Exclusive: Theodore Roosevelt Malloch explains results of
rejecting transcendent truths.
I readily admit to being a
Eurocentric Europhile. Please bear with me as I detail some personal history to
establish the background for why I make this statement.
·
·
My family roots are in
Scotland, Holland and Germany, and my entire education, faith and upbringing,
while quintessentially American, are deeply rooted in the European experience.
My faith is founded in the Protestant Reformation that shook Europe 500 years
ago.
·
·
I spent nine formative
summers teaching and touring throughout all of Europe while I was in graduate
school and as a young professor.
·
·
I still recall with wild
enthusiasm my first trip to Europe in 1972 at age 19. I studied and took degrees
and have lectured at European universities. I was a Deutches Austauschendienst
at Kiel Universitat and was made an honorary member of the Christian Democratic
Party of the Netherlands as early as 1979.
·
·
I was president of the
four ancient Scottish universities trusts in the United States. I wrote a
doctoral dissertation largely about European ideas – in politics, philosophy
and economics.
·
·
I lived four years in
Geneva, Switzerland, in an ambassadorial post in the U.N. in the late ’80s
until 1992 when European history shifted and the Cold War ended. I had a
front-row seat as deputy executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission
for Europe. I was an executive board member of the World Economic Forum, which
started as the European Management Forum for CEOs.
·
·
I was actually present
at the Berlin Wall just days after it came down. My friends in Eastern Europe,
the radical economists, all became leading figures – ministers, central bankers
and prime ministers in their respective countries after the fall of the Soviet
Union.
·
·
I was an adviser to the
Polish government during its shock therapy and privatization. I speak several
European languages, regularly read European books, magazines and newspapers and
have been a firm supporter of the so-called Atlantic Alliance my entire life.
To steal a line from
President Kennedy, “Ich bin ein Europaisch.” So, it is with a deep sense
of disappointment and true sadness that I have to say what I am about to say.
Adrift without a soul
Europe’s churches are
empty. Mass on Sundays, in any Gothic cathedral, is virtually unattended,
except for a handful of tourists, vacant. The actual celebration of Mass is
typically conducted in a side chapel, fit for the dozen or so worshipers who
show up for service. Europe is adrift without a soul and evolving rapidly away
from its moorings.
In his book,” The Cube
and the Cathedral,” George Weigel described a European culture that has become
not only increasingly secular but in many cases downright hostile to
Christianity.
The cathedral in his
title is Notre Dame, now overshadowed in cultural importance by the Arc de la
Defense, the ultra modernist “cube” that dominates an office complex outside
Paris.
“European man has
convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically
secular,” Weigel writes. “That conviction and its public consequences are at
the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale.”
Recall the rancorou
debate over whether or not “Christianity” should be explicitly acknowledged
when drafting the European Union’s constitutional treaty.
By the time the draft
constitution was completed, a grudging reference to “the cultural, religious,
and humanist inheritance of Europe” had been shoehorned into the preamble’s
first clause. This was about as much religion as Europe could stomach in a
constitution that runs some 70,000 words.
Practicing Christianity
in Europe today enjoys a status not dissimilar to closet status reserved for
smoking marijuana or engaging in unorthodox sexual activities decades ago. Few
Europeans will mind if you do so in private, but please have the courtesy to
keep the matter private.
Today Christianity in
the EU is considered at best a retrograde and largely atavistic practice barely
tolerated in a self-described “progressive” society devoted to obtaining the
good material life, including long holidays, short work hours and generous
government benefits.
Dare we ask what is the
deeper source of European antipathy to religion? The problem goes all the way
back to the 14th century, when scholastics like William of Ockham argued for
“nominalism.” According to their philosophy, universals – concepts such as
“justice” or “freedom” and qualities such as “good” – do not exist in the
abstract but are merely words that denote instances of what they describe. A
current of thought was set into motion, Weigel among others believes, that
pulled European man away from transcendent truths. One casualty was any fixed
idea of human nature.
If there is no such
thing as human nature, then there are no universal moral principles that can be
read from human nature. If there are no universal moral truth, then religion,
positing them, is merely a form of oppression or myth, one from which Europe’s
elites see themselves as now liberated. And they look down on their American
and Third World cousins who continue to believe in such irrational flights of
fancy.
I think the critics are
on firm ground when they analyze Europe’s present condition, with its low birth
rates, heavy government debts, Muslim immigration worries and tendency to carp
from the sidelines when the fate of nations is at stake. Like Weigel, one could
sketch the worst-case scenario – the “bitter end” – for a Europe that is
religiously bereft, demographically moribund and morally without a compass:
“The muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St.
Peter’s in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the
Seine – a great Christian church become an Islamic museum.”
One need not find this
scenario altogether plausible to feel persuaded by more measured arguments
about Europe’s atheistic humanism. Without a religious dimension, a commitment
to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its
name. Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe
in freedom and democracy, of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good
life” on hold and put lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion –
in the Balkans, the Sudan, Darfur or in Iraq cum Syria.
The good of human
freedom, by European lights, must be weighed against the risk and cost of
actually fighting for it. It is no longer transcendent, absolute. In such a
world, governed by a narrow utilitarian calculus, sacrifice is rare, churches
go unattended and over time the spiritual capital that brought forth all that
we know as the West is at risk of being lost.
Europe is a society
adrift, untied from the source of its greatness – the very cultural foundation
that provided the values making Europe great is disintegrating, leaving Europe
(and soon the entire West) on sinking sand. More specifically, as the past is
erased, re-written, or ignored, the rich Judeo-Christian history of Europe is
being left behind. And at what cost?
As I ponder this thesis,
I am reminded of Orwell’s quote, “We have now sunk to a depth at which
restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is
obvious, “culture determines civilization.” Without its distinctly Christian
history, Europe would not be what it is. Unfortunately, we may now have more
accurately to write, “Europe would not have been what it was.” America is now
alone in defending freedom and upholding the tradition of faith and reason.
No comments:
Post a Comment