“Europe is experiencing a moral crisis of civilization” that is leading her to “demographic suicide”. That’s the analysis of George Weigel, American biographer of the Pope (and author of ‘Witness of Hope’), who recently spoke in Rome at a meeting organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University. He is considered one of the most authoritative commentators in the USA on religious issues and public life. Weigel spoke of “Politics without God? Reflections on Europe and America”, maintaining that one of the reasons for the European crisis is “the having forgotten God”. “It is obvious there are economic, social, psychological and even ideological reasons for the decline in the birth rate he observed , but the failure is undoubtedly also the expression of a wider failure: the loss of trust in ourselves”. According to Weigel, the religious factor is important to understand the differences between America and Europe, and that’s why he criticised what he called the “christophobia” of high European culture: “High European culture is in large part christophobic and the Europeans themselves describe their cultures and societies as post-Christian”. In Weigel’s view, it is mistaken not to take God into account in political life: “Those who won the constitutional debate in Europe in 2004 would reply that not only can there be politics without God, but that’s how politics must be”. “The European crisis of morality he concluded suggests, however, that the victors in the European constitutional debate are seriously mistaken”.
