"AT THE CENTER OF CULTURE IS CULT," observed Christopher Dawson, the great historian of medieval Europe. And for more than a millennium, the cult or "worship" of Europeans was manifestly Christian. On that basis alone, Christianity has an unrivaled claim to a privileged place among the sources of European culture.

Of course, the culture of modern Europe is pervasively secular. And many on Europe's left reflexively identify religion with political reaction. "We don't like God," was the reported comment of one diplomat from France, which led the secularist forces that wanted no mention of the deity in the union's constitution. Indeed, as convention president, former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France, a practicing Catholic, almost single-handedly prevented any reference to God or Christianity in the text. But delegates from Germany, Italy, Portugal and Malta, among others, argued for inclusion...

Why mention God as a source of European values when most Europeans find theirs in economics? Such a gesture would be no more genuine than if the union were to print "In God We Trust" on the euro.

But the failure to acknowledge Europe's specifically Christian heritage is something else. At one point in the process, the preamble referred to the "humanism" of Greek and Roman civilization, then skipped without pause to the 18th-century Enlightenment. Those specific references to Europe's past have been cut, but the preamble still ignores Christianity's contribution to the core European values that the union is pledged to uphold: "the central role of the human person, and his inviolable and inalienable rights, and of respect for law." What kind of history is this? Surely it was Christianity that made the human person, as a child of God, central to European values. And it was the canon law of the Catholic Church, the oldest legal system in the West, that nurtured respect for law long before the rise of Europe's nation-states.

In the language of the French Enlightenment, the preamble extols Europe's "underlying humanism: equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason." But as we all know, these "humanist" values, separated from religious faith, crumbled in the blitzkrieg and disappeared at Auschwitz.

As an American, I shouldn't much care what the bureaucrats in Brussels write in their preamble. But it should matter to Europeans — and to anyone anywhere who cares about history — because the eliding of the Christian foundations of Western culture is morally and intellectually dishonest..."
Kenneth Woodward NY Times

Being/Becoming a Christian in 2003 has its share of loneliness and trembling. Yet it is peace and joy. The more so one learns to forgive with integrity and "empty" into truth-compassion, which participates in Christ's purpose, even unto death. MG+