ispyPhone ... Is your smartphone watching you? Graphic: Liam Phillips

Australian security experts, consumer advocates and privacy campaigners have sounded the alarm over the hundreds of thousands of free smartphone applications that spy on their users.

Lookout, a smartphone security firm based in San Francisco, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple's iPhone and phones built around Google's Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users' phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.

That's a major concern that has been bubbling up in privacy and security circles.

The data can include full details about users' contacts, their pictures, text messages and internet and search histories. The third parties can include advertisers and companies that analyse data on users.

The information is used by companies to target ads and learn more about their users. The danger, though, is that the data can become vulnerable to hacking and used in identity theft if the third party isn't careful about securing the information.

Lookout found that nearly a quarter of the iPhone apps and almost half the Android apps contained software code that contained those capabilities.

The code had been written by the third parties and inserted into the applications by the developers, usually for a specific purpose, such as allowing the applications to run ads. But the code winds up forcing the application to collect more data on users than even the developers may realise, Lookout executives said.

"We found that, not only users, but developers as well, don't know what's happening in their apps, even in their own apps, which is fascinating," said John Hering, chief executive of Lookout.

Part of the problem is that smartphones don't alert users to all the different types of data the applications running on them are collecting. iPhones only alert users when applications want to use their locations.

And, while Android phones offer robust warnings when applications are first installed, many people breeze through the warnings for the gratification of using the apps quickly.

Australian online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman Colin Jacobs said the issue of applications spying on their users "was something that everybody needs to be aware of".

Jacobs said that many did not think of their phone as a computer.

"Mobiles contain as much personal information as people’s everyday computers do," he said.

"Ironically, Apple's model of a very locked down app store which has caused a lot of controversy may provide more protection to users because each application is so carefully reviewed, but it has its downsides as well."

Intelligent Business Research Services analyst Joe Sweeney said that many users had installed firewalls on their PCs, but weren't doing so on their mobiles.

In many cases this is because they can't. Apple, for example, doesn't offer a firewall product on its iPhone.

"If the numbers in this report are correct, then obviously this is an issue," Sweeney said.

"We may need to see firewall-type software on phones."

However, he said that education of users had to come first.

"There are other ways of addressing this issue that doesn't require a firewall."

Sweeney said network providers, such as Telstra and Optus, could help out. Apple could as well, he said.

Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn questioned whether some of the apps using the code broke Australian privacy laws.

"One would ask whether it is a possible breach of some of our privacy laws," Zinn said.

He said that, although Apple and some of the apps might stipulate in their contracts that they collect data and send it to third parties, "How many of us actually read the contracts and the small print that come with them?

"We know that people don't read them. You just press OK," he said.

"We know that, especially with Apple contracts - they're so long - nobody reads them; you probably need a law degree to understand them."

Zinn said that if something as significant as some of the data that was revealed in the report was being sent to a third party, it "shouldn’t be in small print".

It should be something that a user has to consent to and be in "big print", Zinn said.

Apple and Google did not respond to requests from the Associated Press for comment on Lookout's research.

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RFID tags reached a tipping point with Walmart's announcement that, starting next month, the retailer will place removable "smart tags" on consumer goods. The RFID tags can be read by hand-held scanners to track inventory levels and keep a better eye on loss prevention. Recent drops in the cost per RFID tags have encouraged adoption of this technology. With Wal-Mart publicly embracing RFID, you'll see other retailers quickly fall in line.

If your trash is filled with RFID tags, your trash could be exploited by cybercriminals (driving by with a RFID reader). Perhaps consumers should be advised to trash the offending tag before they leave Walmart parking lot? I’m honestly less concerned that cybercriminals will be cataloging an individual’s purchases via their trash than I am about RFID becoming "spychips" — using the RFID technology to track the whereabouts of citizens who have no idea they are being tracked. RFID chips are already embedded into passports and other everyday items. These potential-privacy-decimating spychips can be the size of a dust speck.

I’m not railing against all creative uses for RFID tracking. There are uses for it that aren’t intended to be violations of your privacy (though in the wrong hands, who knows?) A project called "RememberMe" was started earlier this year as a way of recording memories by tracking clothes and other objects by tagging them with an RFID tag and Quick Response (QR) codes. When the owners of the objects donate them to the shop, a research assistant would record brief stories about the donated objects into a microphone: where they acquired it, the memories attached and any associated stories.  Everyone that participates volunteers to do so — so no one’s privacy is violated in this case.

Food is tracked with RFID for freshness and any possible contamination. A company came out with the world's smartest coffee mug that was embedded with RFID to store the owner's account information, purchase habits, and preferences. Perhaps your business has utilized RFID tracking with products such as Microsoft's BizTalk RFID Mobile? Many companies now use RFID tracking, be it in employee badges or for product tracing.

When it comes to using RFID to track humans and our whereabouts, that's when my hackles get raised. Not that this is new either. In 2007, after newspapers reported on a controversial program designed to compile massive dossiers of data on most every American, the website for Total Information Awareness was taken down. People naturally freaked out at the privacy invasion.

But the idea is far from dead. How about if governments started using RFID to issue automated ticket violations? As part of a project called ASSET-Road, VTT Technical Research Center in Finland, has developed RFID license plate tracking. The project began in 2008 and will wrap in June, 2011. VTT attempts to detect traffic congestion but it also achieved the goal of “traffic violations detected in a flash.” And then Arizona-based camera vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) expanded upon that RFID technology by developing automated tailgating tickets as a feature that can soon be added to existing speed camera programs. Now add in this bit of info: There are also drivers licenses that "come equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be read right through a wallet, pocket or purse from as far away as 30 feet."

Along similar lines is a company using RFID to track employees.An Indian company, Unity Infraprojects, uses RFID employee tags to keep track of so-called "ghost workers." The only way an employee gets paid is by a combination of RFID evidence and physical presence to collect daily payment.

And there are those taking this idea of tracking people a step further. RFID transponders can be embedded as a subdermal implant, similar to a microchip. Microchips for tracking our beloved pets are now common. Microsoft has HealthVault and Google has Google Health for e-health record management services and both are pushing for RFID medical bracelets. Between 2007 and 2009, RFID in the guise of VeriChip implants were given to hundreds of Alzheimer’s patients to help identify them and notify caregivers in case of an emergency. Since 2008, RFID infant protection systems have been placed on some infants at birth to prevent them from being abducted from the hospital or from being given to the wrong mother. A new RFID product, "guarantees that RFID will follow you straight to your grave." The palm-size stone tablet has an RFID tag that talks with mobile phones to direct users to an Internet memorial archive. And such uses for RFID are only the tip of the iceberg. Thing Magic, a company that builds embedded RFID readers, recently launched 100 Uses of RFID. 

In themselves, most of these are "valid uses" of RFID technology. Indeed RFID chips are often an embraced technology due to the good they could do for loss prevention. Then again, RFID technology can be the cause of security vulnerabilities. For instance, security badges with RFID chips can broadcast to the criminals where those badges are located. In an article about Fort Gordon stolen military IDs, embedded with RFID, Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity released a report stating, “The mere possession of a stolen card could, in fact, pose a security risk.”

Former NSA employee James Atkinson, still immersed in the world of intelligence and counterintelligence, said his business and government clients, "often fail to recognize security holes that to him seem big enough to steer a tank through." In regards to the missing RFID enabled military badges, Atkinson stated, “If a spy can get within 300 feet of where classified material is handled, he owns it. I mean, he owns it big time.”

At this year's HOPE hacker conference, the hackers showed both the good and the bad that comes when a person is attached to an RFID badge. “This badge knows what talks you go to. It knows who you talk to. It knows what places in the conference you go. It knows when you were there,” says Rob Zinkov, of the HOPE badge team. If you use that data to enhance your own conference experience, RFID is good. If someone else uses that data, unbeknownst to you, not good.

Extreme-range RFID tracking (hundreds of meters) will be explored and exploited during DEFCON. Also this year's DEFCON Badge was described as "a full-fledged, active electronic system. Pushing fabrication techniques to the limit and using some components that are so new they barely exist, the design of this year's badge took some serious risks." At last year's DEFCON,  some hackers were able to temporarily steal other hackers' and a fed's identity.  According to ThreatLevel, when a RFID "reader caught an RFID chip in its sights — embedded in a company or government agency access card, for example — it grabbed data from the card, and the camera snapped the card holder’s picture."

Location-aware apps are scary enough, based on GPS with the broad range they offer. But for the most part you still have to sign up for those. RFID is being implemented all around you. It has slowly been moving to mainstream. It can track infants to senior citizens with Alzheimer’s. In between it can track your clothes, your purchases, your car — even you. RFID is on the verge of tracking us all, cradle to the grave.

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Starting next month, the retailer will place removable "smart tags" on individual garments that can be read by a hand-held scanner. Wal-Mart workers will be able to quickly learn, for instance, which size of Wrangler jeans is missing, with the aim of ensuring shelves are optimally stocked and inventory tightly watched. If successful, the radio-frequency ID tags will be rolled out on other products at Wal-Mart's more than 3,750 U.S. stores.

"This ability to wave the wand and have a sense of all the products that are on the floor or in the back room in seconds is something that we feel can really transform our business," said Raul Vazquez, the executive in charge of Wal-Mart stores in the western U.S.

Before now, retailers including Wal-Mart have primarily used RFID tags, which store unique numerical identification codes that can be scanned from a distance, to track pallets of merchandise traveling through their supply chains.

Wal-Mart's broad adoption would be the largest in the world, and proponents predict it would lead other retailers to start using the electronic product codes, which remain costly. Wal-Mart has climbed to the top of the retailing world by continuously squeezing costs out of its operations and then passing on the savings to shoppers at the checkout counter. Its methods are widely adopted by its suppliers and in turn become standard practice at other retail chains.

But the company's latest attempt to use its influencev - executives call it the start of a "next-generation Wal-Mart" - has privacy advocates raising questions.

While the tags can be removed from clothing and packages, they can't be turned off, and they are trackable. Some privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought.

They also worry that retailers will be able to scan customers who carry new types of personal ID cards as they walk through a store, without their knowledge. Several states, including Washington and New York, have begun issuing enhanced driver's licenses that contain radio- frequency tags with unique ID numbers, to make border crossings easier for frequent travelers. Some privacy advocates contend that retailers could theoretically scan people with such licenses as they make purchases, combine the info with their credit card data, and then know the person's identity the next time they stepped into the store.

"There are two things you really don't want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that's where we are seeing adoption," said Katherine Albrecht, founder of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering and author of a book called "Spychips" that argues against RFID technology. "The inventory guys may be in the dark about this, but there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors."

Smart-tag experts dismiss Big Brother concerns as breathless conjecture, but activists have pressured companies. Ms. Albrecht and others launched a boycott of Benetton Group SpA last decade after an RFID maker announced it was planning to supply the company with 15 million RFID chips.

Benetton later clarified that it was just evaluating the technology and never embedded a single sensor in clothing.

Wal-Mart is demanding that suppliers add the tags to removable labels or packaging instead of embedding them in clothes, to minimize fears that they could be used to track people's movements. It also is posting signs informing customers about the tags.

"Concerns about privacy are valid, but in this instance, the benefits far outweigh any concerns," says Sanjay Sarma, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The tags don't have any personal information. They are essentially barcodes with serial numbers attached. And you can easily remove them."

In Europe some retailers put the smart labels on hang tags, which are then removed at checkout. That still provides the inventory-control benefit of RFID, but it takes away other important potential uses that retailers and suppliers like, such as being able to track the item all the way back to the point of manufacture in case of a recall, or making sure it isn't counterfeit.

Wal-Mart won't say how much it expects to benefit from the endeavor. But a similar pilot program at American Apparel Inc. in 2007 found that stores with the technology saw sales rise 14.3% compared to stores without the technology, according to Avery Dennison Corp., a maker of RFID equipment.

And while the tags wouldn't replace bulkier shoplifting sensors, Wal-Mart expects they'll cut down on employee theft because it will be easier to see if something's gone missing from the back room.

Several other U.S. retailers, including J.C. Penney and Bloomingdale's, have begun experimenting with smart ID tags on clothing to better ensure shelves remain stocked with sizes and colors customers want, and numerous European retailers, notably Germany's Metro AG, have already embraced the technology.

Robert Carpenter, chief executive of GS1 U.S., a nonprofit group that helped develop universal product-code standards four decades ago and is now doing the same for electronic product codes, said the sensors have dropped to as little as seven to 10 cents from 50 cents just a few years ago. He predicts that Wal-Mart's "tipping point" will drive prices lower.

"There are definitely costs. Some labels had to be modified," said Mark Gatehouse, director of replenishment for Wrangler jeans maker VF Corp., adding that while Wal-Mart is subsidizing the costs of the actual sensors, suppliers have had to invest in new equipment. "But we view this as an investment in where things are going. Everyone is watching closely because no one wants to be at a competitive disadvantage, and this could really lift sales."

Wal-Mart won't disclose what it's spending on the effort, but it confirms that it is subsidizing some of the costs for suppliers.

Proponents, meanwhile, have high hopes for expanded use in the future. Beyond more-efficient recalls and loss prevention, RFID tags could get rid of checkout lines.

"We are going to see contactless checkouts with mobile phones or kiosks, and we will see new ways to interact, such as being able to find out whether other sizes and colors are available while trying something on in a dressing room," said Bill Hardgrave, head of the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, which is funded in part by Wal-Mart. "That is where the magic is going to happen. But that's all years away."

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The company says that an infrared light is passed through the finger to detect a unique pattern of micro-veins beneath the surface - which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify an individual's identity.

"This is a substantially more reliable technique than using fingerprints," Peter Jones, Hitachi's head of security and solutions in Europe, told CNN.

"Our tests indicate there is a one in a million false acceptance rate -- that's as good as iris scanning, which is generally regarded as the most secure method."

Unlike fingerprints, which leave a trace and can be potentially reproduced, finger veins are impossible to replicate, according to Jones, because they are beneath the surface of the skin.

"And before you ask, no -- it doesn't work with fingers that have been chopped off," he added.

While the technology represents a step forward in reducing cases of identity fraud, Jones said that this is just one of many factors that have encouraged the Polish bank to adopt it.

"Here, banks have a responsibility to perform various social functions like dispensing welfare checks and pensions. These cause long queues at the cashier and many people find it inconvenient and even debilitating."

BPS plans to install a biometric ATM at every one of its branches by the end of the year, where, says Jones -- who has worked with the bank for over three years -- they will also function as a collection terminal for state benefits.

Although it is a first for Europe, biometric cash points have been embraced in other parts of the world for some years.

According to business data analysts Bloomberg, the technology became particularly popular in Japan after the passing of legislation in 2006 that made banks liable for withdrawals by criminals using stolen or counterfeit bank cards.

Jones says that there are now over 80,000 biometric ATMs in Japan, currently used by more than 15 million customers.

The machines are also dotted around parts of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and even parts of Africa -- where, according to banking analyst Stessa Cohen, they are preferred by rural workers living in remote areas, who are not accustomed to carrying bank cards.

So far though, the technology has failed to penetrate banking markets in the West. Cohen, who works for industry analysts Gartner, believes there are a number of data privacy issues that commercial banks have failed to address.

"If these banks are going to make biometrics an attractive proposition, they're going to have to start being much more transparent about what they do with their customer's personal data. They have to show that this type of sensitive information does not belong to them, but to us."

For Jones, however, a driving force behind the lackluster uptake in most western countries is due to a dearth of commercial incentives.

"It's generally the customer who foots the bill for fraud, and the banks have already factored that into their business model. Add to that the fact that it costs thousands of dollars to install a new ATM -- and it's just not worth it from their point of view."

The security and solutions expert believes that Poland's early adoption of biometric ATMs reflects the country's forward-thinking attitude to the role of information technology in society.

"It's no surprise that Poland is the first in Europe. They are one of the most proactive at addressing the challenges of the information age. When they host the EU presidency in 2012, they want to say to the world: 'Look at what we've achieved.'"

The 30 million-strong nation in the heart of Europe boasts one of the fastest growing IT sectors in the region and has placed information technologies at the center of its plan for economic growth over the coming years.

As Kenechi Okeleke, IT and telecom analyst for Business Monitor International, told CNN: "Poland's IT sector has performed really well in recent times. IT is a major focus for the government at the moment and they have adopted an IT Infrastructure Plan with money from the government and the European Union."

Dariusz Piotrowski, development director at Microsoft Poland, says that the key to the country's success in technology is a thriving student body focused on technological innovation.

In July this year Poland will host the Imagine Cup -- a highly competitive global tech competition for students, which regularly enjoys upwards of 300,000 entrants from over 100 countries.

Poland's track-record in the competition has been exemplary.

"They stood on the podium 13 times, taking the first prize five times, second five times and third three times." Piotrowski told CNN. "Polish students have succeeded in the categories such as Algorithm, Short Movie, Game Development, Photography, Embedded Development and Software Design."

And as far as human-computer interaction goes, biometric ATMs are just the tip of the iceberg for students in Poland. Their entry for this year's Software Design category is a project titled "InterPeter" -- a breakthrough system that translates sign language into natural language and vice-versa.

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will add six of the pastors to its clergy roster at a service at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Sunday. Another pastor who was expelled from the church, but was later reinstated, will participate in the service.

The group is among the first gay, bisexual or transgender Lutheran pastors to be reinstated or added to the rolls of the ELCA since the organization voted last year to lift the policy requiring celibacy. Churches can now hire noncelibate gay clergy who are in committed relationships.

"It's going to be an extremely glorious and festive ceremony because it's the culmination of decades of work to welcome LGBT people into the ELCA," said Amalia Vagts, executive director of the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a nonprofit that credentials openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people for ministry.

Megan Rohrer, one of the pastors who will participate in Sunday's rite of reception service, grew up in South Dakota and attended a Lutheran college where she said students tried to exorcise her "gay demons" by throwing holy water on her. Some of those people are now Lutheran pastors in South Dakota, she said.

Rohrer, who is transgender and a lesbian, was ordained by four congregations in San Francisco in 2006, but could not join the ELCA roster until the denomination's national assembly approved the new policy in August.

"I didn't really believe the policy was going to change as quickly as it did," she said.

Rohrer said she is hopeful Sunday's service will be a "symbol" to young people that the Lutheran church is working toward becoming more welcoming of people of all different backgrounds.

Jeff Johnson, another one of the pastors who will be added to the roster, said the ELCA's position for years of not accepting the choice of some congregations to ordain gay clergy was painful and disappointing.

"The actions the church is taking on Sunday affirms the decisions of those congregations," Johnson, pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, said. "The church is respecting our family, our partners, the choices we're making."

A small number of congregations have voted to leave the ELCA in response to the August vote. Johnson and Rohrer want Sunday's service to heal some of the rifts.

Johnson said the goal, in part, is to show people the church has space for many different opinions.

"There's room for them," he said. "It's a tolerant church."

The special rite of reception that will be used for the first time on Sunday was developed specifically to welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pastors, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, a spokeswoman for the ELCA.

Two more rite of reception services are scheduled for September in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area and another will follow in Chicago, Cooper said.

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The move grants homosexual couples all the legal rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage gives heterosexual couples.

The approval came despite a concerted campaign by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which drew 60,000 people to march on Congress and urged parents in churches and schools to work against passage.

However, Senator Norma Morandini, another member of the president's party, compared the discrimination closeted gays face to the oppression imposed by Argentina's dictators decades ago. "What defines us is our humanity, and what runs against humanity is intolerance."

Same-sex civil unions have been legalised in Uruguay, Buenos Aires and some states in Mexico and Brazil. But Argentina now becomes the first country in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage nationwide. Homosexual couples who marry will now get many more rights than civil unions, including adopting children and inheriting wealth. The proposed law broadly declares that "marriage provides for the same requisites and effects independent of whether the contracting parties are of the same or different sex."

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Papacy Set to Recapture England

It has been 477 years since 1533; the year Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Spanish Catholic Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn. The respected historian, Merle d’Aubigne, places Henry’s divorce in its larger context,

“The conquest of Christian Britain by the papacy occupied all the seventh century…The six-teenth was the counterpart of the seventh. The struggle which England then had to sustain, in order to free herself from the power that had enslaved her during nine hundred years was…the positive work of the Reformation—that which consisted in recovering the truth and life so long lost….As regards the negative work—the struggle with the popedom…the main point in this contest was not the divorce (which was only the occasion) but the contest itself and its important consequences. The divorce of Henry Tudor and Catherine of Aragon is a secondary event; but the divorce of England and the popedom is a primary event, one of the great watersheds of history…”¹

Henry VIII wanted a church that would give him his desired divorce. He also wanted financial freedom from the Church of Rome. However in 1529 Catholic Cardinal Wolsey with his clergy wielded great power in England so as to challenge even Henry himself. Consequently it became Henry’s plan to release the clergy from the Pontiff and attach it to the crown. But this could not be accomplished through a simple act of royal authority because of constitutional governmental principles which had already been established. As a result, the clergy had to free itself from its bondage to Papal Rome.² Providentially, William Tyndale had just finished translating the New Testament into English and by 1526 Hanseatic merchants from Antwerp were importing it surreptitiously into England where it was becoming widely read. Thus was England being prepared to throw off the yoke of Papal Rome to attain both the liberty to worship biblically and the freedom to live without fear from a tyrannical monarch.³

However, while Henry VIII broke with Papal Rome politically, he personally never got beyond Roman Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless he came to see that he could use the growing Reformation movement for his own political ends. By allowing the biblical truths of the Reformation to permeate all levels of society to a certain extent, the clergy itself could be loosed from Rome’s dogma and therefore its control. But he did not ever plan for the clergy to be free from his own control as England’s sovereign.

In the course of events, King Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury.⁴ And Cranmer was responsible basically for what is called the “Thirty-Nine Articles.” Solid Christian doctrine was embedded in “The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion” that were propagated soon after Henry’s death⁵ and officially ratified by the Convocation of the Church of England initially in 1553 and then more formally in 1562. The Articles affirmed that Scripture alone is the final authority on salvation, which is clearly defined as a gift of God given by grace alone, received through faith alone, and is in Christ alone. Thus the Thirty-Nine Articles repudiate teachings and practices of the Catholic Church.

Ever since Henry’s severance of English servitude to the Pope, the Vatican has been in-tent to undermine the religious and political influence of the Church of England and its monarch. The proposed September 2010 Papal visit to the UK is no exception to this centuries-long Vatican policy. By choosing to elevate John Henry Newman in a thoroughly Roman Catholic ecclesiastical event at this particular time, Benedict is mounting an offensive to demonstrate visibly to the world that the UK is being brought back under Roman Catholic bondage. The Papacy would then be in a much stronger position to influence social policy in the U.K., including further enlistment of the civil government to force by civil law Roman Catholic social policy upon the populace as a whole.

Re-emergence of the Holy Roman Empire
Against the backdrop of the re-emergence of the Holy Roman Empire, the nearly five hundred year battle between Protestant England and the Papacy continues unabated. In 1798, a little over two centuries ago, Napoleon’s general removed the then Pope from his throne in Rome, confiscated the church’s properties, and left the tottering Holy Roman Empire in ruins. However, the Papacy itself in spite of appearances had not been permanently destroyed as a religious and civil power and it used the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to regain much of the ground it had lost.

On December 1, 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon went into effect in the European Union (EU). The Treaty is a further step in the centralization of civil power within the EU. One of the major features of the Treaty is that it “introduces a single legal personality for the [European] Union.”⁶ Consequently, this major move against the sovereignty of the member countries has to a large extent subsumed them as states or regions under a new realm or legal entity still bearing the same title of European Union.

Re-emerged Empire has a Pope
Since the Holy See is a sovereign nation in its own right and not a member nation of the EU, it does not come under the legal jurisdiction of that body. Nevertheless the Pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church has a reliable fifth column within the member nations of the EU. Thus the re-emerged Holy Roman Empire clearly has its Pope.⁷ This fifth column, whose first identity is Catholic, is required by the Papacy to “evangelize” by promoting Roman Catholic social policy. Thus the Papacy wields immense power, both politically and spiritually, within the European Union.
With the Treaty of Lisbon in force, there is a de facto re-emergence of the Papacy as a cohesive political-religious power, which now has been given the opportunity to enhance its position on the Western stage. Less than four months after the ratification of the Treaty, on March 16th 2010, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom announced that “At the invitation of Her Majesty The Queen, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will pay a Papal Visit to the United Kingdom from the 16th-19th September 2010….”⁸ The Roman Catholic website, Zenit, gives fuller details,

“Benedict XVI will be visiting September 16-19. Government and Church leaders are welcoming the upcoming event. In a joint press conference, the state leaders together with representatives from the bishops’ conferences of Scotland, England and Wales, underlined the Pope’s visit as ‘an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen ties between the United Kingdom and the Holy See on global initiatives, as well as the important role of faith in creating strong communities.’ A press release from the British embassy to the Holy See re-ported that this is the first ever official Papal visit to that state, as the previous trip of Pope John Paul II in 1982 was a pastoral visit. The Pontiff …will address the British civil society at Westminster Hall [both houses of Parliament].”⁹

Now in our time, 477 years after Henry VIII opened the primary conflict, comes the Pope officially as the head of a sovereign civil state, the Holy See,¹⁰ to address British civil society at both houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. But equally important, he comes as head of the Roman Catholic Church in order to re-establish Roman Catholicism as the religion of the UK.

Thus Benedict XVI has cleverly chosen to use the beatification of John Henry Newman in the UK to promote both religious and political control of the Church of England. That this is the case cannot be denied from a study of the facts concerning John Henry Newman and the Ox-ford movement. It is further corroborated by the history of Catholic social doctrine as evidenced in the Vatican’s, “Compendium of Church Social Doctrine,” the documents of Vatican Council II on ecumenism and numerous other false ecumenical agreements since Vatican Council II.¹¹ In addition there was the Pope’s call in June 2009 for a super-governmental body over the United Nations (UN) to enforce globally UN social policy, which is essentially Roman Catholic Church social policy.¹²

Pope to arrive first in Scotland
It is also highly significant that the visit is to be exactly 450 years since Catholicism, as the state religion, and the Pope’s authority were formally removed from Scotland.¹³ However Scotland’s national newspaper The Scotsman stated further, “Church leaders have revealed the Pope will use his visit to remind Britain of its Catholic roots.”¹⁴ Thus the Scottish 450th anniversary of abol-ishing Papal authority in their realm will be dishonored by a Pope reminding Britain of its “Catholic roots.” More exactly, history documents the fact that Scotland has truly Christian roots going back to Columba. In 563 on the island of Iona, he founded a church and a base for training leaders to evangelize the nation with the Gospel.

The World Stage is set for the Pontiff
The pivotal figure of John Henry Newman is to be used to enthrall the world with all the pomp and pageantry of Papal Rome in full glory mode. The televised ceremonies will culminate with a public Mass in Coventry, at which the Pontiff will beatify John Henry Newman. The Pope will be performing the second stage of the English cardinal’s canonization, or path to sainthood, by virtue of which Newman will be pronounced “Blessed.” In 1991, Newman was declared “Venerable,” the first of the three stages of the process of becoming a Catholic “saint.” It is customary for beatifications to be carried out at a local level.

Benedict, however, especially desires personally to highlight Newman’s teachings that over the years have been a basis of the Vatican’s promotion of false ecumenism. Newman’s “reformulation of doctrine” and his teaching on “continuing revelation” have been particularly influential. This is what Pope Benedict calls “the hermeneutic of continuity” explaining its meaning, “In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the [Second Vatican] Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.”¹⁵ Thus Newman’s concept notion of “continuing revelation” gives the Pope freedom of interpretation even of their Vatican Council documents. Such room for maneuver biblically and historically is highly perilous. This injurious conjecture was particularly used by those responsible for formulating the Agreed Statements of “The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission” (ARCIC).¹⁶ This false ecumenical endeavor has already been quite successful. Many of the priests and members of the Church of England have already submitted to Papal Rome. The Pope, in elevating Newman to the status of “blessed,” does much more. He seriously endeavours in the 21st century to recapture finally Protestant England back into the Roman Catholic Church fold. This is the culmination of what Newman himself set out to accomplish in the mid-19th century.

Who was John Henry Newman?
Some ask the question, “Who was John Henry Newman, and why he is important?” Logos Bible Software’s Catholic Product Manager answers,

“From his evangelical youth to his leadership of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement to his embrace of Roman Catholicism, the career and legacy of John Henry Newman is marked by brilliance and controversy. His engagement with liberal, evangelical and catholic movements within the Church of England in his time makes him a pivotal figure, important for understanding the Anglican Communion today…”¹⁷

John Henry Newman was born in London in 1801. Within Anglicanism, Newman’s family had maintained strong bonds to biblical faith, which had exercised considerable influence on his early religious life. In the autumn of 1816 he underwent what appeared to be a religious conversion. The tone of his mind at this time became Evangelical and Reformed and, significantly, he held to the conviction that the Pope was the Antichrist. In December of 1816 he was welcomed at Trinity College Oxford, and in June of the following year, went into residence there, graduating in 1821.

Looking to stay at Oxford, he studied to become a professor¹⁸ at Oriel College, which was at the time the acknowledged center of Oxford intellectualism. He was elected a professor in April, 1822. In 1824, he was ordained as an Anglican priest. Then at the suggestion of E. B. Pusey, who was also a professor at Oriel, he served as a curate of St. Clements, Oxford. In sermons that Newman preached at the time, he correctly distinguished between justification and re-generation. However, by 1825, the denial of the biblical concept of justification and an increasing acceptance of the unbiblical notion of conferred inner righteousness with leanings towards sacramentalism became apparent in his understanding. In that year, he wrote in his diary, “I think; I am not certain, I must give up the doctrine of imputed righteousness, and that of regeneration as apart from baptism.”¹⁹

By 1833, Newman was completely won over to accepting what he saw as the Roman Catholic heritage of the Anglican Church, including the papal dogmas of infused justification and baptismal regeneration. It had its consequences, as Anglican historian Walter Walsh re-counts from the collected letters of Richard Froude and Newman,

“Cardinal Newman stated that he ever considered the 14th of July ‘as the start of the religious Movement of 1833.’ A few months before that date, Newman, in company with his friend, Richard Hurrell Froude…had visited Monsignor (subsequently Cardinal) Wiseman at Rome. ‘We got introduced to him…to find out whether they would take us in [i.e., to the Church of Rome] on any terms to which we could twist our consciences, and we found to our dismay that not one step could be gained without swallowing the Council of Trent as a whole.’
“While on this journey Newman fell seriously ill…and decided to return at once to Eng-land….He tells us, ‘I sat down on my bed, and began to sob violently. My servant…asked me what ailed me, I could only answer him:--‘I have a work to do in England.’ What that work was we now know full well. It was that of Romanizing the Church of England.”²⁰

“Romanizing” the Church of England
At Oxford Newman together with other “High Church” academics (including John Keble, Froude, William Palmer, and E B Pusey) formed a secret association from which Newman began to publish numerous tracts that were effective in spreading their message. The primary associa-tion became known as The Oxford Movement and was also called the Ritualistic Movement. Walsh documents the purpose of the Ritualistic or Oxford Movement from Union Review, one of their leading quarterly magazines,

“The great object of the Ritualistic Movement from its very birth, in 1833, was that of Cor-porate Reunion with the Church of Rome….As far back as 1867, a leading quarterly of the advanced Ritualists declared that, instead of seceding to Rome, ‘it would be much better for us to remain working where we are - for what would become of England if we [Ritualists] were to leave her Church? She would be simply lost to Catholicism…Depend on it, it is only through the English Church itself that England can be Catholicised.’”²¹

The same article, referring to this corporate and visible unity with the Church of Rome declared,

“‘Here you have the real heart and soul of the present Movement; this is the centre from which its pulsations vibrate, and from which its life-blood flows.’”²²

The same purpose “corporate and visible unity” is stressed in Vatican Council II documents and the Vatican’s, “Compendium of Church Social Doctrine.” While the strategy used to achieve this in America is a bit different than that originally used on the Church of England,²³ the false ecumenical movement formally announced at Vatican Council II in the 1960s has been accomplishing the same end – “corporate and visible unity.”²⁴ This is the objective behind the Vatican’s reference to the purpose of the coming Papal visit to England as “‘an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen ties between the United Kingdom and the Holy See on …the important role of faith in creating strong communities [i.e., churches].’”

For a number of years, Newman remained inside the Church of England. His plan was to transform it by stealth, primarily by withholding from the congregation the great truths of Scripture concerning atonement, faith and works, and the free grace of God. In their place, he and others in his movement begin to slip in little by little the dogmas of Rome with its basis in ritual rather than teaching the great biblical doctrines from Scripture alone.²⁵ The stealth and intrigue by which Newman and his associates carried out their objectives warrants them being tagged as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Newman Perverts the Gospel
In his book, Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification originally published in 1838, Newman put forth his exposition of the Gospel. He anticipated the rapprochement between Catholic and bib-lical positions seen in the ecumenical dialogue of the 20th century until the present time. His teaching crucially distorts and undermines the pivotal truth—the truth that God’s righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ is imputed or credited to the believer. Newman taught through these lectures what the Jesuit Sheridan defined as a “synthesis of justification and regeneration.”²⁶ This was to be a hallmark of the transformed Newman; he now denied what he had previously upheld. Thus, he wrote in his Lectures on Justification, “The Law written on the heart, or spiritual renovation, is that which justifies us.”²⁷ However, in Scripture the Apostle Paul states the opposite, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”²⁸ The law as such convicts and condemns us and can never justify us. As Martin Luther discovered, and the Reformation confirmed, this doctrine is at the very heart of the Gospel.

Newman was well aware of the forensic meaning of justification, basing it on the Greek and Hebrew texts of Scripture. The Apostolic message of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ died for our sins, was “made a curse for us,”²⁹ “suffered for the unjust.”³⁰ In the words of Scripture, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. …For He hath made Him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”³¹ God laid our sins on Jesus Christ by imputation, the just for the unjust. “He was numbered with the transgressors.”³² This is how He was “made … to be sin for us.” There was nothing in Him worthy of death. But, having been made to be sin by imputation, He was condemned by the righteous judgment of God. In this sense, it was right and proper that Christ should suffer the wrath of God. He had to be treated as if He were a sinner.

It is on this same basis that God deals with us. He credits Christ’s righteousness to the believing sinner. He declares that same sinner just and righteous in Christ’s perfect righteousness, as wonderfully stated by the Apostle, “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”³³

Newman knew the strength of this biblical argument and was not disposed to refute it, as many Roman Catholic scholars over many years vainly tried to do. Despite that, he contended that the word “justify” signifies a making righteous, rather than a receiving of imputed righteousness. On this controversial point, Newman achieved what appeared to be a brilliant synthesis between Scripture and Roman Catholic teaching.

Newman forges tool for the Papacy
Newman believed that he had found a “middle way,” what he called a “via media,” between papal dogma and the Scriptures. His “reformulated doctrine” determined that creation and justification are exactly alike. Thus, he taught that just as in the beginning God said, “Let there be light, and there was light” and just as the Word of God and the work of God went together in creation, so it is again “in the regeneration.”³⁴ Such a teaching may seem to have a form of godliness since it uses a biblical example as its model. It is false, however, in that it denies the repeated biblical statements concerning imputed righteousness.³⁵ In justification, God does not create righteousness as a substance: rather, God imputes righteousness without works. This is as the Apostle stated, “the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.”³⁶ A declaration by God is a pronouncement and not a process.
Newman’s cunning theological deception makes it possible to depend on the Church of Rome’s sacraments to be filled with goodness - like a filling station through which grace is channeled into the soul. Newman’s attempt to associate creation with justification and thus to teach subjective righteousness as fact is a violation of God’s inerrant written Word and is rank deceit.

Newman the Point Man to recapture England
By 1840 the suspicion that Newman, still a priest within the Church of England, had become a campaigner for Catholicism neared certainty with the publication of his notorious “Tract 90.” In that tract, he used sophistry and casuistry to argue that the Thirty-Nine Articles (which state the biblical position of the Anglican Church on salvation), if rightly understood, were compatible with the doctrine and dogma of the Church of Rome. Although the Thirty-Nine Articles repudiate teachings and practices of the Catholic Church,³⁷ this tract was subtly clever in under-mining the Reformed Protestant identity of the historic Articles of the Church of England. For example, Section 5 of the conclusion of Tract 90 states,

“They say that the Church has authority in controversies, they do not say what authority. They say that it may enforce nothing beyond Scripture, but do not say where the remedy lies when it does. They say the works before grace and justification are worthless and worse, and that works after grace and justification are acceptable, but they do not speak at all of works with GOD’S aid, before justification.”³⁸

Such sophistry was a blatant denial of the very principle of the authority of Scripture alone and clearly promotes an argumentative attitude towards it. After Tract 90, it became apparent that Newman was committed to defending papal doctrine. He was officially received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and ordained a Catholic priest the following year.

Thus in the 19th century, the Papacy used John Henry Newman as their point man to subvert Church of England to Catholicism and thereby set in motion a developing plan to regain England as a Catholic country.³⁹ We may think that all this is the sound of “far-off things and battles long ago.” However, the Vatican ever thinks in terms of centuries. Benedict XVI, a skillful politician, understands that England lost its sovereign status in December 2009 when the Treaty of Lisbon went into effect. Little wonder then that the second stage of the “beatification” of Newman has had to wait until now.

Conclusion
Pope Benedict’s clever strategy as a civil head of state is of no worth before the Lord God Al-mighty. We can be sincerely thankful that in the Lord God’s supreme wisdom He has deter-mined a limit to the intrigue of Papal Rome. It will be punished for its continued rejection of the Lordship of Christ. In the meantime, the Lord’s people need not be deceived by the enticing spectacle that is to be paraded before the world in September 2010.

We all know that we live in difficult apostate days. In similar circumstances J. C. Ryle encouraged believers in the UK in the 19th century to remain strong and not to compromise. He declared,

“This is the church, which does the work of Christ on earth. Its members are a little flock and few in number, one or two here and two or three there, a few in this district and a few in that. But these are they that shake the universe; who change the fortune of kingdoms by their prayers; these are they who are the active workers for spreading the knowledge of pure religion and undefiled; these are the lifeblood of the country, the shield, the defense, the stay and the support of any nation to which they belong.”

Thus the Lord’s people “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,”⁴⁰ knowing that, “whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.⁴¹

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1 J. H. Merle d’Aubigne, The Reformation in England 2 Vols. (Banner of Truth Trust, 1962) Vol. I, pp. 337-8
2 For more information, see D’Aubigne, Vol. II, pp. 55-56
3 For more information, see D’Aubigne, Vol. I, pp. 245-8
4 The primary divorce of England from the popedom of Rome did come about fully with much bloodshed of English martyrs, including Thomas Cranmer, as they in obedience to the Scriptures served the Lord Jesus Christ.
5 This occurred during the short reign of King Edward VI.
6 http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/glance/index_en.htm 5/15/2010
7 See our Website, “Papal Rome and the European Union”
8 www.royal.gov.uk 4/8/2010
9 http://www.zenit.org/article-28654?l=english 22/03/2010 Emphasis not in original.
10 The Vatican as a sovereign state is legally called “Holy See.”
11 See Michael de Semlyen’s books, All Roads Lead to Rome? The Ecumenical Movement (1993) and The Founda-tions Under Attack: The Roots of Apostasy (2006)
12 See our website article, “The Pope’s Plans on Organizing Political, Economic and Religious Activities World-wide”
13 “By August 1560, the French forces had been expelled from Scotland through aid sent from England, and the queen-regent had died, allowing a free Scottish Parliament to assemble and formally abolish Popery.” www.reformation-scotland.org.uk/.../john-knox-and-scottish-reformation.php 6/1/2010
14 On March 17th 2010: http://news.scotsman.com/glasgow/Holyrood-to-play--.6157450.jp
15 http://www.adoremus.org/1107BXVI_122205.html 6/9/2010
16 The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was established by Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI in 1967. Its terms of reference were established by the Malta Report in the following year and it has worked in two phases - 1970-1981, and 1983-2005.
17 www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=338121888230 5/14/2010 Emphasis not in original.
18 At the time in Oxford, the position was called “a fellow.”
19 John Henry Newman, Autobiographical Writings, p. 203
20 Walter Walsh, The Secret History of the Oxford Movement, Fourth Ed. (London: Swan Sonneshine & Co., Ltd., 1898) p. 263. Italic in original.
21 Ibid Walsh, pp. 260-261.
22 Ibid Walsh p.261 Italics in original
23 See articles on false ecumenism on our website
24 Thus Post Vatican Council II Document No. 42, “Reflections and Suggestions Concerning Ecumenical Dia-logue” Vol. I, Sect VI, II states, “…dialogue is not an end in itself…it is not just an academic discussion.” Rather, “ecumenical dialogue...serves to transform modes of thought and behavior and the daily life of those [non-Catholic] communities. In this way, it aims at preparing the way for their unity of faith in the bosom of a Church one and visi-ble.”
25 Walsh, pp. 3-10.
26 Thomas L. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, (Alba House, 1967) p. 108
27 Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 45
28 Romans 3:20
29 Galatians 3:13
30 I Peter 3:18
31 II Corinthians 5:19, 21
32 Isaiah 53:12
33 Romans 3:24
34 Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 81
35 For example, the Apostle Paul teaches the concept of imputation eleven times in Romans Chapter Four alone.
36 Romans 4:6
37 For example, they deny the teachings concerning Transubstantiation (Article 28), sacrifice of the Mass (Article 31), both bread and wine should be served to all in the Lord’s Supper (Article 30) and that ministers may marry (Ar-ticle 32).
38 http://anglicanhistory.org/tracts/tract90/conclusion.html 1/16/2010
39 For a detailed record of this plan and its outworking in the nineteenth century, see Walsh’s, The Secret History of the Oxford Movement
40 Jude 3
41 I John 5:4

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Values-driven employers who happen to be Christians will be forced to hire male employees who want to wear dresses to work and use the women's restroom or face crippling lawsuits. Employees who express reservations about homosexual conduct will find themselves out of a job.

President Obama just used a recess appointment to add Chai Feldblum - quoted above - to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the board that will be responsible to enforce ENDA in every workplace in America if it goes into law.

Feldblum, who signed a petition in support of polygamy, freely admits that "when we pass a law that says you may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, we are burdening those who have an alternative assessment of gay men and lesbians."

But it's clear that she couldn't care less about imposing that burden on people of faith, and will happily find against them in her role with the EEOC.

Feldblum addressed a scenario in which an evangelical Christian couple may not want to rent facilities to couples who intend to indulge in sexual immorality, adultery or sodomy on their premises in this way: "[T]his is a point where I believe the 'zero sum' nature of the game inevitably comes into play. And, in making the decision in this zero sum game, I am convinced society should come down on the side of protecting the liberty of LGBT people."

In other words, gays win, Christians lose. Every time.

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Many visitors to Germany can find themselves standing outside a closed department store, perplexed to find that they cannot do a bit of shopping during their weekend trip. This is a result of Germany's long-held resistance to Sunday shopping even in the face of growing consumerism.

Yet many of Germany's 16 states have already made some exceptions, allowing stores to open a few Sundays a year. And in Berlin the city government had gone the furthest in chipping away at the ban on Sunday trading. In 2006 the German capital gave the green light for retailers to open on 10 Sundays a year, including the four Advent Sundays preceding Christmas.

However, Germany's Constitutional Court has now upheld a complaint made by the country's Catholic and Protestant churches, based on a clause in the German constitution that Sunday should be a day of rest and "spiritual elevation."

The court on Tuesday decided in favor of the churches, saying that Sunday opening should not take place four weeks in a row. The ruling will not affect shopping this December, but would come into force next year. However, the ruling did not overturn completely the principle of limited Sunday store opening.

The labor unions had joined the churches in their campaign to ring-fence Sunday as a day off for the nation. However, their focus was not on protecting the right to practise religion, but rather on protecting workers in the retail sector from having to work on Sundays, sometimes the only day they might get to spend with other members of their family. The services union Verdi greeted Tuesday's ruling with "relief and joy," saying this was a boon to shopworkers and their families.

German papers on Wednesday are broadly in favor of the ruling, though their reasons for supporting the court's decision are strikingly different.

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"The Constitutional Court had to overthrow the Berlin law. ... The judgement was not 'out of touch with reality,' as the Berlin Chamber of Commerce claims, but is actually very closely in touch with real life. The great diversity of working lives brings with it the fact that members of a single family are forced into different and sometimes incompatible working hours. If the state does not use some of its regulatory power to give a dependable rhythm to at least one free day -- and that is still Sunday -- then the family faces the threat of being pulled further apart."

"If they have no time with each other and for each other, then the formal notion of belonging together loses value. This danger faces many families in society. … The fact that in the face of growing commercialization and fewer jobs hardly any employee ever dares to ask for a free Saturday, led the labor unions to join the churches in their campaign -- with noticeable success."

The conservative Die Welt writes:

"The churches have argued correctly that employees in the retail sector are not given the possibility of organizing their Advent Sundays according to Christian principles: going to church, being involved in the community, singing and reading aloud. It is part of religious freedom to be able to do these things."

"The judges did not just endorse the division of time marked by Christianity, but also the necessity for this division. There is no ambiguity about this weekly rhythm. We people as social animals are duty bound and justified in dividing our time together. It is good to have free time together, it helps us to live as the social beings that we are."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The judgment sounds antiquated, maddeningly unmodern and pretty patronizing. It tells citizens when they are allowed to shop, and when they are not. It makes shopping on a Sunday an exception. It is a ruling that goes against the economic liberal zeitgeist and is a ruling against the round-the-clock commercialization of life."

"Yet, the ruling is humane. It is an act in favor of the public spirit. … Those who regularly go shopping on Sundays today will have to work regularly on Sundays tomorrow."

"It may sound old fashioned but it is still correct: Sunday is Sunday because it is unlike other days. This is not about tradition or religion or a social heritage. Sunday is more than just a day off for individuals. It that were so, then it wouldn't matter if someone took a day off on Tuesday or Thursday. It is a day to synchronize society, that is what makes it so important. Without Sunday, every day would be a working day and a fixed point in the week would disappear. Of course there can be exceptions, there have always been particular professions who work on Sundays. But when the exception becomes the rule, then the commercialization of Sundays will not end at the department stores."

"The court has given everyone the right to a day off on Sundays. You don't have to take it. Everyone can do what they like with it. But it is good to have it."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"The ruling by the Constitutional Court has revived the emotional debate about opening hours of shops on Sundays. That alone is annoying. But even more annoying is that with its strong emphasis on the religiously based day of rest on Sunday, it is interfering in individual and economic freedom."

"Without a doubt the freedom to practise religion is of great value. However, in an increasingly secular society with more and more individualized rhythms of living, it seems an anachronism for the country's highest court to use retail of all things to save the day of rest."

"In the public debate there is too little mention of the freedom of shop owners to keep customers through opening on Sundays, who would otherwise order online. And the freedom of towns to use Sunday opening hours to attract tourists. Or the freedom of customers to decide for themselves if they would rather spend Sundays amidst the crowds in the shopping malls or walking in the forest."

"Appreciating these rights does not mean throwing away the country to the false god of consumerism. It means allowing a debate … about what Sunday really means to us. That includes protecting the rights of salespeople, paying them extra for working on Sundays and not putting anyone under pressure to work on Sunday."

"If this is achieved, then it is high time that Sunday opening hours are no longer discussed in terms of belief but rationally."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung, which is based in Berlin, writes:

"Sunday as a day off is a great gift. The treadmill is closed for 24 hours. The court has given relaxation, rest and 'spiritual elevation' precedence over the thirst for profit and the right to a consumer fix. However, it made it clear in its ruling that Sunday was not just for those who wanted to practise their religion undisturbed. It is also to play cards, go for a walk or simply to laze around. After all even the strictest atheist needs the switching off that Sundays allow."

Author: Siobhán Dowling

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The Work-Free Sunday Movement Getting Organized in Europe

A "Work-Free Sunday" and the need of legislation to enforce the concept was the topic of a conference held this week in Brussels, Belgium. Last year the European Parliament rejected such an attempt. This conference comes as a response. It is but the beginning of a more strategic movement to revitalize the discussion for a work-free Sunday. Daniela Weichhold attended the conference and reports that László Andor, the new Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, saw the conference as " a new chapter." As Weichhold points out the EU Commission can still launch the legislative procedure even if it fails. There is now a serious attempt to convince the hearts and minds of Europeans that Sunday legislation is necessary for the health of all citizens.

The conference was organized by a number of trade unions, political parties, Roman Catholic Bishops, and Protestant Churches including the Baptist, Methodist, Church of England, and Evangelical Lutherans. The supporting website www.workfreesunday.eu argues "More than any other day of the week a free Sunday serves the aim of reconciling work and family life: As childcare facilities, schools and universities are usually closed on Sundays, parents and children can spend time with each other. Sunday is, moreover, the weekly rest day for children and adolescents according to EU law. .... If the father has the weekly rest day on Monday, the mother on Wednesday and the children on Sunday, a situation is created that is contrary to the aim of fostering a reconciliation of work and family life."

Karel Nowak, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Director at the Euro-Africa-Division of Seventh-day Adventists and Secretary General of the International Association for the Defence of Religious Liberty, was also present at the Conference. He raised the question how this new proposed legislation would protect minorities who keep another day than Sunday. As Weichhold noted he didn't get an answer.

"While we strongly support the right to rest," states John Graz the director of the public affairs and religious liberty department at the General Conference, "we believe the individual should be permitted to choose which days to rest on - not the state in cooperation with churches. We view this movement as a grave danger to religious liberty."

"Seventh-day Adventists have long encouraged members to keep a weekly rest day - as enjoined by the Ten Commandments - the Sabbath (which is Saturday or sábado in Spanish) and practiced by the early Christian Church," states Barry Bussey who represents the Adventist Church to the US Government. "Throughout history we have seen these attempts to use state regulation to enforce a particular interpretation of the Sabbath Commandment. That is not the state's role - ultimately it will cause hardship for minority faiths that do not accept the majority's regulation of a Sabbath."

"We will continue to monitor the situation," says James Standish, who heads up the UN Relations for the Adventist Church. "This is a disturbing movement. Now is the time for us as a people to share with others the importance of maintaining religious freedom for all citizens."

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