This article from the Jesuit European Office's January newsletter is a great and succinct analysis of the relationship between Roman Catholics and the European Union. The author, Guido Dierickx, makes several points that are worth reiterating:
1. Roman Catholics almost by definition favor the continuing integration of Europe, especially when compared to other religious groups.
2. Roman Catholics, on the whole, tend to be less nationalistic and more "universal" than other groups.
3. The Vatican supports the European Union for pragmatic reasons, but also because the church "entertains a nostalgia for the model of the 'Christian world' as it existed in the late Roman empire and in the high Middle Ages. Then the Church was the guarantee for a European unity that has since been lost as a result of the reformation and the rise of the national states." This point is extremely important when it comes to talking about the social and cultural makeup of the European Union--a cause for which the Jesuit European Office was specifically founded.
The article comes from the OCIPE website.
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Irish Catholics and European integration
Guido Dierickx
Some people fear the further deepening of the EU because they are Catholics. Or so they say. They raised their voices at the occasion of the first Irish referendum about the treaty of Lisbon. They are not numerous and their impact on the outcome of the referendum was marginal. But they made themselves heard with the reasons they had to reject the treaty. They feared the secularism of other European member states, for instance because the charter of human rights that is attached to the treaty could be used by courts of justice to impose ethically permissive norms on their Catholic country. Don’t the newspapers almost daily report about offensive judgments by untrustworthy judges elsewhere? Not to mention untrustworthy foreign politicians.
With this diffident attitude these Irish Catholics are not alone. Likeminded Catholics can be found in other member states. In Poland, for example, though the conservative Catholic president finally had to sign the treaty. In the weeks leading to the second referendum the Irish bishops and Catholic groupings therefore found it necessary to come out in favour of the treaty more clearly than before. This intervention was not unexpected. Indeed, one of the Irish bishops is no one else than Noël Treanor, the former secretary-general of COMECE, someone with expertise in the area and a convinced advocate of further European integration.
But these are historical anecdotes. The fundamental question is: Why did Catholics and their leaders support the project of European integration from the start? Why do they keep supporting it? Political realism has certainly been a consideration. At the risk of being repetitious: after World War II European integration was the obvious means to prevent new conflicts between European countries and to bolster their resistance against the atheistic power on their eastern borders. However, more principled considerations also supported this federalist stance. Some would mention here that the Catholic Church entertains a nostalgia for the model of the “Christian world” as it existed in the late Roman empire and in the high Middle Ages. Then the Church was the guarantee for a European unity that has since been lost as a result of the reformation and the rise of the national states.
In order to reach an even more fundamental explanation we should take more data into account. Then we shall be able to show that the catholic leaders did not pursue their federalist policies out of merely tactical considerations and that they are not estranged from their confessional following. Here we borrow them from Byrnes T.A. and Katzenstein P.J. (eds.) (2006), Religion in an Expanding Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. It appears from all European surveys that Catholics tend to be more favourable to European integration than Protestants and committed Catholics more than marginal ones. Add to this fact that the protestant countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and the UK, have joined the EU, that club of catholic countries, at a later date and somewhat reluctantly. Note also that it is not the intensity of religiosity but the substance of religious belief system that matters most. In Turkey the rank and file members of the governing Islamic party are less sanguine about joining the EU the more they are religiously committed.
That the political theology of the religion is such an important factor requires an explanation that begins with the universalistic nature of the Christian faith, a faith that, at least in principle, recognises no social and cultural and, for that matter, no political boundaries. “There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female.” Who does not know these famous words from Paul’s letter to the Galatians? When political boundaries began to thicken on the map of Europe this principle entailed two consequences. The Church needed to accentuate its autonomy against the national political authorities. And she needed to maintain relationships across national boundaries with companions in the same faith in other countries and with a hub of authority in Rome. This ecclesiastical option was not evident, certainly not for Protestant and Orthodox communities. Their faithful were more accepting of protection by the national rulers and of their tutelage in church matters. This is, of course, a long story, the story of the relationship between Church and State. also in Catholic countries there have been currents favouring a narrow symbiosis between ecclesiastic and political institutions, Gallicanism and Febronianism for example. However, on the whole Catholic communities have been more intent on maintaining their autonomy. They have demanded their own bishops, their own schools, their own associations, and, eventually, their own political parties. And frequently they got them.
The consequences are there for all to see. Catholics are, on the whole, less prone to all out nationalism, unless tactical considerations force them to put respect for national identity first, unless their national and confessional interests would coincide, for a while. This has been the case in Ireland, that had to resist British colonisation, and in Poland, that had to fend of the imperialism of both Prussia and Russia. But even there the melding of religion and politics was not as strong as in orthodox Greece that had to struggle against the occupation by Turkey.
The Catholic communities have, thanks to their associational life, been able to develop transnational networks and to maintain them against the lure of nationalism. No wonder that they are less tempted to object to European integration and that a large majority of the “European” leaders have been Catholics. Perhaps we shall live to witness the beatification of Robert Schuman. The Irish “no” at the first referendum was surprising but not impossible to explain. Voters tend to reject proposals that are complex and therefore disquieting. The Irish “yes” at the second referendum was a return to normalcy because, in the context of the crisis, the complexity of the proposal had been reduced to two clear alternatives. And also because Catholics, and there are many in Ireland, tend to favour European integration.
