BREXIT was clearly the voice of Britain (and Wales), considering how it was virtually blanked out in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the two other
parts of the United Kingdom. As someone quickly noted, BREXIT appears to have halted at Hadrian's Wall...
A Europe that must be re-established:
Benedict XVI's warnings in 2007
by Robi Ronza
Translated from
June 25, 2016
The British people have chosen to leave the European Union. Now it remains to be seen what price the 'elites' of Europe will exact from them for defying their pretext that they had constructed a Europe that was also ours (that of the European peoples).
But the first thing that must be said is that the British referendum was a great act of freedom - which opens up great hopes. The voters voted above all against a politically and mediatically constituted order that had wanted [and expected] them to choose to remain in the EU, to which end the 'elites' literally did everything they could to defeat Brexit.
Speaking to RAI state TV and radio in a widely heard broadcast yesterday morning, former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano called British Prime Minister David Cameron 'incautious' to have brought the issue to a referendum.
On questions of this nature, Napolitano said, it is better to leave the people out of it. [Dear, dear! Spoken like a former militant Communist! In the so-called 'people's democracies', the people never decide anything, and everything is imposed on them from the top.]
And to prove a remarkable lack of common sense among our leaders, Napolitano's pupil, former Prime Minister Mario Monti, said something worse. A head of government who had been imposed on Parliament back in 2012 - and for that reason, named 'senator for life' before he formally took office as Prime Minister,
Monti said that in calling the referendum, Cameron had 'abused democracy' no less!
In short, when a people vote their mind, as the British did - and not as the elites would have wanted them to, having been so used by now to consider European institutions 'cosa nostra'
[our own thing, to adopt the Mafia slogan] - then the masks come off.
For the past two days, the Napolitanos and Montis all over Europe have been beside themselves with chagrin, to the point of failing to even hide the underlying authoritarianism - whether it is post-communist or masonic - which has characterized their political vision.
Brexit should be a healthy shock for the EU. It is doubtless extraordinary. As I said, the elites who did not want or expect the outcome of the UK referendum will seek to make, not just the UK, but the world, pay for the failure of their project
[not that it is a failure they will ever acknowledge - how could they dismantle their gigantic bEurocracies lording it over the continent in Brussels and Strasbourg???]], seeking a scapegoat on which to unload irrelevant emergencies.
It is the case for instance with the stocks of the major Italian banking groups on which destinies one cannot see how Britain exiting the EU could possibly weigh. But one must take it for granted that days of turbulence on the world's financial markets await us, yet whoever is able to do that also has the responsibility to stabilize them.
Meanwhile, the 'machine' to falsify the profound significance of Brexit has already geared up. Because ultimately, the episode is a sensational sign negating their claim to have constructed a political Europe based only on contingent interests while obstinately rejecting the history and values that had shaped the continent.
Europe can save itself only if it resolutely changes direction by rediscovering the best of itself. On the other hand, the elites are already purveying the idea that the EU can get out of the crisis brought on by Brexit by not changing anything at all but simply forging ahead bullishly as if nothing had happened.
For obvious reasons, the key to solving this crisis is held in great part by men of faith. Provided men of faith are faithful to themselves and their faith.
In this light, let us turn to a document that is very relevant today: Benedict XVI's address to the participants of the Congress of the Episcopal Conferences of the European Community who met in Rome on March 24, 2007, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty that instituted the European Economic Community
[or European Common Market, parent organization of the current proliferation of European institutions based in Brussels and Strasbourg.]
[The writer proceeds to quote large excerpts from the address, but I will reproduce the body of it in full].
ADDRESS BY HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS OF EUROPE, 3/24/2007
At 11:15 today, in the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father greeted the participants of a Congress on the theme "50 years after the Treaty of Rome: Values and perspectives for the Europe of tomorrow", promoted by the Commission of Episcopal Conferences of Europe [COMECE from its Italian acronym].
...I am particularly happy to receive so many of you today, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957.
It marked an important new stage for Europe, which was just coming out of the extreme effects of a world war and which was desirous of constructing a future of peace and better social and economic wellbeing, without dissolving or denying its diverse national identities...
From that March day 50 years ago, this Continent has gone a long way, which has led to reconciling its two 'lungs' - East and West - which are linked by a common history but were arbitrarily divided by a curtain of injustice.
Economic integration has stimulated a policy and a still arduous search for an institutional structure that would be adequate for a European Union which now has 27 member nations and wishes to take a leading role on the world stage.
Through these years, the need has been increasingly felt to establish a healthy balance between the economic and social dimensions, through policies which could produce wealth and increase Europe's competitiveness, without neglecting the legitimate expectations of the poor and the marginalized.
But demographically, one must unfortunately take note that Europe appears to be on a path that could lead to writing itself out of history. Besides placing economic growth at risk, this could cause enormous problems for social cohesion and, above all, favor a dangerous individualism which is heedless of the consequences for the future. One would think that the European continent is, in fact, losing faith in its own future.
Moreover, insofar for example as respect for the environment, or the systematic access to energy resources and investments, solidarity is hardly given an incentive, not just internationally, but even internally within nations.
The process itself of European unification does not appear to be agreed to by everyone, the widespread impression being that various 'chapters' of the European project have been formulated without taking into account the expectations of the citizens themselves.
It emerges quite clearly from all this that one cannot think of building an authentic 'common house' for Europe by ignoring the identity of the peoples on our Continent.
This is a historical cultural and moral identity that precedes geographic, economic or political identity - an identity made up of a sum of universal values which Christianity helped forge, acquiring thereby not only a historic role, but a foundational one with respect to Europe.
Such values, which constitute the very soul of Europe, should be safeguarded in Europe during this third millennium to serve as a ferment for civilization. If these values were to play a lesser role, how can the 'old' Continent continue to be 'yeast' for the whole world?
If, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the governments of the Union wish to get close to their citizenry, how can they exclude an essential element of European identity like Christianity, with which a great majority of Europeans continue to identify themselves?
Is it not a cause for surprise that Europe today, while it aims to propose itself as a community of values, seems to dispute increasingly that there are any absolute universal values at all?
Does not this singular form of 'apostasy' of itself, even before it is a denial of God, lead it to doubt its own identity?
In this way, it will end up spreading the belief that a 'consideration of benefits' is the only criterion for moral discernment and that the common good is synonymous to compromise.
But although compromise may represent a legitimate balance among conflicting interests, it becomes a common evil every time it means sanctioning agreements that offend human nature.
A community that builds itself without due respect for the authentic dignity of man - forgetting that every person is created in the image of God - ends up by doing good to no one.
That is why it becomes even more indispensable that Europe guards against a purely pragmatic attitude, widespread today, that systematically justifies compromise on essential human values as an inevitable acceptance of a presumed lesser evil.
Such pragmatism, presented as balanced and realistic, is really not, essentially - precisely because it denies that ideal dimension of values which is inherent in human nature.
When such pragmatism is exercised in the context of secularistic and relativistic tendencies, it ends up by denying Christians their very right to engage in public discourse as Christians, or at the very least, their contributions are rejected on the grounds that they simply wish to retain unjustified privileges.
In the present historical moment and in the face of the many challenges that characterize our time, the European Union - in order to be a valid guarantor of rights and an effective promoter of universal values, cannot but recognize clearly the existence of a stable and permanent human nature, which is the source of common rights for every person, including those who would deny those rights.
In this context, the right to conscientious objection must be safeguarded every time fundamental human rights are violated.
Dear friends, I know how difficult it is for Christians to defend the truth about man strenuously. But do not tire of doing so, and do not be discouraged!
You know you have the task to contribute to build, with the help of God, a new Europe which is realistic but not cynical, rich with ideals and free from ingenuous illusions, inspired by the perennial and life-giving truth of the Gospel.
Therefore, be actively present in the public debate at the European level, knowing that it is also part of national debates, and couple such mission with effective cultural action. Never yield to the logic of power for its own ends.
Let Christ's own advice be your constant stimulus and support when He said: "If salt loses its taste...it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot" (Mt 5,13)...
These are urgencies, we might observe, that were already at the center of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's reflections in a 1992 book published in Italy as
Svolta per l’Europa (A Turning Point in Europe)(Edizioni Paoline, Milano, 1992) that deserves to be reread today.
Perhaps no European leader or intellectual has spoken and written so much about the crisis of Europe, and so prophetically, than Joseph Ratzinger. The address he gave in March 2007 could well have been given today and entitled 'Brexit illustrates the crisis of Europe'. (Did someone say 'Charlemagne Prize'? How much more out of the spirit of Charlemagne could those Eurocrat dimwits giving out the prize be!)
When Benedict XVI gave this fairly short address in March 2007 - the AP called it 'passionate - reports and commentaries on it took up almost a full page on the NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT thread in PAPA RATZINGER FORUM.
Speaking of Leo the Great (see post preceding this), I remarked once that a modern equivalent of Leo seeking to keep the Huns and the Vandals from sacking Rome was Benedict XVI trying to hold the new Euro-barbarians at the gate.
Brexit and the failure of Europe
The continent that once ruled the world seems adrift
as its soul is consumed by bureaucracy and political correctness
by Samuel Gregg
June 26, 2016
It’s difficult for most non-Europeans to grasp the scale of the devastation that overtook Europe twice in the twentieth century. Having descended into the abyss between 1914 and 1918, European nations were at it again twenty years later. They consequently endured an apocalypse of death and destruction from Normandy in the West to Stalingrad in the East.
“Never again!” became the lodestone of numerous European politicians, most notably Catholic statesmen such as West Germany’s Konrad Adenauer, Italy’s Alcide de Gasperi, and France’s Robert Schuman (presently being considered by the Catholic Church for beatification), all of whom headed Christian Democratic-led governments in the immediate postwar years.
It was against this background that European unification became seen as a surefire way of securing peace and damping down the fires of nationalism. And from a certain perspective, that made sense. For all their differences, European nations had much in common.
These ranged from a rootedness in Christianity and a substantial Jewish influence to the legacies of the Greeks, Romans, and the various Enlightenments. Then there was the fact that intra-European trade had existed for centuries, forging not-easily broken economic bonds.
The Treaty of Rome, which sought to create a common market by securing the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labor between the 6 original signatory countries, was signed on 25 March 1957.
It’s no coincidence that the ceremony was held at the Palazzo dei Conservatori on Rome’s Capitoline Hill. Built on top of a sixth century BC pagan temple and refurbished by no less than Michelangelo, the Palazzo functioned as a center for businesses and entrepreneurs from across medieval Europe to come together to engage in peaceful trade.
Given that the European continent had been laid waste by war only 12 years earlier, the establishment of the then European Economic Community (EEC) was seen as a great achievement and cause for celebration.
All this seems far removed from today’s European Union. The common market certainly exists and has even expanded to 28 nations. But the continent is flooded with political movements and parties which differ about many things but share a deep distrust of — and an increasing antagonism towards —the EU.
It’s a hostility that transcends more traditional divides such as right and left, employers and employees, Catholic and Protestant, Western and Eastern Europe, or Northern and Southern Europe.
Now it has claimed its first major victory, when Britain — the EU’s second-biggest economy — voted by a relatively comfortable margin to formally exit the supranational union.
It would be easy to dismiss all this as the result of resurgent nationalism and fear of immigrants, something accentuated by the EU’s inept handling of the 2015 migrant crisis and the outbreak of Islamist jihadist violence. Certainly, there is something to this.
But it’s also a distraction from an even bigger source of alienation: namely, the form assumed by the contemporary EU, especially its political leadership and bureaucracy. These groups are, in many Europeans’ view, deeply anti-democratic, downright contemptuous of anyone who expresses misgivings about their agenda, and inclined to insist that most problems can be resolved by giving the EU — and therefore EU officials — more power.
People in Britain voted for Brexit for many, often different reasons. It’s hard, however, to deny that the EU’s top-down approach to public life, its stealth supplanting of national laws, and, perhaps above all, the sheer arrogance of its political-bureaucratic leadership played a major role in causing 52 percent of British voters to say that enough was enough.
Any visitor to Brussels these days is bound to be taken aback by the sheer number of EU agencies and organs housed by the city. Leaving aside the aesthetically questionable architecture of many of the buildings inhabited by such organizations, the EU gives whole new meaning to the word “bureaucracy.”
Brussels teems with hundreds of EU politicians and representatives of member-states as well as thousands of assorted advisors, civil servants, and (invariably state-funded) NGOs. Only a handful of these people are actually elected by normal citizens.
It’s this world of unaccountable political insiders and the perception (fair or otherwise) that the only interests they serve are their own which drove many people in Britain to tick “Leave” on June 23. Yet it’s a world whose emergence was also predicted in the 1950s by one economist who, in this regard, truly merits the title “prophetic.”
Most early opponents of European political and economic integration were old-fashioned socialists. They worried that a common market might impede implementation of socialist policies. A rare exception to this rule was the German economist Wilhelm Röpke. Today Röpke is known as the foremost intellectual progenitor of the postwar German economic miracle.
A devout Lutheran deeply versed in Catholic social teaching, Röpke was also one of the very few free market economists who loudly and publicly criticized what would become today’s EU even before the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957.
Röpke’s proto-Euroscepticism didn’t arise from nationalist sentiments. His experiences as a highly-decorated combat soldier fighting in the German army on the Western front during the First World War left him with an enduring aversion to militarism and nationalism, especially its fascist varieties — so much so that Röpke was one of the first academics dismissed from German universities by the National Socialists in 1933.
Moreover, as an economist unusually well-read in other disciplines, Röpke recognized that modern nation-states have not, historically-speaking, always been freedom’s allies. Nevertheless, Röpke was highly critical of the Treaty of Rome and made several predictions about how the EEC was likely to develop.
It’s striking just how much Röpke got right about the character that’s been assumed by the European integration project. In 1958, for instance, Röpke forecast that it would eventually pit fiscally-responsible European nations against less-economically disciplined countries. In our own time, this division has become one of the major cleavages that, for instance, distinguishes fiscally-responsible Germany and Finland from economic disasters such as France and Greece.
On the topic of a single European currency, Röpke insisted that it would work only if member-states followed disciplined fiscal policies and that there were mechanisms available to oust any nation that violated tough rules regarding spending.
He doubted, however, that such conditions would be met in a Europe in which (1) governments were proving skilled at skirting rules, (2) generous welfare was increasingly regarded as a human right, and (3) political parties habitually used the government’s tax-and-spending powers to buy the electoral support of various constituencies. In retrospect, Röpke’s prediction proved, once again, to be spot-on.
Röpke also conjectured that the EEC would aggravate the bureaucratization of European life. Every postwar creation of supra-European institutions, he illustrated, had produced thousands of civil servants predisposed to expand their numbers and influence.
A mere 6 years after the EEC’s founding, Röpke observed that its executive organs had already become “an enormous administrative machine,” imposing thousands of regulations upon member-states.
Even worse, he added, the EEC’s various departments had been taken over by “socialists and ingrained interventionists” who regarded top-down planning by political-bureaucratic elites as superior to the workings of markets within a framework of rule of law, constitutionally-limited government, and a basic safety net.
Röpke was no naysayer about Europe. Indeed, he supported the continent’s economic integration. He maintained, however, that it should develop “from below” rather than be imposed from the top-down. It would be best actualized, Röpke held, by European countries unilaterally opening up their economies not just to each other but the rest of the world. That would, Röpke stated, remove any need for supra-European bureaucrats and organizations to “manage” the process.
At the same time, Röpke didn’t hide his conviction that the core of European identity went far beyond the world of supply and demand.
To be European, he argued, meant affirming those specific religious, political and cultural traditions which made Europe different to those cultures shaped by other heritages. It wasn’t a matter of denigrating other societies. Rather, it was simply acknowledging those things that gave Europe, and therefore the West more generally, its distinctiveness.
Such notions are given short-shrift by contemporary EU officialdom. Any discussion of values is invariably dominated by words like “diversity” and “non-discrimination” and a near-obsession with equality. To be sure, such phrases can assume positive meaning, but only if grounded in a coherent understanding of the nature of man.
In an EU increasingly inclined to aggressively promote nonsensical concepts such as “gender theory”, all these things take on rather different meaning.
In as de-Christianized a country as Britain, it’s unsurprising that concern about these problems didn’t feature in the Brexit debate. The EU’s adoption of such specific ideological agendas are symptomatic, however, of
a trend that many who voted for “Leave” did rebel against.
And this is the imposition of ideas simply assumed to be correct by the EU’s political classes, bureaucracies and their intellectual enablers. This goes hand-in-hand with an associated habit of labelling anyone who questions their positions as a troglodyte or words to which the suffix “phobic” is regularly attached. Rather than actually debating ideas, it’s much easier to suggest that someone’s views are akin to some form of mental illness.
Given the economic sclerosis, political inertia, and creeping bureaucratization that characterizes much of the EU today, it’s sobering to realize that, 100 years ago, this continent dominated the rest of the globe: economically, culturally, politically, philosophically — even religiously.
On June 23, 2016, however, a majority of British voters decided to detach their nation from what is, as no less than the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker conceded in a September 2015 speech, a “European Union [which] is not in a good state.”
In the short-term, negotiating the terms of the divorce — not least among which will be trade arrangements and the untangling of English and Scottish law from the labyrinth of EU law — will require considerable dexterity from Britain’s next prime minister.
Still, it’s difficult not to conclude that the United Kingdom has detached itself from a political experiment that once offered hope but presently appears
(1) incapable of substantive reform;
(2) disposed to take refuge in denial;
(3) awash in a fever-swamp of political correctness;
(4) beset by aging and falling demographics;
(5) enduring catastrophic youth-unemployment levels; and
(6) dominated by a political class that lives in an echo chamber and won’t acknowledge that many of their actions have helped reignite the very tensions which the European project was designed to obviate.
The future, alas, for Europe is not bright right now. One can hope that Brexit serves as a long-overdue wakeup call. Unfortunately, present trends don’t provide many grounds for optimism. Quite the contrary.