The Soul of Europe
This article was written in April by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger about his new book Values in a Time of Upheaval which has just been published in English. It examines the besieged soul of Europe, which he argues risks becoming spiritually empty, despite its material prosperity.
There is a peculiar sense of malaise in Europe about the continent's future. The most evident sign is in the attitude toward children, who are generally viewed as an impediment to present happiness, not as a hope for the future. Thus, at the moment of its greatest material success, Europe seems empty, paralyzed as if suffering from a profound illness. Europe's spiritual vitality is withering away as Europe's ethnic cultures die out.
There are two main opposing views about Europe's possible future.
Oswald Spengler thought he had detected a kind of natural cycle for cultures: birth, rise, blossoming, fatigue, old age, and finally death. Spengler believed that the West in the 20th century had reached its final phase. Of course, the West could pass on its gifts to a new culture. But as a subject itself, Spengler believed, Europe's time was over.
Spengler's thesis, with its biological basis, was opposed by many scholars between the two world wars — notably by a number of Catholics. Arnold Toynbee emphasized the difference between material-technical progress and real progress.
Real progress, Toynbee said, can only take place in a spiritual context. He said that the occident — the "Western world" — was in a crisis due to the movement away from religious faith and toward the cult of technology, nationalism and militarism. In Toynbee's eyes, the root cause of the West's crisis was secularism. And, if one is aware of the cause of a crisis, one can find the way to heal it: renew the religious impulse. For Toynbee, this impulse could be provided by the religious heritage of all human cultures, but especially from "what remains of Western Christianity." Here, the biological view encounters the voluntaristic view.
If Toynbee's thesis is correct, is it our task today to try to save Europe by re-introducing the "religious impulse" in a synthesis of what is left of Christianity with the other religious traditions of mankind?
What is the inner identity of Europe? What are the enduring elements of that identity which continue over time in the face of all historical change? In other words: what can assure the dignity of human life in Europe, and what can create a framework of laws and customs in conformity with that dignity — tomorrow as well as today?
To find an answer, we have to look back in history. Two new "European" models developed in the 19th century.
First, the secular model among the Latin nations: the state was strictly separated from any religious bodies, which were consigned to the private sector. The state itself rejected the religious foundation of its identity and saw itself as based on "reason" and its conclusions.
These systems proved fragile and susceptible to dictatorship due to the fragility of human reason. These societies were able to function because parts of the old moral conscience continue to exist and enable a moral basic consensus.
Second, the "state-Church" models of liberal Protestantism in Germany and northern Europe.
In these societies, the Christian religion is portrayed essentially as a moral religion, establishing a moral consensus and a wide-ranging Christian social basis, to which other, non-state religions have to adapt. In Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries and Prussia-dominated Germany, this model guaranteed national and social unity over a long period of time. In Germany, however, the collapse of the Prussian state-church created a vacuum, which then opened the way to dictatorship. Today, most state churches are approaching their end: moral power no longer emanates from religious bodies which are derivatives of the state. The state cannot create moral power, but needs to discover it outside itself and build upon it.
The United States falls somewhere between these two models. On the one hand, stemming from the tradition of independent ("free") churches, the US has placed a clear division between Church and state. On the other hand, the US is profoundly marked by a non-denominational, Protestant Christian cultural consensus. This has given the religious impulse an important public weight in the US.
Of course, the erosion of the West's Christian heritage progresses also in the US, though the rapid increase of the Hispanic element and the arrival of religious traditions from all over the world make the picture a rapidly changing one.
Back to Europe. A third model was added to the two models of the 19th century: socialism. Socialism took two main paths — the democratic and the totalitarian one. Democratic socialism became a healthy counterbalance to radically liberal positions in both existing models. It enriched and corrected them. It proved itself even when religious confessions took over. In England, it was the Catholic party, which felt at home neither in the Protestant-Conservative nor in the Liberal camp. Also in Wilhelmine Germany, the Catholic center could continue to feel closer to democratic socialism than to the conservative powers. In many ways, democratic socialism stands and stood close to the Catholic social teachings. It in any case contributed a substantial amount to the education of social conscience.
The totalitarian model, on the other hand, embraced a strict materialistic and atheistic philosophy of history. History was to be understood as a process of "progress" over the religious and liberal phase up to the final society. In this final society, religion could be done away with as a "relic of the past," and material prosperity would ensure everyone's happiness.
This apparently "reasonable" position hides an intolerant dogmatism. For that dogmatism, the spirit is a product of matter. For that dogmatism, the moral is a product of circumstance and must be re-defined depending on the needs of society. Everything which helps to bring personal happiness is considered moral.
This philosophy is the complete overthrow of the values which built Europe.
It is a complete break with the entire moral tradition of mankind.
In this vision, there are no longer any values unrelated to the needs of human progress. In any given situation, anything can be allowed or even necessary, that is — in the new sense — everything can be moral. The future, the "goal" toward which we are "progressing," becomes a cruel god, dominating everyone and everything.
The communist systems collapsed primarily due to their false economic dogma. But one tends to overlook that the deeper reason for their failure was their disrespect for human beings, the subordination of morality to the needs of the system and its future promise. The real catastrophe was not of an economic nature, but the devastation of souls and the destruction of moral consciousness.
I see the essential problem of Europe and the world in the fact that the focus is entirely on economic progress. To overcome economic collapse, old communists have, without hesitation, become economic liberals. But the moral and religious problems which underlay communism's collapse are almost entirely overlooked. To that extent, the problems left by Marxism are still present: the loss of man's traditional understanding of God, himself and the universe.
The loss of the consciousness of fundamental moral values can lead to the destruction of Europe's soul. We must keep this in mind as the real danger — independent of Spengler's theory of rise and decline.
So we face the question: how shall we proceed? In the great events of our time, is there an identity of Europe that has a future and which we can embrace?
It was clear to the fathers of European unity, Adenauer, Schumann, de Gasperi, that such an identity exists and that it is the Christian heritage of our continent, which was formed through Christianity in the first place. For these men, it was clear that the destruction of the Nazi and Stalin dictatorships stemmed from the rejection of these Christian foundations. In their pride, Hitler and Stalin thought they could create better humans no longer subject to a creator, and replace the "evil world of the creator" with a better one, which was supposed to come about through the dogmatism of their own ideology. For the founders of modem Europe, these dictatorships, which brought an entirely new quality of evil, were based on an intentional abolition of Europe. Therefore, one has to return to what gave this continent the dignity and strength to bear all the suffering and crimes of the 20th century.
But the initial enthusiasm for the renewed appreciation of the great constants of Europe's Christian heritage quickly diminished. Thus, the eventual agreement which created Europe was almost entirely based on economic points, and excluded the question of the spiritual foundations of such an economic community.
In recent years, there is renewed appreciation for the fact that the new Europe, even as an economic community of states, requires a basis of common values. The increase in violence, the escape to drugs, and rising corruption forces us to see that the destruction of values has material consequences and that a new direction is necessary.
Three essential things should not be missing in a future Europe and its constitution. First, the principle that human rights and dignity are values which are not subject to any governmental authorities. Guenther Hirsch rightfully stressed that these basic rights are created neither by legislators nor by citizens. "Rather they exist of their own right and must be respected by legislators as authoritative underlying values."
The underlying value of human dignity, which precedes any human political act, ultimately points to the creator. Only he can make laws which are grounded in the essence of men and are not to be set aside by anyone.
The Christian faith maintains that fundamental values exist that must not be altered by anyone. This belief is an essential protection of our freedom and of human dignity. And this essential element of the Christian identity of Europe can be expressed in a way which is also understandable to nonbelievers.
Today hardly anyone would openly deny that human rights and human dignity come before any political decision-making. The horrors of Nazism and its racial doctrine lie only too short a time behind us.
But in a concrete area, that of so-called "medical progress," there is a real danger. Whether in the area of cloning, or of the cultivation of human fetuses for the purpose of scientific research, or of organ transplants, or of genetic manipulation, the demolition of human dignity which threatens us cannot be ignored. Many say that the "good ends" to which this research will lead justify the research, but it is not justifiable. Nor is trafficking in human beings, a new form of slavery, nor is the commerce of human organs for the purpose of transplantation.
Second, marriage and the family are essential for Europe's identity. Monogamous marriage is a basic form of the relations between men and women and at the same time a cell of national community and education rooted in the biblical faith. Marriage gave Europe, both in the East and in the West, a special feature and a particular humanity. Marriage requires a faithfulness and abstinence which always have to be renewed. Europe would no longer be Europe if this fundamental cell of its social structure would diminish or substantially change.
We all know how endangered marriage and family life are today. This is due to the hollowing out of marital indissolubility through ever-easier forms of divorce and through the increasingly common practice of living together without a legal form of marriage. Then there is the desire of homosexuals to form permanent unions, and to have these unions put on the same level as marriage. With this proposal, we step outside of the entire moral history of mankind, outside of all the different forms of marriage law ever known, all of which recognized the special quality of the union between a man and woman which opens toward children and a family.
This is not a matter of discrimination, but of what a human being is as man and as woman, and how the togetherness of man and woman can be rightly ordered. If, on the one hand, their togetherness is distant from the right forms, and, on the other, homosexual unions are viewed as marriages, we face a dissolution of the human image which can only have very grave consequences.
Third, with regard to religion and human life. Basic to all cultures is the respect for what is considered sacred by others. It has never been thought too much to ask for respect for the sacred in general, for God, even if a person is not yet ready to believe in God. An essential aspect of society is lost if this respect is lacking. Thank God there are laws which prosecute those who ridicule the faith of Israel, its image of God, and its great figures, and those who look down on the Koran and the fundamental beliefs of Islam.
Regarding what is sacred to Christians, freedom of expression is the highest good and if that were to be restricted, tolerance and freedom would be endangered or even destroyed. The limit of freedom of expression is where that freedom begins to destroy the dignity and worth of the other. It is not a freedom to speak lies or to destroy human rights.
Here one finds in the West that an odd and what may only be described as pathological self-hatred exists. Thus, the West has sought to open itself, laudably, to foreign values. But the West no longer likes itself, and only sees the cruel and destructive aspects of its history, and is no longer able to acknowledge the great and good aspects of its history.
Europe needs a new — though of course critical and humble — acceptance of itself if it is to survive. Multi-culturalism, which is ever more in vogue, is also at times a rejection of one's own culture, a flight from one's own culture. But the very idea of multiculturalism cannot exist without some common denominators. It surely cannot exist without respect for the sacred. Respect for one's own sacred things and ideas includes respect for what is sacred to the other. But we are only able to do this if the Holy One, God, isn't something foreign to us.
Surely, we can and should learn from what is sacred to others. But it is precisely our duty before others and for others to nourish respect for the holy within ourselves and to show the face of God as he appeared to us: a God who supports the poor and the weak, the widows and the orphans, and foreigners; a God who is human to such an extent that he himself became man, a suffering man, who while he is suffering with us, gives dignity and hope to the suffering. If we do not do this, we will falsify the identity of Europe — and deny others something to which they have a right. The absolutely secular world which the West has brought about is foreign to the other cultures of the world. They are convinced that the world has no future without God. In this sense, multiculturalism might actually help bring us back to ourselves, and help Europe find its soul.
Toynbee said that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Believing Christians should see themselves as such a creative minority. They should contribute to Europe's recovery of the best of its heritage and in this way enable Europe to serve all mankind.
This article was published on April 13, 2005, by Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The book Values in a Time of Upheaval was published in June 2005 by Crossroad Publishing Company.
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