Papal Thought on Europe and the European Union in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

I'm sending out a cry of love to you, old Europe: find yourself again, be yourself, discover your origins, revive your roots, revive those authentic values which make your history glorious and your presence beneficent on other continents. (John Paul II, 1982)

‘Europe’ has been treated in a number of different ways in papal thought in the twentieth century. At first, under Benedict XV and Pius XI, European unity was presented as the only means to avoid wars and to tame aggressive nationalisms. With Pius XII, Europe became a vision, founded on a sacred past where ‘Faith’ and ‘Truth’ had been given by Christ (and the Catholic Church) to the peoples of Europe. The pope's role was unceasingly to defend federalism, and to condemn communism and Cold War politics. The popes of the 1960s and 1970s recast Catholic doctrine on Europe as a new utopia, imbuing Europe with a new concern for the situation of Eastern Europe. They aimed to revive the opportunity for all European peoples to live in a secure, democratic and developed continent thanks to the protective cultivation of Christian values. John Paul II took the view that a common Christian identity pre-existed de facto and was outside any institutional union. Europe had always lived as a ‘spiritual miracle’. The Christian heritage of Europe had to be heard, transmitted and respected both by individual European states and by the Union; otherwise the risk was that the unity project would fail and Europe would disappear, falling into decadence and permissiveness.

Notes

1 John Paul II (Acto Europeo …, 1982, para.3) says: ‘I view Europe and see a continent which has most contributed to world development, not only in the field of ideas but also in the fields of work, sciences and the arts. And while I bless the Lord for letting Europe shine its evangelical light since the beginning of apostolic preaching, I cannot keep silent on the state of crisis in which it finds itself at the doorstep of the third millennium of the Christian era.’

2 The papal notes published by Nathalie Renoton-Beine are kept in the Vatican's archives, Archivio della Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari di Secretaria di Stato, period I–III (before 1922).

3 ‘For if in most places, peace is in some sort established and treaties signed, the germs of former enmities remain; and you well know, Venerable Brethren, that there can be no stable peace or lasting treaties, though made after long and difficult negotiations and duly signed, unless there be a return of mutual charity to appease hate and banish enmity’ (Pacem Dei Munus).

4 ‘An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity’ (Ubi Arcano Dei, para. 45).

5 This expression was first used by John Paul II on 25 January 1988 in the apostolic letter Euntes in Mundum for the millennium of the baptism of Kievan Rus'. The original term in Latin is ‘duo pulmones’, used at part V, para. 12. The future pope had, however, expressed the idea of two complementary parts of Europe in his first article on Europe (Wojtyla, 1978).

6 Expression used by Philippe Portier (2007, p. 44).

7 Leo XIII: ‘Every human community needs an authority to govern it’ (Immortale Dei; Diuturnum). ‘The foundation of such authority lies in human nature. It is necessary for the unity of the state. Its role is to ensure as far as possible the common good of the society’ (Catechism, Part III, Section I, Chapter II, Article 2a., para. 1898).