EUROPE : GERMANY - CHRISTMAS MESSAGE FROM BISHOPS

 RUHR NACHRICHTEN SHARE - In their Christmas sermons have the bishops on Tuesday addressed social problems and called for a self-confident Christian faith. Even on Christmas Eve both large churches had warned of an increasing division of society in Germany and called for solidarity with weaker.Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg denounced on Christmas Day at the increasing violence in schools and football stadiums. One reason for this he looks in the entertainment media. "In a country where television stations even broadcast on Christmas hours action movie and brutal thriller, where snipers and gangster films dominate the festival of love and peace, many living rooms, should not that actually really surprised," said Chairman the German Catholic Bishops Conference in Freiburg.The Berlin Archbishop Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki called for solidarity with persecuted Christians around the world."Christians today are the world's most discriminated and persecuted religious community. And be summoned in an age in which human rights and religious freedom so much, "Woelki said in his sermon. With great concern that he should look at the situation of Christians in many countries around the world - in Syria, Egypt, Nigeria, even in the Holy Land.Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, appealed to the self-esteem of Christians. At Christmas, the festival will celebrate the incarnation of God, Meisner said in his sermon. In Bethlehem, God has entered human history, man has become a household of citizens with the saints and God, Meisner of Cologne Cathedral quoted the Apostle Paul. Even the first Christians did this so fascinating that it "charges against the top trend of the time head led a politically incorrect way of life."The Bishop of Fulda, Heinz Josef Algermissen, warned to leave the depraved human dignity at the mercy of technology and "uncontrollable forces". "Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, blood tests for the detection of Down syndrome in unborn children and their selection as a consequence, but also easier ways to commit suicide reveal a lack of respect in terms of human dignity." Christians would have "in a Christmas consequence" press there massively as "troublemakers" wherever " the powers of death at work were "whether political, economic or military.The Bishop of Speyer, Karl-Heinz Wiesemann criticized the proposed law by the Federal Government on euthanasia in its current form. It lacked a clear rejection of the organized euthanasia Wiesemann said on Christmas Day in the cathedral of Speyer. "Even euthanasia organizations change their constitutions in order to pursue the new law met its goal can continue. What people need but is assisted in life, not participation in the dying. "Man is not the master of life and death, warned the Catholic Bishops.
SHARED FROM RUHR NACHRICHTEN DE - INTERNET TRANSLATION

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