Church bans 9-year-old's football gravestone
Published: 13 Nov 12 09:34 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20121113-46131.html
A German church has refused the parents of a nine-year-old boy who died of a brain tumour permission to put up a gravestone adorned with the logo of his favourite football team.
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After the boy died, the parents had such a headstone designed and in July applied for permission to put it in the cemetery of the Catholic Visitation of Mary church in the Bodelschwingh district of Dortmund, where Pascal is buried.
But the church board rejected the stone, on the grounds that "the design is not appropriate for a Catholic cemetery." Graveyard rules state that "inscriptions and images that are not associated with the Christian faith are not permitted."
The design features the BVB Dortmund football club logo, next to the club slogan "Real Love," as well as a football.
The family is now fighting for the right to fulfil the boy's final wishes, and have started a Facebook group that has already collected over 100,000 supporters. Some Schalke fans - bitter footballing rivals to Dortmund - have also reportedly joined the campaign.
But so far the church has remained adamant, though spokesman Michael Bodin says they have offered to negotiate with Pascal's parents.
The Local/bk
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Your comments about this article:
The churches are self-destructing by refusing people's civil wishes for theological reasons whether it is not allowing football logos, banning homosexuals or spurning women who choose abortions. All it does undermine the churches' authority in civil affairs and decrease the 'need' people have for religion. As various armies have found out, there is a marketplace for hearts-and-minds and the traditional religions are loosing out to the competition: secular activities and weird religions.
Thoughts with the family at this time.
If football is more important than Christianity, the Church, Last Rites, Consecrated ground, etc. why does the family care to bury him in the context of the Church anyhow? Just bury him on secular property and avoid all the noise.
It's like non-religous people getting married in a church because the pictures look better than in the courthouse.
It's kind of like reading the little letters in a contract...
What I fail to see is why the church gives a damn?