«Christopher Dawson, in The Making of Europe, scrive: “The influence of Christianity on the formation of the European Unity is a striking example of the way in which the course of historical develompment is modified and determined by new spiritual influences. […] Thus in the case of the ancient world we can see that the artificial material civilisation of the Roman Empire stood in need of some religious inspiration of a more profound kind than was contained in the official cults.” That need was met by Christianity.
It could be said that the religious divisions sanctioned by the cuius regio eius religio norm, were devised to permit political divisions, national isolation and, as a corollary, wars. Within the unity of religion wars and battles were considered fratricidal and there was an effort to avoid them. Then, when Christianity was divided, contflicts became signs of national glory. Yet, since the Christian conscience of Europe never died, to the spirits of many people those wars appeared as nothing more than infighting, and that the conscience of the Europen community never wavered.
A common beauraucracy is not enough.
The Russian, Soloviov, once wrote that just as the Church had at one time unified Europe, first with the French and then the Saxons, now it would reuinte it with social justice, bypassing the divisions of race, caste and class; that is, by eliminating the major cause of conflicts.
By social justice which according to the Christian meaning is contained in that communion of spiritual and material goods that sees all people as children of the same Father, equal to one another, and this is the view the Church awakens in view of peace in wellbing and in freedom. Hoping to obtain this rational order only with class war would be equivalent to repeating the mistake of Germanic and Slavic militarism. . . that claimed to unite Europe by the sole use of arms. .Christianity represents a unification in freedom and in peace with the elimination of wars and motives for friction. The contribution of religion in this sense is not directed towards the structuring of institutions, as it is to the formation of spirits.
In religion today we see two unifying thrusts in motion: 1) the improving sense of the Mystical Body; 2) the rebirth of ecumenism by which the unity of the Church triggers the unity of the peoples. Two thrusts which, as they correct the direction of the currents and eliminate the passions from whence the vivisection of Europe happened, they also arouse spiritual energies capable of giving a soul to this political union; of infusing a supernatural inspiration into this human project; of popularising the application of unity. If this were left only to economic, political and military factors it would fail.
It is not enough to make Europe a common army or a common beuraucracy. It is not by chance that men of politics tend to incorporate ideologies; that is, giving the body a soul. Europe already has its soul: Christianity, its substance and its genesis.
(Rome: Città Nuova no. 5, 1972), p.23.
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