"The liberties of French Christians have long been in a perilous state, however now the recently elected Socialist Government is set to impose a new form of secularist surveillance upon the Church and lay organisations, seeking to discover and 'dissolve' any potential cases of what it deems 'religious pathology.'"
The Catholic Church has called for a public acknowledgement of the extent of anti-Catholicism in Scotland as new Crown Office statistics show an increase in Religiously Aggravated hate crimes directed at Catholics.
Cardinal Peter Erdö speaks of wrong presentations of and a "a spreading of ignorance about the Christian faith", being "accompanied by repeated juridical, as well as physical, attacks against the visible presence of the manifestations of faith". This is also due to the fact that human rights "no longer have a clear connection with the human and Christian view".
School children as young as 12 who disagree with same-sex marriage have been branded as “Nazis” and “bigots”, a senior Roman Catholic official has said. John Deighan said there is an increasing level of ill will against “very young people” because of their views about such issues.
The “Human Rights agenda” is in danger of becoming a new form of totalitarianism, according to a bishop in comments ahead of four religious liberty court cases.
In a submission to the European Court of Human Rights, hearing four freedom of religion cases in the fall of 2012, Lord Carey said: "The secular human rights agenda has gone too far and the Convention is losing legitimacy in many Contracting states. Many noble words such as ‘human rights’ are seen as little more than a political agenda."
The Daily Telegraph reported, that „in a powerful submission to the judges, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, warns of a distorted ‚human rights agenda’ which he likens to the atheist communist regimes in Eastern Europe which also suppressed Christianity by preventing public manifestations of faith.“
The well-known US intellectual Robert George raised concerns about the verdict handed down in Germany on June 26, identifying circumcision as punishable offense: "it is also about laws that undermine the ability of Jews, Muslims, and persons of any other faith to fulfill their religious duties; and it is about the rights of people of every religion to manifest their faith in public life as well as in their temples, churches, mosques or homes."
During the 40th Meeting of the General Secretaries of the Bishop Conferences in Europe, that took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, between 29 June and 2 July 2012, it was concluded that in many European countries, God is seen as a private matter both in the field of politics, as well as in culture, law and the public sphere. Oftentimes, the religious freedom of churches is restricted in deceitful ways or directly through an intervention of governmental authority. In these times of economic crisis and deep longing after God, this repression of God in daily life seems to have a negative impact on all societies.