Vatican newspaper blasts change from ‘BC, AD’ to ‘BCE, CE’
October 05, 2011
L’Osservatore Romano has published an op-ed piece blasting the British Broadcasting Corporation for abandoning the traditional BC and AD for BCE and CE.
Comparing the change to calendars introduced by the French Revolution, Lenin, and Mussolini, Lucetta Scaraffia observes that “those who wish to erase every trace of Christianity from Western culture are only a few secular Westerners.”
“To deny the historically revolutionary function of the coming of Christ on the earth, accepted even by those who do not recognize him as Son of God, is enormous nonsense,” she adds.
Scaraffia continues:
How can one pretend not to know that only from that moment was the idea affirmed that all human beings are equal because they are children of God? A principle upon which human rights are founded, and on the basis of which people and leaders are judged. A principle which, until that moment, no one had supported and upon which the Christian tradition is based.
Why should it not be recognized that from that moment the world was changed? That taboos and material impurity disappeared and that nature was liberated from the presence of the supernatural precisely because God is transcendent? Out of this was born the possibility for European peoples to discover the world and for scientists to begin the experimental study of nature which led to the birth of modern science.
Why, then, deny even the cultural debt that civilization bears to Christianity? There is nothing more anti-historical and senseless, as Jews and Muslims have clearly understood. It is not a question of faith, but of reason. Once again.
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Posted by: Chestertonian -
Oct. 05, 2011 7:03 PM ET USA
Oh, many use these terms, but it's silly, because the start date for the CE is the same; they've just given it a different name. Mincing words. Continue to resist the change by using the traditional terms. We have more important issues to which we should give our attention.
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Posted by: filioque -
Oct. 05, 2011 6:40 PM ET USA
This is not only bigoted but silly. To what do "BCE, CE" refer? The "common era" still begins with the same event, the birth of Christ. They just avoid actually saying it. This has been the practice in much of academia for years.
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Posted by: Defender -
Oct. 05, 2011 9:01 AM ET USA
LMU commonly uses it and I wonder how many others do to?
