EUROPE & ITS FUTURE |
The Presence of the Church on the Horizon of Europe
Address by His Beatitude Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, to the Pan-European Conference on "Values and Principles for building of Europe".
Athens, 4-6 May 2003
Christ is risen!
This expression, both an announcement and a wish, still conveys in the best and
most complete way my delight at seeing you here with us today.
Christ is risen, "and together with Him, He raised also the entire
inhabited world" (John Chrysostomus, Contra Anomoeos, I, 2.432,
Migne PG, vol. 48). The Resurrection is a fact, but it is also a wish,
since it is not the fate of man, but a possibility given to man so
that he may overcome his fate. The Resurrection is freedom, it is a step
beyond the tyranny of necessity, it is a gift of strength and of a way for
man to climb Jacob’s Ladder.
He is truly risen! I wish that our Conference may pass this certainty on to the
whole of Europe.
But why to Europe? Why Europe at all? What is the purpose of this distinction,
this insistence, while globalization is advancing, while the new technological
and economic realities have turned the globe into a unitary space? What is it
that can still be purely European, what is the signified of this signifier
today? Is it possible that, when we speak of values in Europe, we refer to a
past for ever bygone, which does no longer signify anything in today’s and
tomorrow’s society? The questions go even further: is it possible that the
move towards the unification of Europe came too late, sadly, because it had
already been overtaken by events, by the new technological and economic
conditions? Moreover, is it right to speak of values of Europe, as if they
belonged exclusively to Europe, as if no other people had these values or as if
no other people had the right or the capability to share them? Furthermore, we
must ask ourselves not only the question, which are these values that Europe
has, but also how Europe can maintain them within a globalised environment.
Consequently, let me please clarify the conceptual framework within which any
reference to Europe as bearer of particular principles and values is not only
legitimate but also desirable.
First of all, let me make it clear right away that the Gospel addresses and
belongs to all men and not to the members of one race nor to the partakers of
one culture. By the Grace of the Lord, there are Christians in all parts of the
world. "In every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is
accepted with him" (Acts, 10.35). We, all the faithful, constitute
the Church of the Lord, because the Lord "gathered all nations from the
East and from the West and from the North and from the South, and bound them
together in one Church, one faith and one baptism in love" (Ephraim of
Syria, Homily on the Shared Resurrection, 54.3). Therefore it is clear
and indisputable that the Church is the Church of Christ and not of Europe,
given that "our conversation is in heaven" (Philippians, 3.20).
It is also worth noting that from the moment we speak of Europe we accept of
course a distinction, since this discussion presupposes a specific entity, which
expresses something particular, namely that it has its own identity as does
every other entity too. However, this distinction does not constitute an
underestimation of the other, of the non-European. I do not question at all the
value and the significance of other cultures – and neither do you, I believe.
Therefore, any discussion about Europe, in defence of Europe, does not imply an
underestimation of the other cultures. Indeed, I would say that we have the
right to honour Europe, because and if we also honour the other cultures and
peoples, given that "God hath shewed me that I should not call any man
common or unclean" (Acts, 10.28).
On these premises, let us now try and answer the question "why
Europe?" Why should Christians bother about Europe, why should they convene
and be preoccupied with its future?
At this point I must stress that, if Europe preoccupies us, it is not only
because we are its citizens but primarily because we are Christians. After all, even
though Christianity may not be constricted to Europe, at any rate Europe is
Christian.
The part of religion in shaping civilization is decisive, irrespective of the
fact that not all men are believers or that they do believe but in different
ways. Braudel noted that "the European, even if he or she is an atheist,
remains bound by an ethics and a perception which have deep roots in Christian
tradition. He remains of Christian origin having lost his faith" (Fernand
Braudel, Grammaire des Civilisations, p. 347).
Before Christianity, Europe was a purely geographical term. Its inhabitants were
distinguished into those who lived on this side of the frontiers of the empire,
or of the "oecumene" (the inhabited world), as it was called, and to
those who lived on that side of the frontiers, and were generally called
"barbarians". May I remind you that only one part of the inhabitants
of the empire were Roman citizens, whereas others were free men but citizens of
their own homeland and not Romans (the Latin term for those was "peregrini"),
others had no attributed citizenship and, finally, a large part of the
population were slaves. It was Christianity that brought down discrimination,
repudiated the division of the world into barbarians and non-barbarians, into
citizens and mere inhabitants, into free men and slaves. It was Christianity
which united all men into one community, recognising them all as brethren, all
of them children of the one God. The Apostle Peter qualifies Christians by using
politically loaded terms: he notes, we are "a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, an holy nation" (Peter 1, 2.9), in order to emphasise
the unvalued state of the distinctions of the empire and, by the same token, the
unity of the Church.
Nevertheless, Church community on its own does not create a new cultural
formation. Common learning is also needed. And this is what the Church did. The
ancient Greek and Latin authors were not interested in Christian Letters. But
the Christians went in the opposite direction. Greek learning was never rejected
by the Lord or by His disciples, as a Church historian noted (Sozomenos, Ecclesiastical
History, V, 18.222). But their attitude was not one of passive acceptance.
Clement of Alexandria claimed that Greek learning was a gift of God: "so
also at the fit time were the Law and the Prophets given to the Barbarians, and
Philosophy to the Greeks" (Stromata, VI 6.44.1). Christians often
taught Greek learning. This caused the wrath of Julian, so that he banned such
teaching on the grounds that Christians qua Christians had no right to
teach Greek pagans (Epistle 42, 74.13-15). Gregory vehemently refuted
this argument, and stated his position that the texts of the Greeks
constituted the body of literature and not the religion of Christians and
therefore the latter had every reason to study them and to teach them (Contra
Iulianum, Oratio I, 35, 536.8-10). This position is the foundation of the
learning which the Church offered to Europe, a foundation which remains
unshakeable ever since.
As soon as Christianity was recognised, the Church began to put pressure on
political leadership, the emperor and the local governors to rule humanely and
justly. Gregory of Nazianzus addresses the emperor by admonishing him: "You
rule with Christ, and you command with Christ. So you should imitate God’s
love of man. This is the most divine feature of man, namely to do good" (Ad
cives Naz., 35, 976.25). Similarly, the great Photius, in one of his
epistles which, I would say, could be read as the answer of a Byzantine to
Machiavelli, instructs the young emperor how to behave, how to judge and how to
make decisions. From this brilliant epistle let me quote here just one sentence:
"inasmuch as one is prominent in power, just as much one ought to be
prominent in virtue" (Epistula ad Michael Principem Bulgariae, PG,
102.904-906).
The request of the Church for respect of law was also of fundamental importance.
For Orthodoxy this request somehow took the form of a demand for humaneness,
charity and justice. For the Church of Rome, however, it went much further than
culture.
Orthodoxy developed within a powerful state, where the rule of law was generally
upheld. Of course, violations by the powerful did occur. But the important was
that even those who contravened the law, felt the injustice of their act and
tried to justify themselves. After all, this was the criterion for a lawful form
of government: not that there would be no law-breakers or that the powerful
would not find ways of getting away with it but that deep in their own
conscience, too, they would feel like transgressors.
In contrast, the Church of Rome lived in an anarchic and insecure state. This
was due to the fact that the Western Empire could not hold out against the
invasions. Pope Gregory the Great realised that shaping the new world was a task
for the Church of Rome, and immediately assumed the responsibility of turning
the chaotic environment brought about by the invasions into a respublica
christiana. I think that it is clear to everyone today that Gregory
inherited the long-running and latent opposition between East and West and that
he perceived the world that he wished to create as being foreign to the Eastern
empire (Walter Ullmann, A History of Political Thought. The Middle Ages,
p. 82ff). At any rate, he laboured to transmit Christianity both to the invaders
and to the peoples of the North, and also to establish the rule of law, a common
language and a common learning. As a result, it is only fair that his part in
shaping the European world should be widely recognised. Nevertheless, we should
also mention the Holy Fathers Benedict, Cyril and Methodius but also all the
missionaries, who with their work rendered Europe Christian and gave her the
unitary consciousness which she maintains ever since.
The result of this work of the Church is that the request for the unity of
Europe remained alive, despite the failure of the plans to set up an interstate
community in the West, and despite the fact that the Byzantine state eventually
succumbed to the successive attacks of Islam and of Western Europe. It
succumbed, yet throughout the centuries of its life, even when it was mutilated,
it did not cease to be the "model fellow citizenship" in the
consciousness of the Westerners, nor did it cease to inspire all Europeans. For
the same reason, if the Byzantines did not express Christian commonwealth as a
vision, it was precisely because they felt they were already living it.
We see the request for unification colouring the spiritual horizon of Western
Europe, even when those who formulated it were anti-ecclesiastic. A telling
example was Dante, who, despite his forceful anti-papalism, he, an Italian,
requested the unification of Europe under Germany (In his work De Monarchia
Dante uses the term "monarchy" in place of today’s term
"union"). We see it also in the case of the pupil of the great Thomas
Aquinas, Pierre du Bois; and in the case of the Hussite king of Bohemia, George
of Podebrad, who asked the King of France Louis Onze for his co-operation in
establishing a European federation; we see it in the case of the French duke Du
Sully, who envisaged a federation of anti-Catholic Europe; we see it in the
writings of philosophers as different from one another as Leibnitz and Ortega
у Gasset; we see it in thinkers of the Enlightenment such as Montesquieu
and in Romantic poets such as Novalis, we see it in many others too, whose names
I cannot enumerate here, although their proposals were quite memorable. In
brief, the entire Europe did not cease, for centuries, and in spite of
nationalisms and bloody wars, to request her unification. And this too is the
work of the Church, the blossom of the request for a Christian commonwealth, and
the fruit of common learning.
Consequently, the request for the political unification of Europe was constant.
This was because in the spiritual sphere Europe was united right from the
outset, thanks to the Church and to the learning introduced by the Church. Plato
and Cicero, Shakespeare and Goethe are classics to all Europeans. Basil the
Great, Descartes, Mozart, Francis of Assisi, Kepler, El Greco, belong to all
Europeans. All the children of Europe have been formed by the tales of Hans
Christian Andersen. All Europeans in the Louvre or in the Prado feel that they
see statues and paintings of their culture. All feel Florence, Amsterdam and
Vienna as capitals of their civilisation.
European civilisation exists, it did not wait for this day and for our
concerns so that it could be born. European civilisation is one and alive
through the centuries and belongs to all of us. And I would like to believe that
we all realise that we belong to it too. This means that, if the European
Union aspires to be really what its title denotes, it will have to navigate by
the pole star of its civilisation.
By this remark I mean that peoples the civilisation of which may be important or
even brilliant, yet at any rate it is foreign to the European civilisation, do
not belong to it and therefore should not join the European Union. The nature
and the depth of the relations which we shall have with neighbouring peoples is
an issue for the political leadership to decide. But what is certain is that the
submission of Europe to temporary geopolitical considerations, which lead to the
reversal of her cultural identity, is not only absurd but also invalid.
Civilisations, and indeed great ones, such as the European civilisation, do
not commit suicide. If the political leadership of the European Union
decides to integrate foreign civilisations into its body, the Union will
automatically become fake. It will be reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire,
which, according to Voltaire, was never holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. If the
political leadership integrates totally foreign cultures into the Union, then
the Union will be turned into an economic zone. At its best, it will be a
defective copy of the former Soviet Union, which fell apart as soon as the
central power loosened up.
Undoubtedly, it is the right of political leadership to follow the path which
will divert the European Union onto a zone of economicopolitical specifications.
The Church cannot and must not oppose this choice. But even in the event of such
a derailment, the desideratum of the political unification of European
civilisation will soon have to be raised again from scratch, as the central
request. The Church will not abandon it. The spiritual forces of Europe will
not abandon it.
I believe that the political leadership of Europe will not attempt to forge
History nor will it transform the vision of unification into a lobby of
interests. But even if it so wishes, it will not succeed. The vision of
commonwealth is not just another political ideologeme which can be falsified, it
is public consciousness in the hearts of the Europeans. In which case, it
is absolutely certain that, even within that union of interests, which the
ballastless and the spineless may wish to fabricate, there will be born the
movement that will ask of the Europeans to unite into a new political entity
which will genuinely express their culture.
It is through this lens that one must see the request for a mention of
Christianity in the Constitution of the European Union. We want Christianity to
be mentioned not only as the creative power of our civilisation but also as that
power which reassures us precisely that the Union which is now carried will
indeed be European. Christianity should not be referred to – and we do not
want it to be referred to – as compulsory faith for the citizens of Europe.
The formulation should be such as not to infringe upon religious tolerance, not
to be binding upon the state, not to come into conflict with the rights of man,
not to constitute a threat or a hindrance to the advancement of the
non-Christians who are citizens of Europe. Woe betide those, who in the name of
our culture will attempt to expel or to oppress our Muslim fellow citizens, woe
betide those who will refuse the integration of, say, Albania or of Bosnia into
the Union. We ourselves as Christians have the obligation not to condone the
occurrence of a cultural nationalism. And yet we ourselves have also the
obligation and the responsibility to keep the self-consciousness of Europe
standing, to preserve her identity as a cultural existence.
All this is not merely about preserving our right to be different whilst in
life, resting on the laurels of our achievements. We have work to do. Inhumanity
is growing around us, and so is cynicism, and raw power in place of justice.
Reinforcements have arrived for the powers which want to reduce mankind to a
grey pulp capable only of producing and consuming, with a short interval of
entertainment in between leaving one like an empty sack afterwards. The
knife-wheeled chariots are advancing on the learning they want to cut up so that
they may let alienation and the shattering of souls run riot. This is all
marching in the name of the pursuit of greater gains.
Our civilisation has surely much work to do. Not towards greater gains but
towards the respect of man. For the sake of the dignity of man.
In this struggle the Church is by man’s side once again, and again, and ever
unwavering.