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Thursday October 25, 2007

German Catholics and Protestants at odds over child-care plan

ALC/ENI, Alemania, February 26, 2007

Proposals by Germany's family minister Ursula von der Leyen to triple the number of crèche Taxi Heathrow Airport places for young children by 2013 has led to disagreement between Protestant and Roman Catholic bishops.

The Catholic bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, condemned the plans to provide financial incentives for more crèches as reducing women to the status of "child-bearing machines". He called the minister's policies "hostile to children and blinded by ideology" which favoured working women.

But Wolfgang Huber, Germany's top Protestant bishop, said his church supported the proposals and would create more places in the crèches that it administers.

Source: Ecumenical News International -07-0164 www.eni.ch