editorial" "
Sunday after Sunday, all through this torrid Sunday, the Pope has repeated a passionate plea for a reunified Europe. John Paul II regards the new constitutional treaty as a sign of reunification. It is therefore a significant historical turning point, a time for stocktaking and revival. And the last protagonist of this reunification cannot remain silent. He feels the need to raise the stakes, to enter the fray. What’s involved here, John Paul II continues to repeat, are not merely “geographical and economic aspects”. Reunification “must be translated into a renewed concord of values to be expressed in law and in life”. The thread of John Paul II’s argument is based on social doctrine: a good constitution of society must be rooted in authentic ethical and civil values, as far as possible shared by citizens. The Gospel today, as in the past, is an inexhaustible source of spirituality and brotherhood. The “recognition of this is thus to the advantage of everyone, and the need for the Christian roots of Europe to be explicitly recognised in the Treaty becomes for the Continent the main guarantee of its future”: the guarantee of its further dynamic growth. The numbers seem to leave little room for manoeuvre, just a few weeks before the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference in Rome, which will have the task of adopting the final text of the constitutional treaty. Few governments seem willing to support a reference to Christian roots in a document, which most prefer to be “secular” in inspiration. Yet this is precisely why the Pope’s proposal is so great an opening to the future. John Paul II claims nothing, nor does he look backwards, to a possible ‘restoration’. On the contrary, he is forward-looking: he tackles the great challenges and the great prospects for a reunited Europe in an ever more global, but at the same time ever more conflictual world. The “Christian roots”, in short, are not a claim, but a resource, a point of reference, which Europe badly needs, not only as a political community, but also as a community of civilization, if it is to articulate its own diversities, rediscover an impetus that seems to have stagnated, and embrace a system of values and principles that are not abstract but concretely embodied. That means the image of a “symphony of nations” with which the Pope ended his discourse on Europe at the end of August, when he newly entrusted all the men and women of the continent to Mary. Signs of apprehension are not lacking in the words of the Pope, such as his rather bitter observation that “European culture gives the impression of a “silent apostasy by man who is satiated”. Indeed: for the Pope to claim with passion the Christian roots of Europe in this open and dynamic way means subjecting the future of Europe to permanent reflection. But it means first of all reviving the question of the quality of the presence and the witness of Christians. Believers therefore have the task of a “renewed commitment in response to the challenges of secularisation, starting out from a small sign: the Christian sense of Sunday, and a great challenge”: “restoring hope to the poor”. For it is by such criteria that true politics can be gauged, the kind of politics for which there is so great a need today and that the constitutional treaty could help revive.
