German Protestants apologise for Reformation iconoclasm

By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

(The Tablet) The German Protestant Church (EKD) has apologised for the widespread destruction of religious images during the Reformation.

“The Protestant Church rejects the destruction of images. Images have long since become an expression of Protestant piety,” Protestant Bishop Petra Bosse-Huber underlined at a meeting of delegations from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the EKD. The clerics met in Hamburg to discuss the word “image” from the Orthodox and Protestant points of view. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and EKD chairman Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm sent greetings and blessings to the Hamburg meeting.

Destroying image was most common in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation. In the first half of the sixteenth century, statues of the Virgin and the saints, stained-glass windows, organs and any objects associated with miracles and the supernatural were removed from Catholic churches and wayside chapels and in many cases destroyed. Switzerland, the Netherlands, England and southern Germany suffered particularly... (continued)

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Anger as US inspectors target Swiss chocolate

Swiss chocolate makers face inspections from American authorities to ensure their bonbons do not pose a bioterrorism threat in the US, according to a new report.

(The Local) Because of the importance of the US market, chocolate manufacturers in Switzerland are submitting to Uncle Sam’s intrusion in their factories but they are not happy about it.

“The fact that a foreign authority is involved in our Swiss businesses is unseemly,” Daniel Bloch, of Chocolats Camille Bloch, told Handelszeitung, the German-language business journal.

The newspaper has discovered that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to inspect 21 chocolate factories and 18 dairies in Switzerland.

The move is part of the implementation of America’s Food Safety Modernization Act, new legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama last year that aims, among other things, to combat bioterrorism.

The FDA contends that imported food could be contaminated chemically or even in a radioactive way.

Handelszeitung said Swiss chocolate makers are astonished to be subjected to such screening from a foreign country.

“The companies will let the inspections go through because they want to continue to sell to the US,” Franz Schmid, director of the industry association Chocosuisse told the newspaper.
 
But the planned inspections appear to go well beyond health issues to include such details as sales, ownership, employees and the size of company buildings.

“We ask ourselves, what is the real reason for the FDA inspections,” Jacques Gygax, director of the Swiss dairy association Fromarte, told Handelszeitung.

Gygax fears the Americans may be looking for technical barriers to trade and imports.    


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Bishop Bernard Fellay meets the faithful after an ordination ceremony in Econe, southwest Switzerland, June 29 2009. Earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four Bishops of the SSPX (Society of St. Pius X) leading to a possible reconciliation with Vatican. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the traditionalist Catholic organization SSPX, had consecrated the four bishops against Pope John Paul II's will, automatically leading to excommunication in 1988. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse (SWITZERLAND RELIGION)

Video: h/t to Whispers in the Loggia