As Europe goes…

…so goes the future of the Irish people? The two are still intertwined. But at least some power is still in the hands of the Irish.

Friday’s vote on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland shouldn’t even be happening. This same vote last year was supposed to be definitive, whatever the outcome. But because it was ‘No’, the Eurocratic elite have connived for Ireland to try again, until they get the results they, the Eurocratic elite, want.

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams says there are five reasons for the Irish to vote no. They all pretty much have to do with Ireland’s self-determination, which the ‘no’ voters see clearly is entirely at stake in this election.

Handing Ireland’s future to an EU elite would be disastrous, said Mr Adams. A No vote would ensure the State kept its permanent commissioner through negotiation.

The treaty has a radical agenda that would give the highly activist European Court of Justice ultimate power over states, a court at odds with popular opinion and the common people. It’s a post-Christian, post democratic agenda disguised in some dense language that ‘No’ campaigners call ‘legal sleight of hand.’

He dismissed the guarantees secured by the Government earlier this year, arguing there was not “one comma” of difference between the document before the electorate and what people voted on last year.

“We need to get a new treaty for new times, and that means voting No and going back to our partners in the EU,” he said. “Our place in the EU is secure.”

He said that Ireland did not need “side of the mouth commitments” but real changes to the treaty…

“It is Sinn Féin’s view that handing Ireland’s future to an EU elite would be disastrous. Once we hand that power away we will never get it back,” Mr Adams said.

I’ve been reading Joseph Ratzinger’s book Europe this week, which he updated after becoming Pope Benedict XVI, and find it’s a good companion to reading the news this week.

As the new Europe forms and defines itself without reference to its Christian heritage and values, Popes John Paul II and Benedict have continually tried to call Europeans back to their roots. Take this snip from the book, about the turning point in European history triggered by the French Revolution. Only then, in the late 18th century said Ratzinger, did the “spiritual framework go to pieces as well–that spiritual framework without which Europe could not have been formed.”

This was a process of considerable importance, both from the political and from the conceptual point of view. In the realm of ideas, this meant that the sacred foundation for history and for the existence of the State was rejected; history was no longer gauged on the basis of an idea of a preexistent God who shaped it; the State was henceforth considered in purely secular terms, founded on reason and on the will of the citizens.

For the very first time in history, a purely secular State arose, which abandoned and set aside the divine guarantee and the divine ordering of the political sector, considering them a mythological world view, and it declared God himself to be a private affair, that did not play a role in public life or the formation of the popular will…religion and faith in God belonged to the realm of feelings and not to that of reason. God and his will ceased to be relevant in public life.

This week, Pope Benedict visited the Czech Republic and he brought that up in a homily at the site where Czech king Wenceslaus was martyred.

According to tradition he was a highly cultured and religious king, a man of justice and a benefactor to the poor. He was killed for political reasons by his brother Boleslav in 935 and in 938 his remains were translated to Prague cathedral. Ever since the tenth century he has been venerated as a saint…

In his homily Benedict XVI pointed out that St. Wenceslas “is a model of holiness for all people, especially the leaders of communities and peoples. Yet we ask ourselves: in our day, is holiness still relevant?”

This is not a rhetorical question. He’s in the midst of a European continent where elite secular authorities aggressively seek sweeping changes in the sovereignty of the people and their states, including their rights founded on and informed by faith.

Some thoughts for these people…

“Only those who maintain in their hearts a holy ‘fear of God’ can also put their trust in man and spend their lives building a more just and fraternal world. Today there is a need for believers with credibility, who are ready to spread in every area of society the Christian principles and ideals by which their action is inspired. This is holiness, the universal vocation of all the baptised, which motivates people to carry out their duty with fidelity and courage, looking not to their own selfish interests but to the common good, seeking God’s will at every moment”.

Politicians often refer to ‘the common good’ too, but not to discerning God’s will in finding it. That’s as true in America as it increasingly is in Europe.