Pope mounts defense of EU amid coronavirus ‘paralysis’

[Vouthon]

Non-European Pope mounts defense of EU amid coronavirus 'paralysis'

ROME - Italy today marks day 46 of its nationwide lockdown caused by the coronavirus, which may help explain the impatience with which many Italians view today’s video summit of EU leaders to discuss a shared approach to recovery from the pandemic…

Conte has been pushing the EU to create what are called “coronabonds,” which would be instruments for underwriting the new debt member states are compelled to undertake in order to stabilize their economies, offer short-term relief to unemployed workers and rescue companies at risk of bankruptcy due to the crisis but which are otherwise solvent and productive…

Germany and the Netherlands to date have balked, with Germany instead pushing reliance on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a program…

All of which brings us to Pope Francis, who, despite being the first non-European pontiff since the eighth century, is perhaps the most vocal leader on the Old Continent today making a principled defense of the EU.

In his daily livestreamed Mass from the Vatican’s Domus Santa Marta, the residence where he lives, Francis Wednesday prayed for the union.

“In these times in which we need so much unity among us, among nations, let us pray today for Europe, so that Europe manages to have this unity, this fraternal unity of which the founding fathers of the European Union dreamed,” he said.

Those remarks built on Francis’s Urbi et Orbi message on Easter Sunday, when he said “the European Union [is] facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world”.

Francis’s key allies in Europe have also been pressing the case, acknowledging frustrations with the inability of the EU to get its act together but suggesting the right response isn’t to bail on the union but to beef it up…

It’s important to remember that Catholicism is the world’s oldest functioning globalized institution, and theologically the Church is universalist in principle.

It’s supported the UN from the beginning, as well as the EU, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and other attempts at trans-national solidarity, just as it’s promoted the same trajectory within the Church with COMECE, the Episcopal Conference of Latin America (CELAM), the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC) and so on.

As for Francis, he led the church in Argentina during that country’s “Great Depression” in 1998-2002, and he understands how individual states often are dependent on larger institutions during moments of crisis. When those institutions are weak or unresponsive, therefore, his instinctive response isn’t to walk away but to reform…

…the most remarkable thing is that it seems to be a pontiff “from the end of the earth,” about as far away from Europe as it’s possible to be, who’s reminding his adopted continent of its ideals…​

 

[rocala]

It is very strange, I am not even a Christian, I was born and bred in that most protestant of countries England. Yet there is some little piece of me that still thinks of Catholicism as the 'mother church'. I can relate to and understand the yearning for European unity.

 

[Vouthon]

It is very strange, I am not even a Christian, I was born and bred in that most protestant of countries England. Yet there is some little piece of me that still thinks of Catholicism as the 'mother church'. I can relate to and understand the yearning for European unity

That's very interesting @rocala

I guess it makes sense, given the common cultural heritage of Europeans in - largely - Latin Christendom. For more than a thousand years, Europeans identified themselves, primarily, as brethren in one supranational community, with its centre in Rome.

From a Catholic point of view, it was the mission of the Papacy for centuries to try to unite Europe as a common civilizational space, out of a panoply of languages and ethnic groups left behind in the aftermath of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and with the new Germanic peoples invading from the north.

Robert Schuman, principal founding father of the European Union, once noted in 1951 to an American readership:

"The original outline of a united Europe was that of Christian, medieval Europe under a twin authority – a spiritual one personified by the Papacy, a temporal one embodied by the Emperor, head of the Holy Roman Empire.

This unity withered after more than six centuries of existence, when the Renaissance weakened religious ties; the Reformation likewise disrupted religious unity and the Empire lost its prestige to newly sovereign nations. Europe split into a large group of states whose interests and aims conflicted to such a degree that fierce battles ensued"

(Schuman, Robert, ‘Concept of a United Europe’, in European American Survey (Brussels: European Movement, 1957), 5–9)​

This ‘history’ factored in their minds at the time when the European project was started in the 1950s.

Richard Nikolaus Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi explicitly invoked this idea in 1950 when he became the first recipirent of the Charlemagne Prize:


Speech (extract) by Richard Nikolaus Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi

‘The “Union Charlemagne” should […] be established not just as an economical union but as a six-state confederacy: Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg. We are dealing with no less than the renewal of the Carolingian Empire on a democratic, federal and social basis. […]

Therefore I appeal to all those of good will to bring a movement to life for the total reconciliation between the Germans and the French through the renewal of the Empire of Charlemagne as a confederacy of free nations…to transform Europe from a battlefield of recurring world wars to a peaceful and blooming worldly empire of free people!’
​

The modern European ideal is really a contemporary, secular version of this ancient vision for peace, amity and union in diversity - In varietate concordia.

 

[metis]

As for Francis, he led the church in Argentina during that country’s “Great Depression” in 1998-2002, and he understands how individual states often are dependent on larger institutions during moments of crisis. When those institutions are weak or unresponsive, therefore, his instinctive response isn’t to walk away but to reform…

And I want to reemphasize the above, as I have read two biographies on Pope Francis and numerous articles, and his experiences, especially in Buenos Aries witnessing what the poor had to deal with, was a game changer for him. The "stacking of the deck" with the well-heeled economical and political elite he found to be worse than disgusting with their emphasis on money and power, done at the expense of millions of others.

 

[Left Coast]

Non-European Pope mounts defense of EU amid coronavirus 'paralysis'

ROME - Italy today marks day 46 of its nationwide lockdown caused by the coronavirus, which may help explain the impatience with which many Italians view today’s video summit of EU leaders to discuss a shared approach to recovery from the pandemic…

Conte has been pushing the EU to create what are called “coronabonds,” which would be instruments for underwriting the new debt member states are compelled to undertake in order to stabilize their economies, offer short-term relief to unemployed workers and rescue companies at risk of bankruptcy due to the crisis but which are otherwise solvent and productive…

Germany and the Netherlands to date have balked, with Germany instead pushing reliance on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a program…

All of which brings us to Pope Francis, who, despite being the first non-European pontiff since the eighth century, is perhaps the most vocal leader on the Old Continent today making a principled defense of the EU.

In his daily livestreamed Mass from the Vatican’s Domus Santa Marta, the residence where he lives, Francis Wednesday prayed for the union.

“In these times in which we need so much unity among us, among nations, let us pray today for Europe, so that Europe manages to have this unity, this fraternal unity of which the founding fathers of the European Union dreamed,” he said.

Those remarks built on Francis’s Urbi et Orbi message on Easter Sunday, when he said “the European Union [is] facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world”.

Francis’s key allies in Europe have also been pressing the case, acknowledging frustrations with the inability of the EU to get its act together but suggesting the right response isn’t to bail on the union but to beef it up…

It’s important to remember that Catholicism is the world’s oldest functioning globalized institution, and theologically the Church is universalist in principle.

It’s supported the UN from the beginning, as well as the EU, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and other attempts at trans-national solidarity, just as it’s promoted the same trajectory within the Church with COMECE, the Episcopal Conference of Latin America (CELAM), the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC) and so on.

As for Francis, he led the church in Argentina during that country’s “Great Depression” in 1998-2002, and he understands how individual states often are dependent on larger institutions during moments of crisis. When those institutions are weak or unresponsive, therefore, his instinctive response isn’t to walk away but to reform…

…the most remarkable thing is that it seems to be a pontiff “from the end of the earth,” about as far away from Europe as it’s possible to be, who’s reminding his adopted continent of its ideals…​

Hi Vouthon!

Can you clarify the meaning of this phrase: "...theologically the Church is universalist in principle"?

 

[Vouthon]

Hi Vouthon!

Can you clarify the meaning of this phrase: "...theologically the Church is universalist in principle"?

Hi @Left Coast

Of course, I'd be happy to clarify.

'Universalism' is basically a synonym for "supranational" or anti-tribalistic (which is the predominant meaning in a Catholic context).

The word 'Catholic' comes from the Greek katholikos which is a jointure of two formerly separate roots - kata or kath (meaning “through” or “throughout”) and holos (meaning “whole”). This concept of “throughout-the-whole” implies no notion of boundary or demarcation line separating those who are “in” and those who are “out" - that is, no tribalism.

(Exemplified by Jesus's Parable of the Good Samaritan which sets no limit to one's neighbour/brother and the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus calls for universal, unlimited, non-discriminating love just like the sun shining down on all people: "love your enemies...so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:43-45)).

In Latin, it became catholicus which is often translated into English as "universal".

As the Jewish Talmudist scholar Daniel Boyarin once explained, in his 1997 study A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity, early Pauline Christianity proclaimed the doctrine of a "universal human essence, beyond difference and hierarchy" and called for "autonomy, equality, and species-wide solidarity".

From the earliest times - rooted in the Jewish prophetic vision from Isaiah and Micah of 'swords being turned into ploughshares', Pauline theology and Jesus's vision of the 'in-gathering' of the Gentiles - the church has, in its ideals (although sadly not always in practice, sometimes grievously so), striven to: "create a cosmopolis – a cosmic city that upholds universal, global principles embodied in particular, national or regional practices" (Adrian Pabst, 2013, Res Publica), combining human solidarity and supranationalism with particularistic subsidiarity and diversity of local cultures among a multiplicity of nations.

The EU, the UN, the African Union etc. are all secular institutions that conform to these social-doctrinal principles, which the church has inherited from its past, and so the Papacy has always been a steadfast supporter of international and supranational bodies.

As the Latin Church Father St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in his mammoth tome, The City of God (413–426 CE):


Philip Schaff: NPNF1-02. St. Augustine's City of God and Christian Doctrine - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

"This heavenly city [the Church], then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that, however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace. It therefore is so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities, that it even preserves and adopts them.

Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the peace of earth, and, so far as it can....desires and maintains a common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven." (De civitate Dei Ch. XXV)​

Or articulated in more recent times, in 1916, in the midst of the First World War, by Pope Benedict XV on behalf of the Polish Jews in the Jesuit journal "Civilta Cattolica":

"The Supreme Pontiff.... as Head of the Catholic Church, which, faithful to its divine doctrines and its most glorious traditions, considers all men as brothers and teaches them to love one another, he never ceases to indicate among individuals, as well as among peoples, the observance of the principles of the natural law, and to condemn everything that violates them. This law must be observed and respected...because it would not be conformable to justice or to religion itself to derogate from it solely on account of divergence of religious confessions"
​

Of course, the church has often severely failed to live up to that ideal - and one can cite many examples of it majorly deviating from it, such as the Crusades, Inquisitions etc. etc. - but it remains the ideal we're (hopefully) working towards in the temporal sphere, in spite of our great failings.

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

Perhaps the Pope sees himself as the leader of a unified Europe which will combine legal power with religious power. First step to ruling the whole earth?

 

[metis]

Perhaps the Pope sees himself as the leader of a unified Europe which will combine legal power with religious power. First step to ruling the whole earth?

"Conspiracy theory" are the applicable terms here.