Pope John Paul II this week repeated his call for the
forthcoming
European constitution to acknowledge Europe’s Christian
heritage. Three days later, the presidents of Poland and Lithuania
(two of the 10 nations entering the European Union next year)
joined the leaders of Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain in
supporting the Pope’s idea. High officials of the Anglican and
several Orthodox churches have also lent their endorsement.
The current draft of the constitution contains no specific
reference to Christianity, though it fleetingly invokes “religion”
as one source of Europe’s values. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing,
the former French president who headed the group that produced the
draft, has said that mentioning Christianity was impossible without
support from all the member states.
France and Belgium were reportedly at the forefront of the
opposition. Objections included possible legal ramifications for
controversial issues such as abortion, and the sensitivities of
Europe’s growing Muslim population. The prime minister of Turkey
has also spoken against mentioning Christianity (though given how
reluctant the E.U. is to let Turkey in, that can’t have made much
difference).
Faced with accusations of divisiveness and suspicions of
bigotry, proponents have argued on historical grounds. The prime
minister of Portugal recently noted that “to talk of Europe from a
cultural point of view without mentioning the legacy of its
Judeo-Christian roots is purely and simply a historical
mistake.”
So obvious and irrefutable is this truth, responds Giscard, that
it might as well go without saying; everyone will know what the
constitution means by “religion.”
At this point, even believers might be wondering why any of this
should matter. Christianity doesn’t need validation from the E.U.,
of course. Yet John Paul, an ardent and emphatic supporter of
European integration, evidently believes that the E.U. needs
validation from Christianity.
Common sense suggests that the E.U., an unprecedented experiment
in uncoerced supranational governance, and therefore dependent on
the voluntary suppression of patriotism and national interest,
can’t succeed unless it appeals to some deeper impulse than the
desire to eliminate trade barriers. Without Germany or Russia
posing an imminent threat to European peace, fear won’t do the
trick.
The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, one of the most
influential thinkers on the subject of European integration, has
argued that the continent’s unity depends not just on Europeans’
common economic interest but on their collective “attachment to a
particular ethos … a specific way of life.”
For Habermas, that ethos is the welfare-state ideal of social
justice and solidarity. The E.U.’s draft constitution states that
the “Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity,
liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human
rights … in a society of pluralism, tolerance, justice,
solidarity and non-discrimination.”
The problem with such values, as the political scientist Glyn
Morgan points out, is that they are no justification or argument
for European integration. Europeans can enjoy all these goods
living under an old-fashioned system of nation states.
Nor is the E.U. necessary for Christianity or any other
religion. Yet if the Pope is right, Christianity favors and fosters
European unity. As he put it last Sunday: “The gospel of Christ,
which has been a unifying element for the European people through
centuries, still remains an unfailing source of spirituality and
brotherhood today.… The explicit recognition in the treatise
of the roots of Christianity in Europe would become the principal
guarantee of the future of the continent.”
Less than two months before E.U. members meet in Rome to
consider the constitution, the campaign to write Christ into the
document seems quixotic, doomed to failure by the spirit of the
age. On the other hand, when the Pope came to the throne in 1978,
who would have predicted that then-Communist Poland would 25 years
later be a leading advocate for declaring Europe Christian?
Probably nobody except John Paul himself.
