"They say the crucifix should be taken down from school classrooms. Ours is a secular state and has no right to insist that crucifixes hang in the classroom. (...) But I'm sorry to see the crucifix disappear forever from every class. It feels like a loss. Religious instruction is a form of political coercion. It's a lesson. Words are spent on it. The school belongs to everyone—Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Why should Catholic religion be taught there? But the crucifix teaches nothing. It is silent. Religious instruction creates a division between Catholics and non-Catholics, between those who stay in class during that hour and those who get up and leave. But the crucifix creates no division. It is silent.
It is the image of the Christian revolution, which spread across the world the idea of equality among men—an idea that did not exist before. The Christian revolution changed the world. Are we perhaps going to deny that it changed the world? For nearly two thousand years we have said "before Christ" and "after Christ." Are we perhaps going to stop saying that now? The crucifix creates no division. It is mute and silent. It has always been there. For Catholics it is a religious symbol. For others, it can be nothing—just a part of the wall. And finally, for someone, for a tiny minority, or perhaps a single child, it can be something particular, something that stirs conflicting feelings. The rights of minorities must be respected.
They say that a crucifix hanging on the classroom wall might offend Jewish students. Why would it offend Jews? Was Christ not himself a Jew and persecuted, and did he not die in martyrdom, as millions of Jews died in the camps? The crucifix is the sign of human suffering. The crown of thorns, the nails—they evoke his pain. The cross, which we imagine raised high on a mountaintop, is the sign of solitude in death. I know no other image that conveys so powerfully the sense of our human destiny. The crucifix is part of the history of the world. For Catholics, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. For non-Catholics, he can simply be the image of one who was betrayed, sold out, tortured, and died on the cross out of love for God and for his neighbor. An atheist erases the idea of God but keeps the idea of neighbor. Someone will say that many others have been sold out, betrayed, and tortured for their faith, for their neighbor, for future generations, and no image of them hangs on school walls. That's true. But the crucifix represents them all. How can it represent them all? Because before Christ, no one had ever said that all men are equal and brothers—all of them, rich and poor, believers and non-believers, Jews and non-Jews, black and white—and no one before him had said that at the center of our existence we must place solidarity among men. (...)
Jesus Christ carried the cross. All of us have experienced, or do experience, carrying on our shoulders the weight of great misfortune. (...) We shed blood and tears, trying not to collapse. This is what the crucifix says. It says it to everyone, not only to Catholics. We always think of certain words of Christ, and we can be atheists, secular, whatever we want, but they float in our thoughts all the same. He said: "Love your neighbor as yourself." These words were already written in the Old Testament, but they became the foundation of the Christian revolution. They are the key to everything. They are the opposite of all wars. The opposite of planes dropping bombs on defenseless people. The opposite of rape and the indifference that so often surrounds women violated on the streets. We talk so much of peace, but what else can we say about peace beyond these simple words?
They are the exact opposite of how we are and live today. We think of them always, finding it extremely difficult to love ourselves and harder still to love our neighbor—or perhaps impossible, and yet feeling that there lies the key to everything. (...) The crucifix does not evoke these words, because we are so used to seeing that little piece of wood hanging there, and so often it seems to us nothing but a part of the wall. But if it happens that we remember that it was Christ who spoke them, we are too grieved to see that small sign disappear from the wall. Christ also said: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied." When and where will they be satisfied? In heaven, believers say. Others do not know when or where, but these words—who knows why—make the hunger and thirst for justice feel more acute, more ardent, more powerful. (...)"
Natalia Ginzburg, 2009
(from Super omnia charitas, Dec. 09)