” “In spite of or thanks to?

European Constitution: deadline for amendments expires. The deadline for the presentation of amendments to the first sixteen articles of the draft European Constitution expired on 17 February. A total of 225 amendments have been received. Over a quarter of them concern the first three articles: Institutions of the Union, Values of the Union, Objectives of the Union. Regarding the draft of article 2 and the absence of any reference in it to God and to religion, the senator of the Czech Republic Frantisek Kroupa presented an amendment already contained in the document of the German MEP Joachim Wuermeling (EPP) “Reference to religion in the constitutional treaty”, signed by 26 members of the Convention and sent to the Presidium on 31 January. The amendment proposes that the following paragraph be added to the text of article 2 (see SirEurope no.11 of 14.02): “The values of the Union include the values of those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, goodness and beauty”. The Italian government’s representative at the European Convention, Gianfranco Fini, and the European People’s Party (EPP) have also asked that a reference to the values of religion be included in the future Constitution. The plenary session of the Convention on 26-27 February will include a debate on the amendments and the presentation of other draft articles “If Europe were to renounce its Christian roots, it would no longer be a home for countless citizens”: that’s the gist of a letter that Metropolitan Kirill, head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Patriarchate of Moscow, sent to Giscard d’Estaing, president of the Convention on the future of Europe, on 14 February, after reading the “draft text” of the Treaty establishing a European Constitution. According to Moscow, the articles proposed in the draft text “leave out of account a large part of European culture, i.e. the religious part, which inspires the hearts and minds of many politicians, public figures, artists and ordinary people in the European continent. A Europe that renounces religion and in particular its Christian roots is a Europe that renounces being a home for countless people who live in it”. The draft text enunciates fundamental values such as human dignity, liberty, the supremacy of the law, tolerance, justice and solidarity which – writes Kirill – “are not alien to the Christian moral tradition”. But Moscow’s fear is that these values, if divorced from their Christian roots, may be used to support – for example, in the European Parliament – homosexual unions or the indiscriminate use of scientific progress, especially in the field of human cloning. “The Russian Orthodox Church – concludes Kirill – supports the efforts of all the organizations of the European Churches (KEK, CCEE, COMECE) to defend and promote the Christian roots of Europe and in particular asks that a reference “to the Christian heritage” and an article that establishes “a mechanism of consultation between European institutions and the religious communities of the Union” be added to the draft text of a European Constitution. “The lay principle, tolerance and religious freedom are values that the future European Constitution cannot fail to embrace and recognize”. So says Valerio Bortolin, rector of the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy (Padua section), intervening in the debate on the Christian roots of Europe. In the course of a recent meeting on “Religious identity and draft European Constitution”, Bortolin declared that “the full acceptance of the lay principle cannot mean the State’s absolute indifference to the various religious identities, or the reduction of religion to a purely private affair, without any relevance from a social or political point of view”. “The lay values of liberty, respect for others, the dignity of each person – he continued – emerged within a culture shaped by Christianity. It is thanks to its Christian roots that Europe’s capacity to give hospitality to different religious identities is realized”.