Western Culture Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues
Chapter 1 ('Europe: Its Spiritual Foundations Today and Tomorrow'), Sections 3 ('The universalisation of European culture and its crises') and 4 ('What point have we reached today?').
We could venture a probable beginning of Europe as a ‘cultural continent’ when Jerusalem, Athens and Rome merge around III AD. Its geography roughly coincides with the landmass around the Mediterranean.
The Roman Empire splits into East and West in the IV century. The West collapses in the V century. Charlemagne and his successors take as their mission the continuation of the political empire in the West. The pope in Rome takes the spiritual lead. The Eastern Roman Empire survives as Byzantium till the XV century with both the political and spiritual leadership assumed by the emperor.
In the XVI Byzantium succumbs to the Ottomans, but Moscow takes the baton as ‘the third Rome’ and expands the Eastern Empire northwards and eastwards all the way to Siberia. The West in the meantime splits between Protestants and Catholics. From Canada to Argentina, America is colonised by Europeans along the same denominational lines.
At the end of the XVIII century the French Revolution brings about a phenomenon unprecedented in history: secularism as a creed. France and other Catholic countries see secularism enthroned politically and Christianity relegated to the private sphere with no official say in public life. Protestant countries in Europe had already moved towards state churches with Christianity providing only a broad moral consensus. The newly independent United States adopts a mixed model of ‘free churches’ with a secular state. Liberalism both as an economic approach and as an ideology arises too.
The XIX century sees the newly independent Catholic countries in America follow the secularist model in vogue in Latin Europe. A broad cultural sediment remains but, with religion exiled from the public sphere, rulers are more prone to dictatorships or governments that actively persecute their own people’s majority religion. Mexico in the 1920s and 30s is a good example. Meanwhile Europe witnesses the advent of socialism, which springs in opposition to the excesses of liberalism, and develops two forms, one democratic (usually called Socialism) and the other totalitarian (often called Communism).
The XIX and XX centuries will see the consequences of nationalism taking the place of the former empires, with secular universal and totalitarian visions as motivation and religion in retreat or persecuted: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin. At the core of reconstruction from 1949 Social and Christian Democracy will work together in the project that is today the European Union.
From its beginnings as a ‘cultural continent’ around the III century Europe had faced only one cultural challenge, from Islam. From the South West in the VIII century (711) with the invasion of the Iberic peninsula, and from the South East in the XV (1453), XVI (1529) and XVII (1683) centuries with the advance of the Ottoman Empire.
At the core of what Europe was and its worldview and source of motivations and goals was always Christianity in its different forms (Greek Orthodox in the East; Latin-Catholic or Germanic-Protestant in the West).
The XX century sees the ‘triumph’ of a technological secular model achieved in Europe, now exported to the whole world. But, is it still ‘European’ or just post-European? It would seem that at the peak of its material success Europe has lost what animated it, its ‘soul’.
Today many see Europe as dying as a civilisation and compare it with Rome during its decadence. To its dwindling spiritual strength ethnic decline is added (birth rate at around 1.3). Living in immanent secularism as worldview it is open to everything and anything―Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, anything but its own cultural heritage: Christianity (see Weiler, Joseph, Un’Europa cristiana, 2003).
Spengler’s deterministic theory of civilisations, following the biological model, predicts Europe’s [and the West’s?] sunset. Tonybee’s voluntaristic theory, with civilisational vitality linked to the place of religion in it, allows for a resurgence of Europe based on ‘creative minorities’ [practicing Christians?] and ‘exceptional individuals’ [saints?] at its core. Ratzinger refers to the idea of ‘creative minorities’ in Introduction to Christianity (1969), The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000) and his homily to the College of Cardinals in 2005.
For context, at the time this book is published (2004) a ‘Constitution of Europe’ was being discussed. It was never approved. However, drafters of the text fiercely endeavour to leave out any mention of Christianity (the closest it got was: ‘...drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanistic inheritance of Europe...’, Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, 2004).
Ratzinger proposes three ‘moral’ elements that should be included in that constitution as they form part of European identity, of ‘what Europe is’: respect for human dignity starting by the right to life from conception to natural end, not granted but recognised by the laws and the state (biblical image of man); respect for monogamous marriage between man and woman and open to life (biblical image of the family); and respect for what is sacred to others, especially God, with Christians included.
Ratzinger places the survival and future of Europe as a cultural continent in the commitment of creative minorities. Does this apply for Australia and the West?
Competent use of history
Political philosophy regarding society
Sociological analysis of Europe and worldviews
Challenge of European Constitution and more broadly reflecting what is Europe and what is the West
Arguing for the importance of Christianity as essential to the West