12/1/2011 Europe (The Telegraph) - Many people are breathing a restrained sigh of relief this morning after the cavalry, in the form of the US Federal Reserve, rode to the rescue of European financial institutions. Of course, it is uncertain whether this move will help solve Europe’s lending crisis or whether it merely postpones the day when the euro collapses – followed perhaps by the defeat of the European Project itself.
Whatever the future holds, we need to understand that the economic collapse is not the main crisis which engulfs Europe. More significantly, we see the EU developing into the ever-tighter totalitarianism which was envisaged from its inception. The founding fathers of the EU never foresaw a democratic union. The founders of the project, such as Coundenhove-Kalergi and Jean Monnet, always assumed there would be government not by elected statesmen but by technocrats. This is indeed what we have seen recently in the appointment of such men to supreme power in Greece and Italy.
But this creeping totalitarianism is not the root of our problem. Our crisis is a spiritual crisis, a crisis of identity. As the philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate, Professor Marcello Pera said,
“Christianity is so consubstantial with the West, that any surrender on its part would have devastating consequences.”
But all references to Europe’s Christian character have been expunged by the EU bureaucrats. Europe is now officially secular. Pope Benedict XVI identified our real crisis with terrifying clarity:
“The EU is godless. But then it is unthinkable that the EU could build a common European house while ignoring Europe’s identity. Europe is a historical, cultural and moral identity before it is a geographic, economic or political reality. It is an identity built on a set of values which Christianity played a part in moulding.”
A church in every village. A cathedral in every city. The glorious traditions of European music and literature. The political freedoms of which we are rightly proud. All these were products of Christian civilisation.
The mistake of the secularists and the bien pensants who now control every aspect of our lives is to imagine that we can throw off our Christian identity and yet all the political liberties and other good social consequences we derive from that identity will remain in place.
They won’t and already they haven’t. If Christianity goes, the lot goes. As T S Eliot said back in 1934, “Such attainments as you can boast in the way of polite society will hardly survive the faith to which they owe their significance.”
