 |
| No halos please! It's too Christian. |
Editor's Note: During the communist era, many artisans in Eastern Europe were ordered by communist authorities not to put halos on the saints in their artworks.
For once the Hungarian government is standing by Slovakia and supporting them. This is highly unusual as relations between the two countries has been lukewarm at best. Many Slovaks have never looked at Hungary in a favourable light. They regard the 1,000 years of Hungarian rule as an "occupation". Modern day Slovakia used to belong to the old Kingdom of Hungary.
The Hungarian government is now supporting Slovakia in their ongoing battle with the European Union over the inclusion of Christian religious iconography on a commemorative euro coin Slovakia wants to mint. The EU has asked Slovakia to remove the halos on the heads of the saints as they don't want any religious iconography on euro coins.
Last Friday, the Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén, released a statement in which he expressed solidarity with Slovakia in its ongoing battle with the European Union over its commemorative €2 coin. The Slovak coin marks the 1,150th anniversary of the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Great Moravia. Both of these saints are significant to the Slovak people and Slavic people in general. The Slovaks were told that they were not allowed to put halos on the heads of the saints by the EU because there were complaints from Greece and France.
The euro coins are shared amongst the European Union member states and some of the members states would object to having coins with religious iconography on them as Greece and France did. The interesting thing is that one of the saints on the coin is holding a Byzantine cross, why didn't the EU object to that? Apparently, the Slovak Catholic Bishops' Conference released a statement saying that the EU was "treading on European Christian traditions". The Hungarian government has agreed with this statement. The government of Hungary has also come under attack recently by the European Union over their actions of moving the country back to its conservative Christian traditions.
Once again the anti-Christian face of the European Union is revealed. Rather than celebrate the Christian traditions and history of the European continent, the EU would rather confine it to the dustbin of history. The EU is doing what ever it can to erase Christianity from public life in their new "utopia".
The EU will face strong resistance to this plan in Central and Eastern Europe as it is these nations that are still strongly Christian. Western Europe has been flooded by millions of non-Christian immigrants in the last couple of decades and has also bowed to the will of the EU in removing Christianity from their societies. Hungary and the other Eastern European nations will not make the same mistake.
For more on this story, click here.
István
