“We especially need another mentality. No European community can exist if we don’t construct it”. The importance of the role of civil society in the construction of Europe is recalled in these terms by Johan Verstraeten, of the University of Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium, according to whom we first need to “develop a European civil society and the European institutions, and only then the Union as service to the interests of civil society”. But at the same time he adds civil society needs to be educated, especially “in the values of European citizenship” and in the Christian tradition which “is one of the roots of the culture of the old continent”. This education has a need for “an intellectual tradition”, able to participate “in the political debates on the great questions of our time”, not only with “major spiritual declarations”, but by “presenting valid arguments”. To be able to acquire this capacity, “the Catholic community has a need for intellectuals, for universities where dialogue and exchange are fostered”. Verstraeten too underlines the role of the Churches in the construction of the Union. “The Churches he says are repositories of memory. They have experience of humanity, but also of horrors and evil. By remaining true to themselves they may represent the historical experience of the European society of which they form part, in a period that has lost its memory, a period without history. And that is a disaster”.
