Stuart Wolfendale

‘Without Roots.’

The West, Relativism, Chritianity, Islam

by Joseph  Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI and Marcello Pera (Basic Book

Apparently the Dutch have an expression to describe self-loathing. “Down with Us!” it goes. That is what is ailing Europe’s perception of itself in the opinion of both Marcelo Pera, philosopher, academic and president of the Italian  Senate and Pope Benedict XVI . In May 2004, before he became Pope, Josef, Cardinal Ratzinger, addressed the Italian  Senate  on the state of the West. The day before, Pera had done much the same thing to the Latarenese Pontifical University. The juxtaposition was a coincidence though both reached very similar conclusions on the crisis of self-abnegation the continent seems to be suffering from. The addresses, followed by an exchange of lengthy letters make up this short book.Pera is an agnostic but such a sympathetic one that he belongs to an almost auxiliary contingent of Christians which the Pope describes as ‘seekers’. They see Europe bringing itself down into a pit of relativism, garbed as multiculturalism and policed by the language of political correctness. Relativism means that everything is as good as everything else in its own way. Identification of a moral superiority or preference, of one way of things being simply better or more bearable than another is discouraged and –if you are not careful- punished. So, in the face of Islamic assertions, which do not offer reciprocal tolerance to Western materialism or the Christian political dynamic between church and state,

Europe is denying itself its right and duty to defend its spiritual and political heritage within its own boundaries.Pera says that this is because Europe has downplayed its Christian culture and ethics because of  a carefully cultivated guilt complex and  the mistaken idea that if  you come out and believe that in principle and practice Christian moral principles are superior to Islam’s , then you must go to war with Islam, which is clearly not the case. Pera does go onto say that if Islam goes to war with you, nonetheless, there can be a case for giving it a righteous clobbering in return.

Benedict declines to get involved with the just war argument. He is a calming, lucid engaging writer who manages to synthesize huge chunks of history with quiet assurance. Indeed, one of the attractions of this little book is its invitation to you to roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen and look into the mind of the new living and breathing pope!It is quiet a disclosure. Benedict is very appreciative of the role of the Protestant churches in what he calls ‘German Europe’ in how they hammered out a system of church state relationships in their societies which has eluded the Latin Catholics. He is very informed about the synergy between the free churches in the USA and government.

In this book he does better than most to explain why, in a country that vaunts the separation of church and state, the churches have come to be so identified with the nation’s political vision of itself. Although for the most part, he appears to agree with the senator, Benedict’s tone is different. He has the neat habit of laying down historical evidence before offering his opinion. Where Senator Pera often ends on a pessimistic note, the Pope can often be found looking for a hopeful solution.

He is practiced at academic detachment, but his commitment to a purely Christian remedy for Europe’s woes, though artful and indirect is more palpable than anything from Pera.Benedict is deeply alarmed by the demise of the family, the corrosion of marriage and the fall in the birthrate. He believes that the refusal to procreate in favour of possessions and pleasure is suicide of the civilization. He sees Europe as being overrun, not by Turkish armies but by guest workers, migrants their families, their faiths and the repressive influences of political Islam that they will bring in their bags.

To re establish Christian spiritual values in social life, Pera advocates the establishment of state churches, probably thinking of those canny Protestants again. Benedict is no having that, thank you. He is for re establishing Christianity and the Church with as few secular caveats as possible. He describes the mission to rescue Europe’s spirit as the task of a ‘committed minority’, without which no culture can survive. This minority, Christian of course, will reach out to the seekers and those even further off to link them to the cultural and spiritual font. In a tactical briefing which spreads out a very clever strategy, the Pope describes the church as a great tree whose branches spread so far off and away that those at their ends could not always see the trunk but could be brought by those traveling along the branches to understand it and the life that it gave.

As part of the spade calling a spade exercise and a as righteous knee in the groin to political correctness, Pera says that, since so many Muslims had migrated to Europe to live and work and that they did so entirely by choice, surely this was an open admission that a society operating under Christian inspired principles of government and political and religious toleration offered more opportunity and was a better place to be than their own native systems.

 Now, just to add a dash of interesting if contrary perspective , I came across a review of this book in Arabic international daily ‘Asharq Alaswat’. The reviewer, Amit Tehari, did not like this point about guest workers choices at all.“Pera’s theory could be used against him.” he says. “Millions of Christian and Hindu Asians are present in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries as guest workers. Does their presence mean that Islam is superior to Christianity and Hinduism? Or should we simply note that they have come in search of jobs and better wages?”I welcome such a novel book about Europe which comes right out in the open about a malaise which so affects my own country of England that I feel ill at ease there now. However I could ask both authors in parting what exhortational weaknesses the Catholic Church has suffered from in the Philippines that such a huge percentage of its people choose to live and work amongst Arab Muslims? 

As a writer I like a brisk refutation of  the  loathsome censorships of political correctness and as an Englishman, I am convinced that being brought up before one of Her Majesty’s justices is infinitely more reasoanble in perception and procedure than a morning with sharia law. However, I also suspect that Europe has the genius for gradual alteration which we must not rush to see as mutation.ENDS   

  

 

 

 

 

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