As the European election campaign gathers pace, the European bishops have made their own distinctive tone-deaf contribution. A joint statement published on March 13th gives voice to 27 bishops from the 27 European Union member states. They call for “a responsible vote in favour of Christian values and the European project.” This ambitious and noble-sounding programme conceals some deep ambiguities.
The text comes from the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union. Made up of delegates from the bishops’ conferences of the EU member states, it has a permanent secretariat in Brussels. It has no particular canonical authority, but it does have the merit of offering a fairly representative cross-section of part of the Catholic ‘establishment.’
The commission’s statement is a fine example of Europeanist rhetoric and shows that the representatives of the episcopate have perfectly integrated the language of the European authorities. Reflecting on the origins of the European project, they hail the advent—since the end of the Second World War—of a Europe “united in diversity, strong, democratic, free, peaceful, prosperous and just,” designed to help a battered continent rise from its ashes.
It’s worth noting the stylistic clause stating that the European project has made war on our continent “practically” impossible. It’s all in the ‘practically.’ The bishops do not forget to pay tribute to those of the founding fathers who were Catholics and whose work must be resolutely continued today. They place themselves under the patronage of the late Jacques Delors, a European Catholic whose veneration is authorised on the altars of the right-thinking. Before being a convinced European, he was above all a French socialist in the service of one of the most disastrous presidents of the Fifth Republic, François Mitterrand.
Praise of the European project seems somewhat abstract and disconnected from the realities of Europe as it is being made and built today. The “strong,” “fair” and “democratic” nature of the European Union has yet to be demonstrated. What can be said of the motto “united in diversity”, when the institutions of Brussels are striving methodically to erase all the particularities of the nation states, be they cultural, religious or political? In this respect, Pope Francis just unexpectedly raised his voice in defence of Hungary, and in favour of the European Union taking a little more care to respect its specificities in “diversity.”
But let’s now get to the heart of the declaration, which contains some voting instructions to help Catholic voters—and beyond that, all bonae voluntatis voters—when it comes to readying their paper for the ballot box. To do this, the bishops are keen to remind us of the challenges facing Europe in the future, which are worth getting involved in: “wars in Europe and in the neighbourhood, migration and asylum, climate change, growing digitalization and use of artificial intelligence, Europe’s new role in the world, enlargement of the European Union and change in the Treaties.” The least we can say is that in terms of the “common good,” this is a programme deliberately restricted to a few biased issues.
On that basis, according to these good bishops, we should vote enthusiastically for those who “clearly support the European project”—a European project that we have just been told is all about “migration, asylum and climate change.” In a flash of lucidity—remembering that after all, they speak in the name of the Roman Catholic Church—the bishops of Dijon, Eisenstadt, Zagreb, and Latina and their comrades add that we must vote for those who “clearly support the European project,” because these candidates will undoubtedly be keen to defend “our values and our idea of Europe, such as respect and promotion of the dignity of every human person, solidarity, equality, family and the sanctity of life, democracy, freedom, subsidiarity, care for our ‘common home’.”
And therein lies the rub. The bishops, in their great naiveté—or culpable blindness, as the case may be—imagine that those who “clearly support the European project” are the same ones who will respect the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life. But we conservatives, who carefully scrutinise the speeches of European parliamentarians in Brussels and Strasbourg every day, are desperately looking for these rare birds, currently nowhere to be seen. When they do make some brief appearances, the timid voice of these all too rare heroes—wandering between the benches of the ECR, ID or EPP groups—struggles hard to make itself heard.
Today, the parliamentary groups that are officially recognised as being the worthy successors of the founding fathers and the most determined to take Europe further and further—Renew, the Socialists like ‘Father’ Delors, the EPP to a lesser extent—are those that sacrifice themselves to political correctness and show themselves to be the most determined to destroy the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life.
Today, in France, the homeland of Jacques Delors, the fashion is for abortion—a cardinal virtue now enshrined in the marble of the constitution, and soon, for euthanasia. President Macron’s party, which claims to be one of the champions of tomorrow’s Europe, is even working hard to have abortion added to the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. But of this, our brave bishops say not a word, not a single word, not even a discreet hint that insiders could understand. They certainly consider this would lead them too far and could damage the “European project.” They prefer stratospheric generalities full of good feelings to a precise diagnosis of the evil that is eating away at Europe.
In Brussels, the European institutions have become one of the vectors accelerating Europe’s plunge into wokism and the promotion of LGBT demands. Countries that try, whatever the cost, to limit abortion or homosexual propaganda are under constant pressure. They are singled out and repeatedly blackmailed, like Malta and Hungary, in the hope that they will finally fall into line. The European Commission and Parliament are working methodically to promote surrogacy and deconstruct the traditional family model. Their daily attacks are resolutely in line with a progressive agenda that a highly organised lobby is responsible for carrying out. But the bishops are careful not to denounce this in their press release.
But let’s give them some credit for a drop of realism: “We know that the European Union is not perfect and that many of its policy and legal proposals are not in line with Christian values and with the expectations of many of its people, but we believe that we are called to contribute and improve it with the tools democracy offers us”, they say.
European voters thank the bishops for this observation. They will have to make up their own minds before supporting those who could potentially ‘improve’ Mrs von der Leyen’s Brussels paradise. Who knows? Dreaming of the white blackbird may well end up making it exist.