What Europe should be
What Europe should be
European Unity is another step towards the united world. It is advancement and success, under the pressure of popular claims of the natural law, Christian revelation, and moral and spiritual forces to which we could add the economic, political, scientific and technological pressure gravitating towards unification: the finalism of reason and morale, and of life in time and eternity. For Clemente Alessandrino – heir of Hellenic wisdom – unity is the good, and producer of life; division is the evil, and generator of death.
For Huxley every real progress of civilisation is a progress in charity. And charity is the sentiment that leads to make all one. It is not surprising that it is the soul of Christ whose testament ends in the vow: «so that all may be one.» Charity leads to integration, communion, and solidarity also in politics and economy. And here among the essential forces pushing towards European integration, we want to illustrate precisely the forces of the spirit, leaving apart the illustration of the political, economic, and social aspects.
Igino Giordani, «Fides», May 1961 p.130
Christianity and Europe
Europe is full of grudges like a warehouse of explosives kept alive by philosophies, false patriotism, myths and egoistic interests. In order not to blow up, Europe needs to remove all these inflammable materials: it needs a universal reconciliation which liberates from the past and looks to the future.
Who can carry out this “ministry of reconciliation?”» Its Christianity: this reserve of sanctity which Europe still guards and communicates to other continents. And Christianity implies a unification of liberty and peace, with the elimination of wars and other reasons for friction.
Igino Giordani, «Fides», May 1961 p.131
The conscience of the Mystical Body in Europe
The contribution of religion in this sense is not really directed to the structuring of the institutes but indirectly to the formation of the spirits. It is not only the transmission of teachings and traditions, but is a particular start-up of the unitary conscience propagated like a spreading of circles, from the person which Redemption liberates, to sociality which charity suscitates, the family, municipality, nation, continent… and the world … The epilogue is unity, goal of Redemption, and the peak of history. In this sense today there are two great unifying movements:
– The growing sense of the Mystical Body;
– Ecumenism reborn among the Christian denominations.
While rectifying the currents and eliminating passions, from which the dissection of Europe came, two impulses stir up in a new way, the spiritual energies able to give a soul to this political union, thus imbuing the divine grace to this human operation to make the claim for unity popular and sacred.
Igino Giordani, «Fides», May 1961 p.131
The heart of Europe
Europe already has a heart: Christianity, its essence and genesis, though weighed down by the load of heretic ideologies (all the revolutionary ideas –Benedetto Croce said – come from the only real revolution which is Christianity). In this spiritual breath, also the material and human factors merge, and rise, enlivened by a universal ideal. So the peoples of Europe, in renovating this principle that constitutes their history, fusing them in the ideal flame of solidarity, the fruit of love – which is divine intelligence – will find their rationality in coexistence, urgency, necessity, and the solution for their problems. And this, in a decisive moment in which an internal war – that more than ever today appears irrational and fratricidal – could mark the definitive catastrophe. Love instead, putting the good and goods into circulation, will be able to mark the final salvation.
Igino Giordani, «Fides», May 1961 p.131
