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Over the last few days, thinking of Europe, I have often repeated to myself: “finally we are beginning to open our eyes…!” For those who dreamt of a Europe of values, of well-being, of tolerance and pluralism, it’s a brutal re-awakening into the cold light of day after a beautiful dream, in observing that toleration is asked only for what is difficult to tolerate, and that the most inalienable values include the freedom to do anything you like and, especially, to decide on life and death… Openly professing the values of the majority of Europeans seems to have become something blameworthy or a weakness tolerated only if confined within the restricted space of one’s own private life. It is surprising to see that, in this situation, it is just the new members of the European Union that are the most expert. In particular, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and the three Baltic countries have overcome all the decades of open and hidden struggle against the faith, of marginalization, of persecution and of brainwashing. “The faithful will have as much freedom as they wrest for themselves by struggling”, it was said at the time of the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918. From the ancient Greeks we have taken the concept of democracy, but not it seems the concept of the leadership of the best, freely chosen. The limitations of present-day European democracy also need to be recognized: if it is built on an erroneous conception of man and society, one does not need to be a prophet to predict difficulties ahead. The current European situation recalls the years 1947-50 when a quasi-democratic struggle to install new governments took place in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Christians too had to actively participate to save what could be saved without remaining disappointed if they lost position. Fortunately the vitality of the Church does not depend mainly on the functioning of structures and their recognition and support by the civil authorities. Lenin’s theory that the strength of the Church consists in perfect structures and that it’s enough to destroy them to eliminate it, has not been borne out, and in fact the militant atheists, under the totalitarian regimes, aimed not at destroying the structures but at distancing the faithful from sacramental life. And it seems that it is precisely this that is the pastoral priority of the Church in Europe today. Those who say that Christians “ought to be afraid not of a strong Islam but of their own weak Christianity”, are right. Difficulties serve for purification and re-vitalization. We need to have the humility also to accept injustices as a sign of the times: we must try to put them right but at the same time make use of them for renewal. In the Communist countries too there were those who rebelled continuously, cursing the regime, but there were also those who “accepted” it as an invitation to make a positive contribution for change. This “supernatural realism”, however, does not mean accepting Christian life segregated in the sacristies and in private homes. It also means serving the whole of society by healing the anthropological error that fails to foster the transcendental and spiritual dimension of man in the structures of social and public life. Recalling the right to form social structures according to interior convictions does not mean asking for privileges. It means helping man to be himself. And a further encouragement: Christians ought not to knock on the doors of Brussels or Strasbourg in order to enter the life of European society. Christians are already there, inside; they are present, but they need to bear witness to their Christianity in a radical way. Europe will remain Christian in proportion as European Christians are truly witnesses of the Gospel.
