A NON-CHRISTIAN EUROPEAN UNION: THREAT TO THE CHURCH'S SURVIVAL ON THE CONTINENT

Though not a member of the European Union, the Vatican today and tomorrow will launch itself into one of the bigger political questions of the year: the future of Europe.

The French President, Emmanuel Macron, and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Union Commission, earlier this year offered detailed contributions to the debate over the future of Europe. 

Representatives of the Church will engage with European leaders from across the political spectrum in a so-called high-level dialogue at the Vatican under the broad rubric of Rethinking Europe.

The Vatican must engage in the politics of the European Union for one simple reason:  the Church’s survival on the Continent depends upon it.

The fact is the Europe has been in an unprecedented civilization crisis for the last two centuries.  The Continent has become completely secularized.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many nations regained their freedom and democracy, it seemed that a new, positive period had begun for Europe.  That was the specific hope of Pope St. John Paul II whose dream for a Catholic Europe dissolved before his very eyes as he witnessed his beloved Poland’s rapid acceptance of a more secularized, particularly non-Catholic approach to self-governance.

The European Union chose not to revert to the Continent’s Christian roots, but instead began to build its institutions on abstractions such as the free market, equality of individuals, and individualist human rights.

The Church sees this growing separation between Christianity and the European Union as a threat to both its influence and financial security.  It must be remembered that the Church is very much dependent upon friendly European states collecting so-called “church taxes” from citizens and distributing those monies to the various denominations with which those citizens identify.

Should the European Union disallow or discontinue such practices, the Church would be thrown into a state of financial collapse.

But even more profoundly, a European Continent devoid of its historic relationship with the Church would find itself morally adrift, having forgotten that all laws should serve the dignity of the human individual, a dignity not conferred by the State by which only comes from God Himself.

The European Union wishes to cut itself away from the Continent's Christian (understand that to be principally Catholic) roots.

The crisis could not be greater for the Church and the Vatican is not so quietly taking very opportunity to remain “in the political game”.

Given the dramatic decline in religious practice and admitted church affiliation that has been witnessed throughout European in the past half-century, the Church has an uphill battle ahead.