A MAN working in the advertising business filed a criminal complaint in connection with the pastoral letter authored by the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia (KBS), which generated controversy by calling gender equality efforts a “culture of death”.
“I am filing a criminal complaint on the suspicion of the violation of the Penal Code paragraph 156, the defamation of nation, race, ethnicity, or belief by a group that presents itself under the name the bishops of Slovakia,” Robert Slovák wrote in his letter to the police, as quoted by the omediach.com media news portal.
Slovák claims the bishops committed the defamation of belief against those who are without religious confession. For instance, the letter says that for a man to stand against God’s order is the promotion of the culture of death.
“I filed the criminal complaint because I got the impression that the bishops of Slovakia have defamed part of the population for not sharing their opinion about life, for not believing or believing in something else,” Slovák told the hnonline.sk news portal.
The bishops associated with the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia (KBS)
caused outrage among their opponents, but also among some of their followers, mainly with the language they used in the letter to describe what they see as a threat to the institution of traditional family in Europe.
They repeatedly labelled efforts at gender equality as “the culture of death” and same-sex marriage as “sodomitic mockery”.
In their letter, Slovak bishops note that the institution of family in the traditional sense might not survive in Europe.
“Even though a man cannot destroy it, he can cripple it, and this is what is happening in the world nowadays,” the letter reads, going on to charge that proponents of the “culture of death” use very sophisticated methods by inserting brand new and disparaging content into noble terms. The bishops slammed “gender ideology” and “the so-called gender equality”, which they say is not about granting equal rights to men and women, but is instead aimed at “persuading us that none of us exists by nature as a man or as a woman”.
Source: omediach.com
Compiled by Michaela Terenzani from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
