"I believe that some of these variants are in flagrant discord with great church tradition and the ecumenical consensus that exists between major churches," Church commissioner Mikael Löwegren in Ljungby, Småland County said, as quoted by the Sydsvenskan daily.

Löwegren argued that this decision signified that the Church of Sweden "ceased to exist as a coherent spiritual community."

"Under the guise of 'diversity', society is being broken down into different groups," Löwegren said, arguing that the new manual effectively dismantled church unity by allowing differences from parish to parish. He also argued that the gender-neutrality toward God "took the Church of Sweden further away from major churches instead of bringing it closer to them."

Priest Helena Edlund, who blasted the church for having shown "a total unwillingness to listen to criticism," expressed her concern over the development.

"If the Church of Sweden is to be a part of the world-wide Christian church, we cannot always choose the paths that tear us apart from the tree and its roots, we must choose unity instead of breaking away," Edlund told the Världen Idag news outlet last year.

However, Sofia Camnerin, the deputy chair of the Uniting Church of Sweden, defended the use of "inclusive language" in the church.

"Referring to God as 'Lord' consolidates gender hierarchies and the subordination of women in a white, Western feminist context," Camnerin argued in a blog earlier this year, claiming that legitimizing hierarchies led to violence and subordination.

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Something terrible happened last Saturday in Poland. A crowd of 60,000 neo-Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, far-right nationalists, anti-Semites and religious fanatics marched in the streets of the capital Warsaw in the biggest display of bigotry and hatred the world has seen in years. And like-minded radicals from all around Europe sent their delegations to the rally. And the Polish government not only failed to condemn this march of the right, but dared to call the event "beautiful." The terror! [...]

The indignation in reaction to the Polish Independence Day march may be justified, but it should not come as a surprise. A similar nationalist-organized event in 2016 had 60,000 to 75,000 participants, according to different estimates. And guess what, some of them carried anti-Muslim banners, the falanga symbol, and a banner that read: "Death to enemies of the fatherland." The rally in 2015 numbered some 70,000 and was hailed the some Polish media as a major breakthrough for not being violent, unlike in previous years. [...]

There is no denying that Polish nationalism is no bastion of some of the values and goals promoted by EU functionaries. The people on the march were showing support for their government's opposition to policies like admittance of refugees from the Middle East or legalization of same-sex marriage - which goes against Catholic tenets. But would all of the 60,000 marchers endorse Jewish pogroms or a Nazi Germany-style 'final solution' for the Muslim population in Europe, which would justify the names they had been called? Doubtful. [...]

The change from the previous years is apparent. The Independence Day marchers were "members of far-right groups" and "radical nationalists" for the media just a year ago. The media didn't refer to them with loaded terms like "fascists," even when the rallies turned violent.

What apparently changed over the past year is that the EU has decided to escalate the conflict with Warsaw over a number of issues such as controversial media and judiciary reforms. Just days after Independence Day, the EU Parliament passed a damning resolution, which said the Polish government must condemn the "xenophobic and fascist march" and "suspend large-scale logging" in the Bialowieza forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, among other things. [...]