New Europe Takes Shape

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 8/15/02)

Casual visitors to Europe these days can be pardoned for supposing that the biggest development there in years has been the painless introduction of the euro. No doubt about it, a common currency that ends the need to change money when passing between 11 of the 15 European Union nations (though not yet Denmark, Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom) is no small thing.

But bigger changes than the euro are afoot on the old continent. In October government chiefs of present EU countries will meet in Brussels to pass judgment on new applicants. If all goes well, 10 new nations—eight from the former Soviet bloc—will enter the European Union in 2004. Several more are waiting in the wings in "candidate" status.

Numbers are one measure of what this means. The combined populations of the EU states now number over 375 million. The new members will add nearly 100 million more. (U.S. population is 284 million.)

But this expansion signifies more than numerical growth. "It is a veritable reunification of a long-divided Europe. It re-establishes for all its inhabitants the sense of belonging to one continent," says the Brussels-based Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (COMECE for short).

In many ways, this is a deeply gratifying development. Above all, it holds out the hope of putting a permanent end to European rivalries and power struggles that spawned two world wars during the 20th century. Yet, taken together, the full range of implications of these momentous changes is mixed.

As far as the United States is concerned, Europeans are our friends, our partners — and, more and more, our economic and political rivals. Rivalry is likely to increase as the new Europe’s size and strength grow.

And the Church? Clearly, it is backing the reunification of Europe. COMECE's presence at European Union headquarters in Brussels is one sign of that. But as Church leaders readily admit, reunification of the continent is being pressed at a time of rampant secularization.

Resolutions in the European Parliament in Strasbourg calling for the Church to lose all voice in public affairs can perhaps be shrugged off as expressions of fringe sentiment. The parliament's 280-240 vote July 3 urging ready access to legalized abortion in all EU member states cannot. Nor can the EU's recent decision to commit about $32 million extra to the UN Population Fund to make up for money withheld by President Bush because of its support for coercive abortion.

Where religion is concerned, a European writer says the attitudes of many have passed "from incredulity and distaste to something colder: the absence of any sort of interest or engagement." Fewer than half of all Germans, to take one instance — 43 percent in a poll — consider themselves religious (the U.S. figure is 77 percent). In the admittedly extreme case of the former East Germany, 48 percent say they need no religion at all.

Although the Church's stance toward European reunification is essentially one of engagement, that does not rule out criticism. Both were apparent in Pope John Paul II's message to a study conference on a European constitution held in Rome in June.

If the "new European order" is to serve the common good, he said, it must acknowledge values that underlie "European humanism," including the central role of marriage and the family, the sanctity of human life, the dignity of work, religious liberty and the conviction that political power is a form of service.

The Church has its work cut out pressing this agenda in the secularized new Europe now taking shape.

Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C.

Copyright ©2002 Arlington Catholic Herald.  All rights reserved.