Last Saturday Pope Francis completed a trilogy of speeches on Europe in which he appeared, in turn, as a prophet, dreamer and contemplative. Taken together, they are comparable to Benedict XVI’s own great trio of addresses on European democracy, at the Collège des Bernardins in 2008, Westminster Hall in 2010 and the Bundestag in 2011.
Francis was speaking a day after Catalonia declared independence from Spain and more than a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union. For the Pope, these two events starkly illustrate the crisis of European unity which he has tackled, from different angles, in all three speeches.
His first address was memorably savage. In 2014, the European Parliament invited him to Strasbourg, hoping perhaps for a gentle pat on the back. What he delivered instead was a sharp clip around the ear. Europe seemed “elderly and haggard”, he said. The world was becoming “less and less Eurocentric” and viewed the old continent “with mistrust and even suspicion”. “Where is your vigour?” he asked a stunned, silent chamber.
His second oration, as he accepted the Charlemagne Prize at the Vatican in 2016, was much milder. Instead of dwelling on the image of Europe as a wizened grandmother, he shared his dream of a continent “that is young, still capable of being a mother: a mother who has life because she respects life and offers hope for life”.
In his third reflection, at the Vatican’s New Synod Hall last weekend, the Pope was neither an acidulous critic nor a soaring visionary. Instead he was an almost wistful figure, looking forward across the decades (if not centuries) towards a European spiritual revival. He recalled the figure of St Benedict, who “from a tiny cave in Subiaco … gave birth to an exciting and irresistible movement that changed the face of Europe”. But Christians must do more than sit around, awaiting what philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously called “another – doubtless very different – St Benedict”. Francis said that we are called even now “to revitalise Europe and to revive its conscience, not by occupying spaces, but by generating processes”.
“Generating processes, rather than occupying spaces” is one of Pope Francis’s guiding maxims. He explained what he means by it in his interview with Fr Antonio Spadaro in 2013. “We must not focus on occupying the spaces where power is exercised,” he said, “but rather on starting long-run historical processes … God manifests himself in time and is present in the processes of history. This gives priority to actions that give birth to new historical dynamics. And it requires patience, waiting.” To use a biblical metaphor, we are called to sow the seeds, not reap the harvest.
Pope Francis clearly identified those seeds last Saturday. They are the dignity of every human being created in the image of God and the resulting sense that we are a single community called to care for the weakest members. Europe, the Pope said, has lost sight of these “foundational values” brought by Christianity and will flounder until it rediscovers them.
In his three major speeches, Francis has rebuked, encouraged and stretched Europe’s leaders. He can do no more. It is now up to the European politicians who have sought his guidance to help build a civilisation worthy of the name.
Students at University College Dublin, an institution closely associated with Blessed John Henry Newman, have voted by a two-to-one margin to remove the head of their student union. Katie Ascough, who is pro-life, aroused the ire of the student body by stopping the publication of information on the cost of abortion outside Ireland and also on abortion pills. The publication of such information is illegal in the Irish Republic, but one senses that Ms Ascough was removed simply for being pro-life.
There was a time when Ireland was a strongly pro-life country. As such it introduced an amendment to its constitution that guaranteed the right to life of the unborn. The Eighth Amendment, as it is known, was introduced in 1983 by a clear majority. Next year there will be a referendum on its repeal, which may well succeed. This would then open the way to the liberalisation of abortion in Ireland. The impeachment of Ms Ascough is a sign of the way public opinion is moving in Ireland, particularly among the young.
Naturally enough, this magazine regards the prospect of legalised abortion in the Republic of Ireland with dismay. Such a step would represent a sad defeat for humanity. It is worthwhile recalling the words of the Eighth Amendment: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”
The right to life is the basis of all human rights, for the dead can have no rights. If one section of humanity is to be deprived of its right to life, what does this say about our commitment to universal human rights?
Abortion, quite apart from being a grave moral evil in each and every case, also has a morally corrosive effect on society. Irish people who may doubt this only have to look across to this side of the Irish Sea and assess the way British society has changed over the past half century.
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