Are the Dutch really being ordered to spell “Christ” lower case?

The Web is abuzz with a story that the governments of Belgium and Netherlands have mandated that “Christ” be spelled lower case, as well as the word for Jewish when it is used in a religious rather than a national or ethnic sense. Having seen this bounce around the Web for a couple of days, I don’t believe it. I come to this conclusion because the original news report, which apparently comes from Kathnet agency, is just a couple of sentences long, and, unbelievably, gives no hint of the ostensible reason why such an astounding thing is being done. Almost as strange, the several articles I’ve read commenting excitedly and angrily on the report show the same incuriosity as the report itself. No one asks why this is happening, except to assume it’s an attack on Christianity, though I haven’t seen anyone suggest that it is also an attack on Judaism. Christ is a proper name. Proper names are capitalized. The same goes for the name of a religion. I repeat: the failure of the original news report to give any reason for the orthographical change strongly suggests that this is a hoax.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 02, 2005 11:46 PM | Send