Eu Elections and europeanist Ideology. An Interview to Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi

On the 8th of June elections to the European Union parliament will be held. There are many reasons to think that this time they will be important, do you agree?

There certainly remains doubt about voter turnout, which in the past has never been very high. However, evaluating the problems on the table, I believe that this electoral round is certainly more important than others in the past. The European Union has not given a great account of itself recently. Many had pointed out the serious flaws of the European Green Deal, but they were not listened to. The climate and energy transition policies have been centralist, expensive, ineffective and illusory, provoking reactions of rejection. The recent parliament vote on abortion as a human right highlighted the control of parliament itself by a destructive and hopeless ideology. The interference of the Union institutions in the political elections in Poland and the forcing of the decisions of the government of Hungary, a nation that is often treated as “alien” to the Union, are some aspects of a situation of evident crisis. Add to this a considerable failure in foreign policy.

Do you foresee major changes in the composition of the European Parliament or small tweaks?

There have recently been electoral outcomes in some European countries that were strongly against this European Union. I am referring to the elections in some German states and especially in the Netherlands. Based on this trend, some observers even estimate a shift of a hundred seats in the next European parliament. However, it is difficult to make predictions. I limit myself to observing only that there will probably be a polarization of the composition of parliament, a sign that the future of the European Union will not be an easy path, but rather a conflicted one. Will this polarization mainly concern this aspect: slow down or even reduce the transfer of sovereignty of the States or, on the contrary, accelerate unification?

In recent days Mario Draghi anticipated some contents of the Report he drafted on behalf of the President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Layen. How do you evaluate them?

I think that Mario Draghi does not only speak in a personal capacity, but also on behalf of various circles of power, financial, economic and political, with which he is connected. His intervention must therefore be carefully evaluated. It seems to me that it is placed in the perspective of a rapid and decisive strengthening of the Union with the prospect of the birth of a central state, the creation of a common debt, European rearmament and the continuation of the environmentalist and digital transition. He spoke of the need for a “turning point”, but it seems to me that his proposal is in continuity with current trends, which he would like to radicalize and speed up by moving towards a new European “sovereignty”.

What would the Social Doctrine of the Church say in this regard?

Anyone wishing to refer to the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church should evaluate similar objectives very critically. The project would cancel natural communities, from the family to local communities up to nations, and would create a super-state even further from citizens and organic communities than the institutions of the Union are today. The continuation of the current transitions in the hands of such a Leviathan could create a centralized system of population control with dangers for the very freedom, so much proposed, even excessively, by European democracies as their main value. Not to mention that financing the green and digital transitions would require immense resources and interventions that would invade the right to private property. The issues that now remain – at least formally – the responsibility of the States would become a central responsibility and, to give an example, in the educational field we could witness a “pedagogy of the masses”, as some experts call it, governed by the central power. A kind of flattening and homologation of citizens’ minds to Europeanism as an ideology.

I understand that you are more in favor of the other line, that of cooling unit processes.

I believe that at this moment it would be more appropriate to slow down the unitary processes, to evaluate the path implemented so far, to rediscover what is essential to Europe and what the unification of the European Union has so far lost or neglected. There is a need to stop the race and think more.

Are you also referring to Christian roots?

I am referring to many things, to the Christian roots, to the family, to the conservation of national cultures, to the subsidiary dislocation of political power, to the governance of migrations that the Union has not even managed to establish, to the value of traditions, to the freedoms managed from the base, to the self-organization of local communities, to the preservation of many identities that have been lost without anyone being able to say why, up to a more calibrated geo-strategic reflection.

As for the Christian roots, allow me to make a couple of observations. The culture of the European Union is essentially atheistic and anti-Christian, hidden behind the principle of religious freedom. Having recognized this, however, it must also be said that a revaluation of Christianity cannot take place through “historical” motives, that is, only because it is part of our past. This is not a sufficient reason, because anyone will be able to say that that past is now gone. It will have to be based on the “truth” of the Christian religion, that is, on a new awareness that European political life needs it to be true.

However, here lies the responsibility of the Catholic Church…

Certainly, because it is above all his task to show the truth of the Christian religion, a truth which establishes the ultimate reason for its claims to be valid in public and not only in the private. I must say that today there are quite a few difficulties on this point. The Church, even recently, has argued that secularism is the ideal place for meeting, dialogue and peace. But if this is the case, the Christian religion becomes one of the many ethical instances and the Church one of the many civic training agencies. The principle of freedom of religion must not conflict with the Catholic Church’s claim to have something unique and unique to say and do. The reason for the historical, public, social and political role of the Catholic Church cannot be only the right to religious freedom. Benedict XVI had explored this theme in depth, and his observations had also aroused great interest on the part of secular thought, but I have the impression that it was no longer continued.

In your opinion, what is the main deficiency in the Catholic Church’s vision of the European Union?

I would say that it is the reception of the European project as an indisputable a priori, however valid in itself, in which to collaborate but without strong proposals, without denouncing the main errors. Let’s not forget that Europeanism can also be an ideology, when it places itself above everything. In a recent document in view of the June elections, for example, the bishops of COMECE, the Commission of the European episcopates of the nations of the Union, limited themselves to inviting participation and saying that the pro-European project is valid and must be helped to develop . It seems too little to me. I also notice another weakness regarding the so-called founding fathers of the European Community which later became the European Union. The Catholic faith of the three founding fathers is exalted too much, to the point of making the entire process that followed, including today’s situation, Catholic. It is not correct to set things up according to a forced line of continuity with a certain original Catholicism. Furthermore, this may overshadow the fact that at the origins of the Union there is also the Ventotene Manifesto, with a very different ideological tenor and which today seems successful.

S.E. Mons. Giampolo Crepaldi

(Interview by Stefano Fontana)

(Foto: Autore Garry Knight, Immagine di pubblico dominio)