FRONT PAGE
Has Europe stopped being Catholic?
Up till recently, it was possible to refer to some European countries by adding to their name the qualification “Catholic”, as exemplifying the contribution of the Church to their national culture. So people spoke of Catholic Ireland, Catholic Poland, Catholic Spain… But now, instead, press agencies in Europe are filling the pages of the web with disturbing stories that seem to place in question the traditional cultural heritage of many peoples. In Poland, for example, a Catholic weekly has just been condemned for having placed in question the decision of the European Court of Human Rights which had fined the Polish State for failing to satisfy a woman’s “right” to have an abortion; the Republic of Ireland has also been placed in the dock by the same Court for failing to provide the necessary legal instruments to guarantee the same “right” to three Irish women. In this sense, Portugal now has one of the most “avant-garde” pro-abortion legislations in Europe and has just approved a law permitting so-called homosexual “marriage”; and even Spain has just approved a law that de facto institutionalises abortion, because the abortion day-after pill is now being freely sold in pharmacies, without any obligation for a medical prescription. What’s happening? It seems as if the geographical axis of secularization, which was positioned in the Nordic countries forty years ago, has now swivelled round to the nations that traditionally boasted of a greater presence of the Catholic Church. In one of his last journeys to Poland, Pope John Paul II, having been informed of the social changes to which his homeland was being subjected, exclaimed: “But not like that!” And it’s true: not like that, in that way no. In Spain we are awaiting the next visit of Benedict XVI which will be the third to our country during his pontificate, if we count the World Meeting with Families in 2006 and World Youth Day due to be held in Madrid in 2011: the Holy Father’s concern for the cultural turning upside down that our society is experiencing can escape no one. A few weeks ago, the news came to light that the suicide rate in Spain has overtaken road accidents as a cause of death, taking second place after cancer – and after abortion, it goes without saying, but this is a fact of life that no one wants to recognize -. The Pope reflects on all this when he looks at countries like Spain, which for centuries nourished themselves from the Catholic faith to build a modern, stable and free Europe, but which now seem the advance guard of secularization, materialism and relativism. So what’s to be done? How can we reconstruct anew what’s gone to pieces in the space of a few years? There’s no point lamenting the passing away of a former age; we need to look still further back: to the roots of Europe, one of the themes that the Pope has most at heart and which he has often spoken of in his books and addresses. Europe was built through pilgrimage to the roots of the Catholic faith: to the Holy Land and to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and James. And it is precisely at Santiago de Compostela that the Pope will arrive next November, as a pilgrim among pilgrims, indicating the road to be followed. Perhaps this whole climate that is suffocating life and that is spreading in Europe has its origins in a kind of internal secularization that has involved all these countries of great Catholic tradition. Perhaps the sons and daughters of the Church have lowered their guard and have for too long been unconscious of the danger by which they are threatened. Perhaps they have forgotten, in sum, to be pilgrims. No matter, but now we need to turn back in our tracks, like the Pope, and follow the road that leads back to our roots, which are none other than the love of faith and of truth. The pilgrim’s way, the “Way of Santiago”, is proof of how faith can become culture, art and life and how the Gospel, interpreted in its deepest root, is able to build an entire continent. We need to dedicate ourselves and not succumb to one of man’s greatest temptations: despair. If Europe was once built, it can be reconstructed again.The rest remains, as the ancient pilgrims knew very well, in God’s hands. Ultreya! (the pilgrim’s greeting: Onwards!)
