Pope Benedict recently announced the creation of The Pontifical Council for New Evangelization. Its remit is to operate in those countries “where Churches are present of ancient foundation” but which “are going through a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God.’” Its task is to find “the appropriate means to propose again the perennial truth of the Gospel of Christ.” In other words, it’s a mission to Europe.
Given the way in which the centre of Roman Catholic gravity has shifted decisively south and eastwards over the last forty years, this may seem like an attempt simply to return bums to European pews. In fact, it is rather more than that.
Europe is exceptionally close to the papal heart, both personally and historically. Pope Benedict is a thoroughly European pope, having held professorships at Bonn, Tübingen and Regensburg, and the Archbishopric of Munich and Freising. His subsequent close relationship with John Paul II further encouraged his concern to preserve what John Paul called “the Christian roots of Europe and its Christian soul.” On assuming the papacy Cardinal Ratzinger chose his pontifical name partly in honour of Pope Benedict XV, the early twentieth century pope who sought to bring peace to a continent devastated by war, and partly in honour of Saint Benedict of Nursia, whom Ratzinger called “the Co-Patron of Europe”, and described as “a fundamental reference point for European unity and a powerful reminder of the indispensable Christian roots of his culture and civilization.” Since then, Benedict has made sixteen overseas visits, ten of which have been to European countries.
This European concern is more than just a personal peccadillo, however. Indeed, it is precisely the historical context that makes the personal interest so important.
Benedict has repeatedly remarked in speeches and books on the subject that Europe is a Christian concept. Where, for example, do its boundaries lie? The Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean might make that sound like a question of straightforward geography. But even if Europe’s western, northern and southern borders have always been self-evident (and history suggests they have not), that certainly does not apply to the east. “Why, for example, does Siberia not belong to Europe,” Benedict asks in Europe: Today and Tomorrow, “even though it too is inhabited by Europeans? …Where do the frontiers of Europe disappear to the south of the community of peoples called Russia?”
Europe, he contends, is not so much a geographical concept as a “cultural and historical” one, a realm of ideas that have a distinct “spiritual foundation” and immense implications on our understanding of the state, the family, the direction of history and, supremely, the nature of the human person. Lose these spiritual foundations and you lose the “unconditional character” of human dignity, a dignity that is not granted but recognised by legislation, a dignity on which the entire apparatus of liberty, equality, solidarity and democracy rests.
Benedict does not, of course, imagine that Europe is about to slide back into the totalitarian nightmares of the recent past. But he does warn that without a conception of inalienable human dignity, we risk subtly instrumentalising people. A “deliberate promotion of religious indifference or practical atheism”, as he calls it in his encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate, would do more than deny Europe’s history or frustrate the church. It would threaten Europe’s future, its development and democracy, its liberty and equality, by depriving citizens of the “moral and spiritual strength” they need to flourish fully as human beings.
Benedict is right. A de-Christianised Europe would undoubtedly survive, but it would be a very different animal from the Christian Europe that formed and was formed by the Vatican. It would, in effect, no longer be Europe.
Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at Theos A longer version of this article is published in Foreign Policy magazine.
