EU president’s praise for Catholic teaching welcomed as bishops urge citizens to vote in elections to stop "nationalist threat"

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Ridgerunner said:
No. The Pope asked the EU higher ups to acknowledge Europe’s Christian roots. They wouldn’t but enshrined a sort of secular “Euro-worship” in its stead.
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The proposed EU constitution never passed, as such this is largely an academic question. In the absence of a written constitution codifying the treaty law and legal judgements of the ECJ, it’s moot.

If the topic did recur again though, I’d certainly be in favour of including a reference to Christianity amongst the sources of inspiration for the Union.

But to my knowledge, Christianity is not mentioned at all in your constitution or declaration of independence, so aren’t you being hypocritical here with double standards?

A vague deism seems to be the leitmotif of the Declaration, while the Constitution is just plain secular as they come. So what right has an American to insist that the EU act differently, I wonder?
 
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By contrast to the US constitution, the EU at least acknowledges the spiritual values in its heritage, in the fundamental charter of rights (its “bill of rights”):

https://fra.europa.eu/en/charterpedia/article/0-preamble
The peoples of Europe, in creating an ever closer union among them, are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values.

Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage, the Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law. It places the individual at the heart of its activities, by establishing the citizenship of the Union and by creating an area of freedom, security and justice.

The Union contributes to the preservation and to the development of these common values while respecting the diversity of the cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe as well as the national identities of the Member States and the organisation of their public authorities at national, regional and local levels; it seeks to promote balanced and sustainable development and ensures free movement of persons, goods, services and capital, and the freedom of establishment…

Enjoyment of these rights entails responsibilities and duties with regard to other persons, to the human community and to future generations.

The Union therefore recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out hereafter.
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As an addendum, I’d invite you to have a brief look at this recent 2017 study by Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti, assistant professor of political theory at City College, City University of New York, and an associate researcher at the Center for European Studies of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, which rebuts the misconceived idea (admittedly popular stateside amongst conservatives) that the EU is “laicite”-style secular:

A more adequate category for describing the way in which these relations are structured within the framework of the European Union as it exists today is offered by an ideal-typical notion of ‘Christian Democracy’. In order to substantiate this thesis,the paper focuses on the discussion of a number of concrete features of the institutional structure of the European Union that do not fit with traditional definitions of secularism and laıcite, but resonate with the way in which the notion of ‘Christian Democracy’ was theorized in the work of some of its most representative exponents, such as Luigi Sturzo, Alcide De Gasperi and Jacques Maritain
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The U.S. has never formally rejected Christianity and at least accepts God. The EU has rejected both. I never said the U.S. was perfect. But I really do think rejecting the Pope’s call for an acknowledgment of Christian roots is secularism with a vengeance, and particularly in a continent that has reminders of its seemingly former Christianity everywhere.

It’s a secular empire whose members are members for economic reasons, but which has usurped political power in the process. I understand the wish to be better than previous European empires, but there’s no great reason to assume that it will be when it won’t even acknowledge a power greater than its human participants.
Vouthon said:
Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage
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Yes. Secularists claim “spirituality” too. Lindbergh’s plane was the “Spirit of St. Louis” but that didn’t mean there was anything religious about it, and there wasn’t. Couldn’t say the word “Christian” though, or even acknowledge that there is a creator.

There may be worse things, but all this claiming that the EU is somehow a Catholic institution is just nonsense. It’s secular to the core. Some churchmen think it’s a good idea and that’s as far as its Catholic heritage goes.

Leaving pretty quickly . Just have to answer a PM.
 
Ridgerunner said:
There may be worse things, but all this claiming that the EU is somehow a Catholic institution is just nonsense. It’s secular to the core. Some churchmen think it’s a good idea and that’s as far as its Catholic heritage goes.
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The fact that its four main founding fathers were all devout Catholics and that Catholic Social Teaching is intrinsic to the constitutional Treaties, and that Pope Pius XII was involved in ushering its formation, ought to be included too.

Most American founders were deists or deistic Christians (not that that’s a bad thing).

There is no getting away from the fact that the U.S. constitution doesn’t even refer to “spiritual values”. It’s just plain secular as they come, while the declaration is clearly about the natural God of deism, without any hint of revelation. So I do view your position as overtly hypocritical.

And as per the article I referenced above, here are some of the factors that make that politics professor argue that the EU is “Christian Democratic” as were its founders:
1. The fact that European institutions do not establish (or even aim to establish) a homogenous juridical space for regulating relations between politics and religion, but rather seek to accommodate a plurality of different modes of articulation between them, according to a doctrine of subsidiarity

.2. The fact that, within the framework of this doctrine, the European Union explicitly recognizes religion as a source of ‘‘inspiration’’ for public law ,thereby setting itself the formal goal of including representatives of various religious traditions within the legislative process.

3. The fact that the European treaties, and the jurisprudence that gives them effect,have endorsed a ‘‘positive’’ interpretation of the principle of religious freedom ,which is not reducible to an idea of non-interference with religious practice, but on the contrary imposes an obligation upon European institutions to actively promote religious traditions and especially education on its territory.
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(continued…)
 
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4. Finally, the fact that the European treaties and jurisprudence also implicitly grant a privileged status to Christianity as a constitutive element of the specific kind of civic ‘‘ethos’’ that is assumed to give unity and coherence to the European project as a whole, while other religious traditions (such as, most notably, Islam) are taken to be either exterior and even inimical to it.

To be sure, the elaboration of these points is not meant to provide a comprehensive analysis of the structure of the relations between politics and religion in the European Union’s institutional framework. I do not mean to deny that there are some respects in which this institutional framework can be described as ‘‘secular’’ nor even that there exist some elements of overlap between the way in which this notion has been historically understood and the ideal type of ‘‘Christian Democracy’’ I will be referring to as a counter-point. The European Union is certainly not a ‘‘theocracy,’’ even in the restricted ‘‘constitutional’’ sense recently coined by Hirschl (2010) to describe regimes such as Israel, Iran or Pakistan.

The point I want to make, however, is that an ideal–typical model of ‘‘Christian Democracy’’ is more adequate than the much more frequently employed notions of ‘‘secularism’’ and ‘‘laicite´’’ to describe the institutional structure of the European Union. The approach I adopt is therefore comparative and heuristic, in the sense that I aim to evaluate the relative degree of adequacy of ideal–typical notions of ‘‘secularism’’, ‘‘laicite’ and ‘‘Christian Democracy’’ to the actual institutional framework that is inscribed in the European treaties and jurisprudence.
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I’m sure you don’t pretend to expertise on EU constitutional law like he does, do you? After all, the chap above actually teaches it to graduate students in America and Europe.

That doesn’t mean his study is right but it does illustrate that your position is draconian.
 
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Ridgerunner said:
has usurped political power in the process
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How can it have “usurped” power when it was granted it in treaties written, designed and given legal force by the signatory member states from 1957, through to 1992 to 2009?
 
Vouthon said:
The fact that its four main founding fathers were all devout Catholics and that Catholic Social Teaching is intrinsic to the constitutional Treaties, and that Pope Pius XII was involved in ushering its formation, ought to be included too.
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Nevertheless, the Pope asked that Europe’s Christian roots be acknowledge, and they wouldn’t do it. Few even go to church there. The EU is no more Catholic than Erdogan. Might as well let him into the EU too.
 
Vouthon said:
How can it have “ usurped ” power
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By economic threat. They shut out those who don’t join and sanction those who do.

Fortunately the U.S. is a continental economy, together with Canada.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Nevertheless, the Pope asked that Europe’s Christian roots be acknowledge, and they wouldn’t do it.
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And the constitution never passed, meaning this is academic anyway.

Perhaps it never passed partly for that reason, come to think of it, amongst certain member states (although there were a plurality of factors).

If that question were mooted again, with all of the eastern member states now in the Union and if Ukraine and Serbia join in the future, you may be surprised by the outcome.
 
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Ridgerunner said:
Fortunately the U.S. is a continental economy, together with Canada.
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And I’m happy for you.

I just wish you too would be happy that others wanted a continental economy in Europe too and have had one for decades now.
 
Perhaps on the question of secular and non-secular polities we could agree on this:

The UK is a less secular state than the US. Many of its civic ceremonies are overtly religious; its head of state is crowned in a religious rite, indeed in a Eucharist; there is a State Church established by law; the supreme governor of that church is the head of state; that church has the right to send bishops to take part in Parliament; that Parliament is not prohibited from making law respecting an establishment of religion — indeed it regularly does so.

The US is a less secular society than the UK. Religion plays a much more prominent role in communal and private life, and it has a far higher proportion of committed Christians and of regular church attenders.

How about that?
 
On a side issue (apologies, OP) any suggestions of why British membership of the EU seems to have attracted the ire of American posters here? I can sort of understand disgruntled and misinformed Britons backing Brexit (although I can’t recall any of them turning up here) but what is the motivation of American Brexiteers?

It could just be that they think we are ill-advised and, in deference to our long friendship, wish to utter a word of caution. But somehow they seem more emotionally engaged than that. What can be troubling them?
 
PickyPicky said:
But somehow they seem more emotionally engaged than that. What can be troubling them?
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You know, I’ve really never understood this over the years here on CAF.

Practically every Brit poster on this forum is a Remainer, and so the advocacy for Brexit is coming from people who don’t actually live in either the UK or EU.

And yet, there is an apparent emotional investment in the issue that is rather perplexing, as if some of these posters were speaking about their own country, which has zilch to do with the EU, rather than the UK.

On the surface, it would appear to be a kind of romanticised ideal of European “nationalisms” (i.e. how Americans with heritage in given European countries think their ancestral lands should be like), which the existence of the Union seems to threaten (in their minds).

Wedded to that is an obsession with ‘globalism’ (even though the EU is explicitly a continental project, like the US and thus, again, has little to do with North Americans) and the belief that the EU is a great bastion of this allegedly nefarious ideology.

Or something like that.

To be honest, I struggle - even after all these years - to really envisage the mindset, as it’s a bit alien to me.

I think it evidences some kind of hysteria.
 
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Because you have a pope DIRECTLY STATING THAT OTHER FORMS OF SOCIALISM ARE CONDEMNED, not just Marxist collectivism as you assert!!

You haven’t bothered to deal with the ACTUAL QUOTE from pope Pius XI that I have now pasted 4 times.

So here’s a fifth:
  1. But what if Socialism has really been so tempered and modified as to the class struggle and private ownership that there is in it no longer anything to be censured on these points? Has it thereby renounced its contradictory nature to the Christian religion? This is the question that holds many minds in suspense. And numerous are the Catholics who, although they clearly understand that Christian principles can never be abandoned or diminished seem to turn their eyes to the Holy See and earnestly beseech Us to decide whether this form of Socialism has so far recovered from false doctrines that it can be accepted without the sacrifice of any Christian principle and in a certain sense be baptized. That We, in keeping with Our fatherly solicitude, may answer their petitions, We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.
  2. For, according to Christian teaching, man, endowed with a social nature, is placed on this earth so that by leading a life in society and under an authority ordained of God[54] he may fully cultivate and develop all his faculties unto the praise and glory of his Creator; and that by faithfully fulfilling the duties of his craft or other calling he may obtain for himself temporal and at the same time eternal happiness. Socialism, on the other hand, wholly ignoring and indifferent to this sublime end of both man and society, affirms that human association has been instituted for the sake of material advantage alone.
  3. If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.
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I could care less if Britain remains or leaves the E.U. but if other countries wish to leave I have no problem with that.

The question is would you get “hysterical” if they did???
 
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josie_L said:
I could care less if Britain remains or leaves the E.U. but if other countries wish to leave I have no problem with that
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None do.

You have any problem with that?

And for the record, secession is a constitutional right under the TEU, article 50, so I’m perfectly happy for any member state of the Union to exercise it, if they so elect.

Out of curiosity, what’s the position for Quebec should it want to Quebexit? Can it unilaterally decide to secede from the Canadian union and would you get “hysterical” if they did?

Right back atcha.
 
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