01-06-2007 - Traces, n. 6 Debate Is Europe Against the Church (Against Us)? Christianity as a political adversary which it seems natural to oppose… For the Church is a reality that cannot be reduced to the dogmatism of reason as the “measure of all things.” It is accused of curbing the freedom of individuals, their desires and their right to satisfy them always and every way they want. And for this reason the Church is condemned more harshly than Cuba and China for human rights violations. by Mario Mauro* Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget. She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft. She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts. They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. […] Men have left god not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened before That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic. The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do But stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards In an age that advances progressively backwards? (T. S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock,” Faber, pp. 174 and 178) Today there’s a big question mark hanging over the completion of the political project called the “European Union.” Yet, despite setbacks, substantial discretionary powers for decision-making are now in the hands of the European Union, with far-reaching effects in many important and even strategic fields: ethics, the economy, the market, diplomacy, monetary policy, and much more. Relativism The crisis that has hit the integration process is the fruit of an erroneous approach to the question, a political position that does not seek to start from reality, from an answer to the question: “What is Europe?” This fundamental question is emblematic, since it concerns the very foundations of European integration. Benedict XVI has reminded us that the great dangers for peaceful co-existence at this time come, on the one hand, from fundamentalism–namely, from an attempt to make God a pretext for a project of power, and, on the other, from relativism, the belief that all opinions are equally true. The present stagnation of the European Union needs to be seen in these terms. Europe’s problems stem from the fact that the relationship between reason and politics has essentially been sidetracked from the concept of truth itself. Compromise, rightly seen as the crux of politics, has now become an end in itself. This leads, for example, to a hysterical “ideology of equality” on issues such as the family, research, and human rights, which also reveal the limitations of the political leaders who have followed each other in recent years. This has gradually led the European project away from its original goals. Attacks on the Church The political project that we call Europe actually grew out of the testimony of Catholic statesmen–De Gasperi, Schumann, and Adenauer. As a response to the devastation of the ideologies of the twentieth century, they were able to present a vision that was as pragmatic as it was true. But is this vision still respected today? Anti-Christian prejudice now reigns in the European institutions. In the past ten years, the European Parliament has condemned the Pope and the Holy See no fewer than thirty times for violations of human rights. Yet Cuba and China have received just ten condemnations apiece. In these institutions, the theory of the family in all possible and imaginable forms, provided it is not marriage between a man and a woman, has reached such complex levels of elaboration as to justify questions about the common sense of the institutions themselves. If we consider the reports, motions, questions, and written statements presented by European parliamentarians from 1994 to 2007, we see that the Church or the Vatican’s positions have been subjected to no fewer than 64 attacks, which attempt to represent the simple expression of religious belief as “fundamentalist.” Not the least of these attacks was the attempt last April by the Socialists, Greens, Liberals, and Communists to get the European Parliament to condemn the President of the CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference), Monsignor Bagnasco, in a resolution against homophobia. The maneuver was foiled by the EPP (European People’s Party). As the stagnation of the European left shows, these are forces that, in recent years, instead of vigorously and energetically helping European citizens to strengthen Europe, have tried to demolish the very reasons for conceiving and desiring a united Europe. Apostasy Today, the European project has run into contradictions that are so powerful and numerous that instead of offering a positive response, the EU often appears to be an obstacle, a sort of appallingly senseless agglomeration. It has reached the point where Benedict XVI recently exclaimed that apostasy by Europe is now a distinct possibility. Apostasy means rejecting its own history, its own identity, its cultural roots, the roots of the experience of dialogue and coexistence between its peoples which has given us over fifty very important years of peace, development, and human rights. If this is the starting point for trying to understand what has happened to the evolution of the European political system, we now need to focus on a detail. We have to understand that what is involved is not a political dialectic as an end in itself, but the very survival of our experience as a people. The problem is just who we are and what Europe is. Europe has to remember that its ability to choose the right options for mankind today and in the future lies in the relationship between the law of nature and politics. Otherwise, we will increasingly end up damaging not so much the political project that we call Europe but the experience of the men and women who are its members. In this respect, the question of the Christian roots of Europe becomes even more urgent. What is at issue here is not whether to offer a standard operating procedure to the ecclesiastical hierarchies, but the question of the survival of Europe itself. Political challenge What can we offer that will be more than just a meaning? Is there a political project and an experience that will promote peaceful coexistence between peoples? What do we have to offer if we are not capable of questioning ourselves about the grounds of what unites us? The question of the European Constitution exists at this level. We have to answer this challenge. We have to win the battle against fundamentalism and relativism and be capable of saying what are, what we believe in. If we are to have a better Europe, we have to starting believing again, and to work and struggle for this. Europe was born Christian. We cannot leave it prey to mystification and exploitation. And this is also an opportunity for a whole society to rediscover itself and to rediscover its identity, its own face but also its purpose, the reason why we are what we are. Isn’t it our duty to take up this challenge? *Vice-President of the European Parliament