16 June 2003
NEWS
Archbishop Christodoulos speaks at the Univ. of Craiova on the European identity
"Europe is that which Christianity created, it is the cultural formation which was born because the Christian Church gave a common identity, a common learning and social welfare services to a medley of peoples. Nowadays we attempt to unify it, but it should not escape our notice that Europe was born with unity as its precept, a precept which we abandoned thereafter, by espousing the political ideology of nationalism, and thus vindicating the remark by Goethe, which I quoted at the beginning of my talk.
Accordingly, what I would like to testify to before you today is that we shall not be able to keep the unity of Europe alive if we let it fall prey to political ideologies. We shall not be able to keep it alive if we let it fall prey to financial interests.
I would also like to testify before you to my deep conviction that there will be no Europe on the basis of pressures and compromises. If we want Europe to exist, we must also assume the responsibility for Europe, we must lay again the community of its peoples as precept. We shall have to acknowledge both in its forthcoming Constitution and in its everyday political practice the fact that, when we speak of Europe, we speak of a civilisation, we speak of a particular spirituality, and that this spirit is the offspring of Christianity, and that we want to preserve it as The reconstruction of United Europe is a responsibility incumbent upon nobody other than its men and women of spirit."
[See the full text on http://www.ecclesia.gr/English/Archbishop/speeches/europa_nostra.html ]
Archbishop Christodoulos on the Future of Europe
Addressing to the Univ. of Iasi, the Greek Archbishop has warned:
"Without Christianity, man will turn into a producer and, by the same token, a victim of consumerism. I wonder, how much deprivation will be needed before we realise that, without days of fast and abstinence from desires, man is tied to the chariot of the ever and deliberately growing needs? How many tears need be shed before we learn to see that, if man cannot feel the distinction between days of retirement and days of feast, then he will only enjoy himself like a pig in its own dirt?
Without Christianity, the United Europe will not be a civilisation but an enlarged marketplace. It will be nothing but a rearing farm of a greasy, grey shapeless mass.
Europe has been our vision. It is now up to us to create the United Europe, and not the united cowshed."
[See the full text on http://www.ecclesia.gr/English/Archbishop/speeches/futurum.html ]
Serbian Orthodox Church Will Welcome Pope
Following the visit to Croatia, a trip by John Paul II to Serbian Orthodox Church, is possible.
Prompted by a reporter's question as to when the Pope might visit Serbia,
Vatican spokesman Joaqumn Navarro-Valls said: "I don't know, but it is only
an organizational question, not one of relations, which are certainly very
cordial."
The Croatian press stressed the possibilities that have opened for a
papal trip to Belgrade, a symbolic visit that would help to promote
reconciliation in the postwar Balkans.
In an interview with Rijeka's newspaper Novi List, Orthodox Metropolitan
Jovan of Zagreb, who attended the papal Mass on Saturday as envoy of
Patriarch Pavle of Belgrade, left the possibility open. :
"Personally, I don't see any problem in the fact that the Pope might visit
Serbia," he said. "As head of the Catholic Church, he has the right to visit
his faithful, as we visit ours in the West."
Istria's newspaper Jutarnji List published a photo on the front page of the
Pope greeting the delegation of five bishops of the Orthodox Church in
Osjiek on Saturday. They came, in 15 buses, accompanied by the faithful from
Serbia and Montenegro.
President Svetozar Marovic of Serbia and Montenegro, who was in the Vatican
recently, invited the Holy Father to visit the federation, and requested his
support to accelerate its integration in the European Union.
[Source: CIS, slightly edited by Ecclesia Report]
FEATURES
An Oxymoron: Europe Without Christianity
By Kenneth L. Woodward
The New York Times, 16 June
Next week, leaders of the European Union will meet in Greece to vote on a proposed constitution that will govern the lives of 450 million Europeans. The most agitated debate at the convention that produced the draft focused on the preamble, specifically whether God in general, and Christianity in particular, ought to be mentioned among the sources of the "values" that produced a common European culture and heritage.
[...]
No one can visit Italy, or the medieval core of any European city, without encountering evidence of the Christian humanism that gives Europe its enduring cultural identity and - even now - its particular glow. Who goes to Brussels except on business?
"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.
[...]
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. One can only hope that wiser heads at next week's summit meeting in Greece will set the historical record straight and reject the trahison des clercs manifest in Brussels. What kind of future can there be for a united Europe that disavows its own past?
