Europe must rediscover 'its own identity, its own unity', says Pope Francis

[Vouthon]

From The Tablet, an international weekly magazine published in London that is the oldest surviving Catholic weekly journal in Britain (founded in 1840, past contributors to The Tablet have included Popes Benedict XVI and Paul VI (while cardinals)):

Europe must rediscover 'its own identity, its own unity', says Francis

Europe must rediscover ‘its own identity, its own unity’, says Francis​

Pope Francis has said Europe must rediscover “its own identity, its own unity,” so it can overcome "divisions and borders”. For this to happen a crucial principle of the Church’s social doctrine is required: solidarity.

Speaking on the Papal plane returning from Romania to Rome, the Pope pointed out that the global financial system, which leaves many young people unemployed and others discarded, makes it difficult for individual countries to solve problems alone. Solidarity, where poorer countries received support from wealthier ones, is vital for the common good.

He warned that the continent was returning to a “divided” and “belligerent” past. He urged Europe to “take up the mysticism” of its founding fathers to keep the dream of European unity alive.

“Please let’s not let Europe be overcome by pessimism or by ideologies, because Europe is not being attacked by canons or bombs in this moment, but by ideologies - ideologies that are not European, that come either from outside or which stem from small groups in Europe,” he said.

Romania is one of the newer members of the European Union after joining the bloc in 2007. But the EU - founded on the principles of Catholic social teaching - is coming under pressure from Brexit, and the rise of the far-right and nationalists in Italy, France and Poland.

The ancestors of Europe, who witnessed two bloody world wars before putting their divisions aside, would be alarmed at the rhetoric being used by politicians today. On the plane, Francis said political leaders must be honest and avoid campaigns based on “calumny, defamation, scandals and many times, sowing hate and fear. This is terrible.”

 

[Vouthon]

An article in First Things published yesterday, by contrast, expresses (sigh) American conservative Catholic distaste for the alleged “politicization” of the church hierarchy in Europe (code: support for European integration and the rights of immigrants to be protected from discrimination, how very dare they!).

The author is the Rome Bureau Chief for Breitbart News:

The Politicization of the European Church | Thomas D. Williams | First Things

The fact that European churchmen have decried Salvini’s win as a categorical loss for the Church herself suggests that clerics have overly entangled themselves in politics, to the point of identifying the good of the Church with contingent—and debatable—political positions. This alliance could compromise the Church’s evangelizing message and needlessly alienate many believing Catholics who in good faith hold contrary political positions.

Three examples will suffice: Namely, the L’Osservatore Romano editorial against sovereignism by Andrea Monda, the lamentations of COMECE president Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, and Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro’s editorial in Thursday’s Famiglia Cristiana .

On May 27, the semi-official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published a front-page editorial by Andrea Monda (personally appointed as the newspaper’s editor-in chief last December by Pope Francis), who criticized the pro-sovereignty movement that made extraordinary gains in Sunday’s elections. That movement is the enemy of Europe, the editorial proposed, and the Lega’s substantial victory in Italy was particularly worrisome.

“Sovereign, as the word itself indicates, is the one who does not want anyone above himself, who wants to be free from any other presence that is seen as a suffocating limit to his own freedom,” Monda wrote. “It is from this misunderstood sense of freedom that Europe’s problems arise, as highlighted by the election results.”

“Sovereignism and Europe are actually two diametrically opposed ideas. Europe is the union of states, it is a being-with,” he continued. The pro-sovereignty vote Sunday was “reactive.” It was not a vote for something, but “against” something, driven by fear.

Monda’s portrayal of national sovereignty as essentially negative, and the pro-sovereignty movement as diametrically opposed to Europe, represents a certain political perspective. But it cannot lay claim to representing the position of the Catholic Church. Moreover, even if all the European states were to relinquish their national sovereignty to the European Union, the E.U. itself would then become sovereign, and Monda’s criticisms of sovereignty would have to be applied to Europe as well.

(continued…)

 

[Vouthon]

The president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) praised the victories of Green parties in Sunday’s elections while lamenting the rise of populist-nationalists such as Salvini. Luxembourg Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich told reporters on Monday that the success of ecological parties is a “positive” sign, because it signals attention to the themes of environment and creation. He then went on to offer the curious assertion that “as a Church” the victory of the green parties “makes us happy.”

“There is, as expected, a strengthening of populist parties but it is not a trend in all countries,” he said, noting that the strong populist victory in Italy was not matched in countries like Spain, Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands.

“Certainly, the presence of a strengthened group of sovereign and populist parties will surely be an obstacle, but not an insurmountable difficulty,” he said, “because these political forces do not represent a strong enough minority to block the EU Parliament.” Asked whether the overall results of the elections were positive or negative, the archbishop said they were “not completely negative” even if this is “perhaps harder for Catholics in Italy to see.”

Hollerich then criticized Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini for preying upon Catholics by appealing to their religious sense.

“I could also hold up a communist flag,” he continued, “but that does not mean that I am a communist,” suggesting that Salvini is not a real Catholic, despite his claims to the contrary.

As a third exhibit, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica , railed against the election results in a full-page article in Famiglia Cristiana . “There is a toad, a moral sickness, in the belly of our country, which is also infecting our Church,” Spadaro observed, since a significant number of self-identified Catholics evidently voted for Salvini.

“If the political usurpation of religious symbols of brotherhood has become acceptable; if a Christian accepts the imposition of a penalty on the one who rescues a drowning man; if nationalism contradicts the very essence of the universality proper to Catholicism… this means that the Christian conscience has been hacked, genetically modified,” Spadaro said. His denunciation of the Italian electorate’s choices suggest that he would have preferred another party to come out on top, but which one?

These three examples are just the tip of the iceberg, the latest signs of a process by which leading spokesmen for the Church in Europe seem to be growing more overtly political and intolerant of challenges to a globalist agenda. Globalists can certainly look to some Catholic Church teachings for inspiration and a justification of their aims, since the Church proclaims the essential unity of the human race and the universal brotherhood of humanity under the common fatherhood of God. Yet defenders of national sovereignty can also look to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity…

 

[PickyPicky]

Difficult to see how the Church can address important public issues without sometimes “identifying […] with contingent—and debatable—political positions”

 

[niceatheist]

It’s an odd criticism since the Church has been an integral part of European politics since the Edict of Milan.

 

[grotto]

What European identity has Europe misplaced? Has the continent lost the numerous countries that have been there for ages? What kind of “divisions and borders” need to be overcome. Does this mean “doing away with”?
Why is Pope Francis concerned, is there something he doesn’t like about
countries that enjoy their place? If they are not engaged in great evils - why must they “rediscover”.
Perhaps Pope Francis is being misquoted again - that has happened.

 

[Ridgerunner]

the EU - founded on the principles of Catholic social teaching

Pope Francis said this? The EU specifically refused to acknowledge Christian roots when urged to recognize them by Pope JPII.

 

[Guinness]

There has never been a “European culture”. Europe has always been a bunch of tribes competing for land, resources, and power. Division and conflict is the true “European” identity.

 

[Guinness]

But without a common language…

 

[Ridgerunner]

The only “tribalism” presently in the U.S. is the divisiveness encouraged by the left.

It is of interest that the article in Post #2 is anything but complimentary of EU politics, and is very much a condemnation of clerical alignment with European politics. That alignment presently seems to be with the EU, or so we’re told by EU supporters on CAF.

 

[abucs]

Pope Francis said this? The EU specifically refused to acknowledge Christian roots when urged to recognize them by Pope JPII.

Yes I remember this too and my concern is that the EU are very much anti Christian and pro secular. I also have very little praise or trust in our current pope.

Personally I think certain church appointments have clearly been a mistake and I hope the lesson is learned for the future otherwise we will continue going down the same divisive path.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You don’t live here. You don’t know how Americans interact as individuals. If you did, you would know what I’m saying is true. Getting your information about America from liberal media is misleading.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have said many times that I don’t purport to understand European politics. Ask Vouthon, as I have said it to him repeatedly. You would do well to acknowledge the limitations of your own sources of information about America and Americans, rather than ridicule us about things about which you know little or nothing.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Please don’t post stuff like that when I am imbibing me coffee, I can only buy so many keyboards in a week.
[/quote]

I guess between Ridgerunner’s posts and mine, you go through a lot of keyboards.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Glad we can provide you a few laughs then.

 

[grotto]

There is a great deal of “what is this European Union” and “how come this outfit is calling the shots”? A power struggle has already surfaced and is on its way to cause trouble. History will clearly prove that takeovers have been tried and defeated only through bloody, terrible wars. Caution and deciphering what is actually being agreed to or not must be accomplished.

 

[Vouthon]

What European identity has Europe misplaced?

There has never been a “European culture”.

"…The European nation has always been a part of the greater unity of European culture…The ultimate foundation of our culture is not the national state, but European unity. It is true that this unity has not hitherto received political form and may never do so; but it is for all that a real society not an intellectual abstraction, and it is only through their communion in this society that the different national cultures have attained their actual form…

A common educational tradition creates a common world of thought with common moral and intellectual values and a common inheritance of knowledge, and these are the conditions which make a culture conscious of its identity and give it a common memory and a common past…"

Christopher Dawson. The Making of Europe (1932).
“…There have been periods of time in which communities, apparently in peace with each other, have been more perfectly separated than, in later times, many nations in Europe have been in the course of long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in the similitude throughout Europe of religion, laws, and manners. At bottom, these are all the same.

The writers on public law have often called this aggregate of nations [Europe] a Commonwealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great state having the same basis of general law; with some diversity of provincial customs and local establishments. The nations of Europe have had the very same christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines. The whole of the polity and oeconomy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary; from the feudal institutions which must be considered as an emanation from that custumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into system and discipline by the Roman law.

From hence arose the several orders, with or without a Monarch, which are called States, in every European country…From all those sources arose a system of manners and of education which was nearly similar in all this quarter of the globe; and which softened, blended, and harmonized the colours of the whole. There was little difference in the form of the Universities for the education of their youth, whether with regard to faculties, to sciences, or to the more liberal and elegant kinds of erudition.

From this resemblance in the modes of intercourse, and in the whole form and fashion of life, no citizen of Europe could be altogether an exile in any part of it. When a man travelled or resided for health, pleasure, business or necessity, from his own country, he never felt himself quite abroad…"

– Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795), PART III, pp. 132

 

[Vouthon]

Many Europeans would beg to differ. I feel European and identify with Europe culturally.

Like other world civilizations such as China and India, Europe is a genuine historical and cultural unity.

Circa 490 BC, Herodotus explicitly set Europe and Asia in contrast, in the context of the Persian Wars where Greece defends its liberty from the might of the Persian Empire, and gives this enmity a semi-mythic origin in the Trojan wars. (Histories 1.1.)

Christendom presupposed three Pan-European principles – the ecclesiastical power Sacerdotium (Church), the imperial power Imperium (Empire), and the Studium (Univesity). In addition, there were a range of other pan-European cultural institutions, such as Benedictine monasticism, Roman law, classical heritage, chivalry and the feudal order.

Furthermore, a Pan-European language –Latin – united the entirety of Western Europe in religion, scholarship and education hence the term “Latin Christendom": a single, supranational cultural sphere.

When St. Thomas More lost his head in 1535, in the Tower of London, he died a martyr for ‘Christendom’, not just for his Pontiff but for a supranational European civilisation that saw itself - overriding its patchwork diversity - as constituting one union in the Latin West under canon law, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor of the Hapsburgs.

“The original modern idea of the nation emerged in 16th century England. When, in refusing to accept Henry VIII’s claim for supremacy in the English church, Thomas More appealed to the idea of the unity of Christendom, he was thinking in 'pre‐nationalist terms’” (Liah Greenfield).

But the fate of Europe, ‘supranational’ papist and Hapsburg vs Protestant nation‐statism, was not decided in the 16th century. It took over a hundred years for that to happen.

Despite being raised Lutheran in the immediate after of the Westphalian Peace Settlement, Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz (1646 ‐ 1716), the famous German polymath, had this to say:

"…All Christendom forms a species of republic, in which Caesar has some authority ‐ from which comes the name, Holy Empire, which should somehow extend as far as the Catholic Church. Caesar is the commander Imperator, that is the born leader of Christians…to maintain good order, in short to act through the authority of his position so that the Church and the Republic of Christendom suffer no harm…

The scepters of kings are…subject, like their consciences, to the universal church…to constrain them [national governments], by the authority which I believe resides somehow in the universal Church, and in the Holy Empire, and in its two heads, the Emperor and a legitimate Pope.

And if the Council were perpetual, or if there existed a General Senate of Christendom established by its authority, that which is done today by treaties and, as is said, by mediations and guarantees, would be done by the interposition of the Public Authority, emanating from the Heads of Christendom, the Pope and the Emperor…"

Medieval Europe thus conceived of itself as an uncodified, flexible and porous “Christian
Republic” (res publica Christiana).

 

[Vouthon]

It’s an odd criticism since the Church has been an integral part of European politics since the Edict of Milan.

You don’t say…

Pope Clement XIV, Dominus ac Redemptor (1773):

"…Our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace announced by the prophet, when he came into this world first proclaimed peace to the shepherds through the angels. Then before he ascended into heaven, he announced peace through himself. More than once he left the task of peacemaking to his disciples when he had reconciled all things to God the Father…

He also gave the apostles the ministry of conciliation and entrusted to them this word of reconciliation so that, serving as envoys of Christ, who is not the God of dissension, but of peace and love, they might proclaim peace to the whole world. They were to apply their utmost efforts and labors to the end that all those begotten in Christ be solicitous to preserve unity of spirit in the bond of peace. There was to be one body and one spirit as they have been called in the one hope of our calling to which we never arrive unless, as St. Gregory the Great says, we hasten to be of one mind with our neighbor.

This very word and ministry of reconciliation has been divinely entrusted to us in a certain more powerful manner…Furthermore, we well know that the divine plan has placed us over peoples and kingdoms. In cultivating God’s vineyard and in preserving the house of the Christian religion whose cornerstone is Christ, we root up and we destroy and we dispose and we scatter and we build and we plant. This has always been our mind and firm intention that we ought not leave anything undone for the peace and quiet of the Christian Republic.

We ought to act by planting, by building, by doing whatever is suitable. Similarly, when the same bond of charity requires it, we should be prompt and ready to uproot and to destroy anything…"

 

[grotto]

The so called European Union looks like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.