Calling Europe back to its roots

Long before he was pope, Joseph Ratzinger was one of the leading voices of truth in the universal Church. Ever since his election, he has been actively urging European nations — which have blurred into a continental collection of communities — to uphold their historical and core values and reject relativism. Sandro Magister looks at yet another flap in Europe and the concern at the Vatican. It’s intruiging.

When in Verona on October 19, 2006, speaking to bishops, priests and laypeople of the Italian Church, Benedict XVI wagered on Italy as “fairly favorable terrain” for Christian renewal in Europe and the world, many shook their heads in disbelief.

And the lively battle that the pope and the bishops are waging against the legalization, in Italy, of de facto heterosexual and homosexual unions is also raising skeptical reactions.

The skeptics include some of the most prestigious Catholic intellectuals.

Hence, the intrigue. One of them told a leading Italian paper why he thinks the pope and the Church are wrong, and he concludes that the pope has…too much hope in Italy? He says the Italian church is not accepting “Europeanization.”

But is this really the case? Without a doubt, in other European countries the Catholic Church has mostly reacted weakly and without success to the laws on de facto unions, homosexual marriage, quick divorce, abortion, euthanasia, artificial insemination, the use of embryos.

So also it is beyond doubt that in Italy, the Church’s resistance has been much more effective in recent years. It should be enough to think of the victory in June of 2005 against the referendum that intended to liberalize heterologous fecundation and the killing of embryos. The Church proposed a boycott of the vote, and in effect three citizens out of four did not vote, annulling the referendum.

But there’s another more interesting fact. For some time, the Italian Church has no longer been a solitary exception among the Churches of Western Europe. Other bishops’ conferences look to it as a model, and imitate its actions. In Portugal, for example, the Church recently opposed forcefully a referendum for the complete liberalization of abortion: and the referendum, which was held last February 11, failed because of low voting participation.

The Barque of Peter is making a turn which, no matter how slow, is perceptible.

Pope Joseph Ratzinger’s wager on the “great service” that the Italian Church can render “to Europe and to the world” is bearing its first fruits.