The Vatican said that the Charter of Fundamental Rights adopted at the European Union summit in Nice was a "godless" document.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said the charter upheld family values in theory, but in promoting the rights of homosexuals it had "departed from the beaten track followed by the moral history of humanity," and would cause "moral and social harm" by sanctioning homosexual unions and making it easier for homosexual couples to adopt children.

He said: "We find ourselves faced with the destruction of the image which man has always had of himself." He added it was regrettable that "God and our responsibility before God" had not been "anchored in the European constitution."

France: Proselytize, go to jail
Bible left unread in most homes
Europe's diminishing religious liberty

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England, believes Britain has become an atheist society in which people look to medicine, not religion, to provide eternal life, the Daily Telegraph reported. The newspaper quoted Dr. George Carey complaining of a "tacit atheism" prevailing in Britain and adding: "Death is assumed to be the end of life, bleak though that thought is." People's hopes focused on family happiness, the next holiday or personal fulfillment, the paper quoted Carey as saying. "Our concentration on the here and now renders thoughts of eternity irrelevant." According to Carey, most people no longer believe in eternal life and desperately seek to postpone death through medicine.

A Chinese Protestant arrested while worshipping at an illegal service has died in a central China jail after being beaten and then denied medical care, a rights group reported.

Police detained Liu Haitong in a raid on a private home serving as an underground church in Henan province's Xiayi county on Sept. 4, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Beaten by police and left weakened by the prison's inadequate food and poor hygiene, Liu began vomiting and developed a high fever, the center said. It reported that the 19-year-old died in the jail on Oct. 16 after police refused to provide medical care.

Chinese authorities have in recent months renewed a 2-year-old campaign against people worshipping outside state-backed churches. Henan has been at the center of the crackdown. The province is home to thriving Protestant house churches and the movement is serviced by evangelical preachers, foreigners among them.

The crackdown is likely to intensify following decisions made at an annual meeting of the ruling Communist Party's elite. Immediately after the meeting, Public Security Minister Jia Chunwang ordered police to target members of cults, separatists and "religious extremists." The latter phrase is a code for people worshipping outside official churches.

Joe Leiberman tossed off a couple of lines about God in a speech the other day. He said that the framers of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Seems true enough, but from the press fallout, you'd think he'd called for a new Inquisition.

This is one of a thousand examples of the wholly unjustified anti-religious bias of our time. The assumption of most intellectuals and their media echo chamber is that believers, particularly Christians, are a danger to society and to liberty. Sure, people should have freedom of religion, so long as their religion is private, invisible, politically ineffectual, and culturally irrelevant. The Church is to be hounded as a menace, and the State heralded as liberator of mankind.

Do believers represent a danger to society? Are they the would-be oppressors of our time, to be constantly watched, feared, and thwarted? Look at the sweep of the century and you see that Christians have in fact been the main victims of state violence in our century. For full documentation of these claims, I commend to you Robert Royal's remarkable new book, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000).

"In absolute numbers, the century's martyrs far surpass those of any previous century," he writes. And why? Royal blames "the appearance of virulent anti-Christian ideologies and brutally repressive regimes seeking to impose them, which led directly to the widespread suffering and slaughter of religious believers."

"In a century that rightly prided itself on its scientific and technological advances on the one hand and its commitment to human rights on the other, refined methods of torture and control, physical and mental, also emerged with a vengeance all around the globe. As one of the deepest sources of opposition to oppressive tendencies, religion was a logical target for tyrants. The twentieth century presents a brutal spectacle that may be remembered historically as one of the darkest periods of martyrdom."

How many martyrs? Royal says we can't know for sure. But millions were slaughtered. The chapter on the Ukrainian liquidation of believers makes for very difficult reading. Imagine this: the Ukrainian Catholic Church had 2,772 parishes, 8 bishops, 4,119 churches and chapels, 142 monasteries and convents, 2,628 priests, 164 monks, 773 nuns and 4 million laypeople. By the end of their suppression, the entire apparatus was reduced to zero. And his list goes on and on.

Royal reminds us that Christianity is a faith in which martyrdom, not conquest, is the driving theme. St. Paul was beheaded, and explained why in Galatians: As "he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born of the Spirit, even so it is now." Our Lord Himself warned His followers that "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves."

Tertullian observed that the Roman state blamed all problems, even natural disasters, on the Christians: no matter what happened a shout went up, "The Christians to the lions! Death to the Christians!" So it seems sometimes in our own time. Christianity's teaching of the dignity of human life, and its recognition that every individual has a soul of infinite worth, gave birth to the modern idea of freedom. In many ways, Christianity has sustained freedom because it refuses to recognize the final authority of the state. The loyalty of the Christian will always be to transcend authority, and hence will be inclined to resist. That is why they were killed in this century, and why they continue to be persecuted today.

The miracle is that Christianity has survived despite everything. So far, it has outlasted every government that has tried to kill it off. Indeed, the promise from Galilee was that the gates of Hell will never prevail.

Two lawyers said that they had written to German Family Minister Christine Bergmann asking her to officially class the Bible among books considered dangerous for children because of its violent content.

The Holy Book contains passages of "a gruesomeness difficult to exceed" which are glorified as the will of God, the Bavarian lawyers Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel said in their submission to the minister on behalf of "some parents of minors." "It preaches genocide, racism, enmity towards Jews, gruesome executions for adulterers and homosexuals, the murder of one's own children and many other perversities," Sailer and Hetzel said. The book should therefore be kept on the "not for children" list so long as the "bloodthirsty and human rights-violating passages" were not removed.

A spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Church in Munich, Adelheid Utters-Adam, described the demand as absurd. If the Bible should be put on such a list, then so should every history book and practically every newspaper edition, she said.

Sweeping new anti-sect laws approved by the French Parliament have raised fears among civil rights organizations and other groups, which believe they could be used to attack them. One civil liberties watchdog, Omnium des Libertes, has condemned the law as a "cancer on the face of democracy."

French courts had long complained that existing laws were insufficient to control sects. Now the new crime of "mental manipulation" is being introduced. The charge carries a maximum term of three years behind bars or a fine of 300,000 francs ($50,000).

The law also allows the sect itself, rather than just its leaders, to be put on trial, and it could be dissolved by the courts if it is found guilty more than once. Any sect found to be directing marketing towards the young stands to be penalized.

The day before the law was passed, 50 associations which fear they may be classed as sects took out a full-page advertisement in the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, denouncing what they described as "liberticide" and saying France would be comparable to China if the law was passed.

The Church of Scientology said the law represented a "highway out of democracy." It claimed the only other mental manipulation law ever passed in western Europe was introduced by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

The bill aims to restrict the growth of 173 blacklisted faiths, including Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists and … the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest denominations in the U.S., with 15 million members, and the church affiliation of both President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Evangelism by the groups mentioned could be criminalized as an "exercise [in] serious and repeated pressure on a person in order to create or exploit a state of dependence."

Morris H. Chapman, president and chief executive officer of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, said he is concerned about the legislation. "It is particularly disheartening that the selfless act of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ could be equated to the 'mental manipulation' of the public," he said in a statement released by the Baptist Press. "God does not desire to control the minds of men but to change their hearts."

Dwayne Hastings, a spokesman for the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the Bible commands believers to share their faith. "The Bible is explicit in its command that we should seek to share the Gospel with everyone," he said. "Evangelism and witnessing are actions generated out of love and concern, not hostility or hatred. It is clearly not an exercise that should be regulated by the state."

State Department officials who have spoken to French lawmakers say many of them describe the legislation as advocacy work by a charismatic citizen named Jacques Guyard, who leads an anti-sect movement and was author of the government's sect list.

While France is the first nation to push for criminalization of certain religious activities, it is by no means alone in its quest to stop the growth of "sects." France, Germany, Austria and Belgium have set up commissions to list sects, which in Belgium includes even the YWCA.

"It isn't surprising, given the climate of increased repression and persecution of Christians in many countries around the world," said the Southern Baptist Convention's Hastings. He added, "It is inappropriate for any government agency or faith community to attempt to intimidate or silence any other entity in the public or private expression of their faith."