calling the mosque a "cultural center."

Update: As I post, the most recent edition of Daoudal Hebdo #112 has the latest on the "Agenda Europa":

While it had been announced that future editions of the agenda would contain no religious references, the European Commission has now backed down and declares that the 2011-2012 edition will note the principal holidays, including the religious holidays celebrated in every member State of the EU.

This decision obviously stems from the fact that the Commission risked being attacked for not respecting religious freedom. Even Laurent Wauquiez, the minister of European Affairs, said that this "episode is an opportunity to remind everyone that no religious discrimination is tolerated within the European Union". To publish a European agenda that observes everything that happens in Europe to the exclusion of religious holidays was still an offense to religious freedom. The European Commission was therefore forced to back down.

Daoudal closes with the observation that the agenda remains largely a work of propaganda:

And in the middle of all that, there are two pages on "safe sex" that are basically propaganda for contraceptives. And in highlights, a piece of advice on the choice of lubricants, and this remark attributed to a girl in high-school: "Using contraceptives is restricting, but it's really important. There is no other way to protect oneself." (Well, there is one...)

I would say that it is more propaganda for promiscuity and that it puts the lives of young girls at risk for future health problems. It removes parental control from the picture, and endorses major decision-making for youngsters too immature to foresee the consequences of their acts.

I also think it's in bad taste to put Christian religious holidays in such a publication. The fact that the Commission changed its mind says a lot about the power of public opinion, but at the same time the change was not made in the spirit of the holidays that were at the core of the controversy.