WAS EUROPE STOLEN FROM THE EUROPEANS?
Lidia Dudkiewicz, The Editor-in-Chief of ‘Niedziela’
We are asking ourselves more and more frequently what has happened with the spirit of Europe which was built by St. Benedict from Nursia, its main patron, 1500 years ago. He was gathering peoples and nations around the cross. It was thanks to St. Benedict that they felt being God’s people. The great unification of the Old Continent on the basis of the Christian values was undertaken also at our times. The Christian roots of the European unity were built and strengthened after the Second World War by ‘fathers the founders’ of modern Europe – the Catholics worth following – a French man Robert Schuman, an Italian – Alcide de Gasperi and a German man – Konrad Adenauer. And later, when Europe lost its bearings, being overwhelmed by totalitarianisms of the 20th century, there appeared the pontificate of John Paul II. In 1979 in Gniezno he said the significant words about ‘the spiritual unity of Christian Europe’, divided with an iron curtain into two camps hostile to each other at that time. Whereas a dozen years later, in 1997, when Europe had already changed, as communism collapsed and the Berlin wall was pulled down, John Paul II said, also in Gniezno: ‘There will not be Europe unity, until it is the community of spirit. This deepest fundament of unity was brought to Europe and was strengthened by Christianity with its Gospel, with understanding the man and contribution into the development of the history of peoples and nations’.
Now Europe is in decline: for it was to be Europe of the spirit but it is Europe of business. Whereas Poles hear about their particular mission in secularized Europe more and more frequently, particularly in terms of faith defence and natural order, that is, simply normality. The Old Continent is calling for help, as it sees the consequences of fatal ‘European standards’ which are imposed by the European Union in the name of the ‘political correctness’. First of all, what is horrifying, is promoting the gender ideology, dangerous anti-family actions and also protecting homosexual couples, spreading civilization of death, abortion and euthanasia.
And this is the background at which the voice of a French journalist is Heard via media, saying: ‘Once we used to say that Church is the sign of objection’. This is the opinion of Bernard Margueritte, a French man, living in Poland for several dozen years. Maybe it is worth hearing what he has to say about Europe: ‘If we want to be the Europeans today, we must strongly fight for it with Brussels. Not in order to split apart the Union, but to reform it. If we want to save Europe, we must be the opponent to those who are governing the Union now. What they are doing is anti-European. This is completely contradictory with what fathers of United Europe were fighting for’ (‘Sieci’ issue 26/2018). This famous French journalist also noticed that current Europe is fighting with ideals on which it was built as a community. In his opinion, ‘this is Poland which is a real heir of these values, not Brussels’. Seeing the recent pressures onto Poland from European institutions, Bernard Margueritte appeals: ‘Leave Poland alone, let Poland live, do not kill its spirituality, otherness, as you have nothing to suggest. This is Poland from which rebirth of Europe can arrive’. So, now, when European officials ‘stole Europe from the Europeans’, we need a universal spur for giving back Europe its Christian soul’. Surely, Poland must be present in this battle.
Translated by Aneta Amrozik
Niedziela 27/2018 (8 VII 2018)