By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Not every admirer of Hilaire Belloc’s work thinks it was wise for him to write, “Europe is the faith, and the faith is Europe.” But whatever one’s position on Belloc’s words, what is happening in Europe these days calls them to mind.
Am I the only one who suspects that the people of Europe, whether or not they have ever heard of Belloc, are pondering one version or another of his statement about the centrality of Catholicism to Europe’s identity as they witness the flood of Muslim refugees pouring across their borders?
My guess is that Europeans are longing for a leader to come to the forward and state openly and unapologetically, “This flow of refugees across our borders has to stop. We are a Christian people, and we want to stay a Christian people, and we have that right. There is nothing shameful or unjust about wanting that.”
What holds them back from saying this, of course, is the notion of a secular society based on Enlightenment principles that has been taught to the people of the once-Christian West since they were children. They have been instructed that it is reactionary to promote a Christian society, close-minded, non-inclusive, even hateful to do so. They find themselves tongue-tied when they see Muslims pouring into their countries holding signs that proclaim the right of “Freedom of Movement Access Across Borders.”
How does an enlightened modern European oppose that demand? Muslims have as much right as the local parish deacon to shape society, according to the Enlightenment understanding of liberty, equality, and fraternity. People are people. If migrants cross national borders, invited or not, and become the majority in the country where they decide to take up permanent residence, they have the right to enact their principles into law. Right?
No, it is not right. Everyplace else on Earth would deem the proposition laughable. No one questions the right of countries with Muslim majorities to remain Muslim. Hindus are praised for how they united to halt the British transformation of their culture. The Vietnamese are admired for the vigor they displayed in driving out French and American interlopers. No one expects the Japanese to open their borders to a flow of immigrants that would redefine what it means to be Japanese. White Europeans are scolded constantly in the media in Hollywood for their assault on Native American culture. We could go on.
It is only the nations of the world that are populated by Christians, or people who were once Christian, that are told it is high-minded for them to accept a radical transformation of their national culture, a redefinition of who they are.
One might object that modern Europeans cannot demand the right to retain their Christian identity, since they have long deserted it. Most of them don’t practice their faith any longer. Christian religious leaders do not define morality and personal behavior for them.
Well, not exactly. The free societies of Europe are still Christian, whether they know it or not. Their national identity depends upon the collective memory of when Christianity shaped their values.
From the time of the Enlightenment to the present, the champions of a secular society have been living within the framework of a Christian society. Edmund Burke called it the “unbought grace of life,” the customs and traditions that lifted the people of the Christian West from the savagery of the past into the civilized societies that are now drawing migrants from all over the world.
Modern Europeans, even those who call themselves agnostics, are living in societies with broad and deep strands of Burke’s unbought grace running through them, even if expressed in secular language. Those strands were responsible for the people of Europe coming to the conclusion that mankind no longer needs the authority of kings and clergy. It is what led them to believe that people were born naturally good and capable of self-rule, “noble savages,” as Rousseau phrased it.
It led them to conclude that free men will also be good men, kind, respectful of the rights of their neighbors, of the poor, of women, of minorities, as if those attributes were inborn in every human being. But they are not. They were a consequence of the role that Christianity played in forming their national cultures.
The bottom line: The modern “liberal” values of freedom of conscience, speech, press, and religion are rooted in the Church’s teachings about the obligation to respect the rights of the individual — a man or woman made in the image and likeness of God. The respect for the dignity of women was formed in large measure as a consequence of the Church’s veneration of the Blessed Virgin. The safety nets to protect against poverty and economic injustice are a manifestation of Christ’s call to care for the least of our brethren, expressed in secular language. Europeans are not ignoble for doing all they can to not lose these expressions of their Christian heritage.
That heritage will be transformed by ongoing waves of Muslim migrants, as surely as the cathedral of Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. One would think that even French atheists recoil at the prospect of the cathedral of Notre Dame or Mont St. Michel meeting a similar fate.
We are at a moment that cries for European leaders to make the case for why societies shaped by Christian beliefs deserve the right to stay that way; that their freedom of religion is at stake. And why hundreds of thousands of Muslims pouring into Europe year after year will deny them that right.
Saying that does not imply a hatred for Muslims. An insistence upon the integrity of European borders can, and should, be accompanied by a clearly expressed willingness to provide generous material and military support for safe areas for Muslim refugees in their own countries, a commitment to give them whatever is needed to survive — except the right to make Christian Europe, even a secularized Christian Europe, no longer Christian.
Some European leaders are showing signs that they get the point. At a recent political rally, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, told supporters that “France is not a supermarket, it’s a whole. There is no French identity, no happy identity in a multicultural society.”
I guess we can forgive Sarkozy for not adding that France’s “identity” includes its Catholic heritage. It could be that he has not yet fully come to grips with that thought; that he has not yet spent time pondering why liberty, equality, and fraternity did not spring to life in Persia or among the Incas in the 18th century.
Will making the argument that Europe has a right defend and preserve its Christian heritage make any difference to the Muslim refugees determined to make the cities of Europe their new home? Not likely. Odds are they would retort with some secular liberal bromide about the “global village” or “Free Access Across Borders.” (Notions they will disregard in an instant if they ever become a governing majority.)
But it will help the Europeans who commit themselves to stopping the invasion stand firm with a clear conscience. Dignum et iustum est.
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