European Referendum: final week

Many no doubt have already made up their minds or even voted by post. For those of us still struggling to discern the correct way to vote, there are my final suggestions:

1) Pray:

"Lord, grant us wisdom that we may walk with integrity, guarding the path of justice, and knowing the protection of your loving care for all". (From the English and Welsh bishops here. Apologies to the Scottish bishops if I've missed their equivalent advice! )

2) Reflect:

a) The advice from the English and Welsh bishops is simple. It is to ask yourself:

How in the light of the Gospel, can my vote best serve the common good?

The common good is defined by the Compendium of Social Doctrine as:

 The principle of the common good, to which every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”.[s.164 here]

b) Although a non-Catholic source, the advice from political scientists Paul Cairney and Andrew Glencross strikes me as being some of the most helpful I've seen on the actual process of decision (here).

c) The report of the Catholic Voices debate on the referendum provides a handy checklist of some of the issues Catholics ought to be thinking about (here).

Happy Europe Day!

Happy Europe Day!

I confess that I hadn't realised until now that 9 May was celebrated as Europe Day (details here) in honour of the Schuman Declaration of 1950 (here)  proposing what became the European Coal and Steel Community and eventually the European Union.

The declaration is relatively dull (text here). But since Europe Day is apparently sometimes known as Schuman Day, it's perhaps worth exploring Robert Schuman's role a little more deeply. (The Wikipedia biography of him is here.) A rather fuller account of Schuman's ideals in promoting the EU can be found in his Strasbourg 1949 speech here:

We are carrying out a great experiment, the fulfillment of the same recurrent dream that for ten centuries has revisited the peoples of Europe: creating between them an organization putting an end to war and guaranteeing an eternal peace. The Roman church of the Middle Ages failed finally in its attempts that were inspired by humane and human preoccupations. Another idea, that of a world empire constituted under the auspices of German emperors was less disinterested; it already relied on the unacceptable pretensions of a ‘Führertum’ (domination by dictatorship) whose 'charms' we have all experienced.

Audacious minds, such as Dante, Erasmus, Abbé de St-Pierre, Rousseau, Kant and Proudhon, had created in the abstract the framework for systems that were both ingenious and generous. The title of one of these systems became the synonym of all that is impractical: Utopia, itself a work of genius, written by Thomas More, the Chancellor of Henry VIII, King of England.
...
Today,  the commencement {of the Council of Europe} is characterized by a timorousness which many people will find disappointing. In this period while our States have not yet consented to renouncing any part of their sovereignty, and, when they make international decisions, they do not submit themselves willingly to each other as an engagement that they are fully observing their decisions, the debates of the Parliamentary Assembly {of the Council of Europe} can still have a moral and psychological effect. At least I hope so. They can influence the Governments and national Parliaments but they will create by themselves neither rights nor obligations.  We are still at the start of things. We would do well to bridle our impatience. If not, we are likely to make the doubters more distrustful and what is more serious, endanger not only the experiment but also the whole idea of a united Europe.

As is probably obvious from that extract, Schuman was a devout Catholic and much influenced by the social teaching of the Church. (An article on the Catholic background to the EU is here.) He mentions Dante as one of his inspirations in that Strasbourg speech and Dante's De Monarchia (putting aside its other concern of the relative ranking of Papacy and Emperor) also envisages the merits of international government:

Wherever strife is a possibility, in that place must be judgment; otherwise imperfection would exist without its perfecting agent. This could not be, for God and Nature are not wanting in necessary things. It is self-evident that between any two princes, neither of whom owes allegiance to the other, controversy may arise either by their own fault or by the fault of their subjects. For such, judgment is necessary. And inasmuch as one owing no allegiance to the other can recognize no authority in him (for an equal cannot control an equal), there must be a third prince with more ample jurisdiction, who may govern both within the circle of his right. This prince will be or will not be a Monarch. If he is, our purpose is fulfilled; if not, he will again have a coequal beyond the circle of his jurisdiction, and again a third prince will be required. And thus either the process will be carried to infinity, which is impossible, or that primal and highest judge will be reached, by whose judgments all disputes are settled mediately or immediately. And this judge will be Monarch, or Emperor. Monarchy is therefore indispensable to the world, and this truth the Philosopher saw when he said, “Things have no desire to be wrongly ordered; inasmuch as a multitude of Princedoms is wrong, let there be one Prince.”

(Chapter X, Book I. Full text here.)

Bearing in mind the coming referendum, the general lines of a powerful argument in favour of European integration under one government can be seen here. But what might be the arguments against it? It strikes me that there are two paths here. First, and in principle, you might reject the very idea of the benefits of international institutions. (This might take a strong form (denial of the benefits of any international institutionalised order) or a weak form (denial of the benefits of any form of government beyond the nation). Whatever the merits of such an approach, it is relatively difficult to reconcile with Cathiolic social teaching and I therefore put it aside, at least for now. Secondly, you might argue that, in fact, this particular institution of the EU has turned out to be a counterproductive form of institutionalisation.  Again, this might take two forms: a denial of the effectiveness of the institutions; or a denial of the more concrete forms that the general principles have been realised by in the current EU. Questions of the effectiveness of institutions are rather tricky to deal with in a blog, but the often heard criticism that the EU's regulations dampen economic development would be an example of that line of criticism. Having noted the possibility, I again put it aside for now.

This leaves us with the criticism that the EU as it has developed, has adopted concrete principles that are damaging either specifically to the UK or more generally to European countries. One example of this criticism is contained in the interview linked previously with Alan Fimister (here) :

However, its [ie the EU's] embracing of the culture of death would have appalled him. Schuman’s slightly more ambitious goals also led him to appreciate more vividly than Maritain the possible consequences of the corruption of his vision. “An anti-Christian democracy,” he said, “would be a caricature ending in anarchy or tyranny.”


Another criticism would be that the form of international government actually realised by the EU is antithetical to the principles of subsidiarity and nationhood envisaged by the Church:

The rights of nations are nothing but “‘human rights' fostered at the specific level of community life”. A nation has a “fundamental right to existence”, to “its own language and culture, through which a people expresses and promotes ... its fundamental spiritual ‘sovereignty”', to “shape its life according to its own traditions, excluding, of course, every abuse of basic human rights and in particular the oppression of minorities”, to “build its future by providing an appropriate education for the younger generation”. The international order requires a balance between particularity and universality, which all nations are called to bring about, for their primary duty is to live in a posture of peace, respect and solidarity with other nations.

[From section 157, Compendium of Social Doctrine here]

Finally, in view of the rather secularised environment we now inhabit, Schuman's reflections on Christianity and democracy make rather interesting reading:

This is where the Christian doctrine comes in. Democracy owes its existence to Christianity. It was born the day that man was called to realise in this temporary life, the dignity of each human person, in his individual liberty in the respect of the rights of each and by the practice of brotherly love to all. Never before Christ were such ideas formulated. Democracy is therefore bound to Christianity, doctrinally and chronologically. It took shape with it by stages and with periods of stumbling, sometimes at the price of errors and falling back into barbarism.
[Full piece here.]


[Image details: here]

The EU referendum: 'Why Catholics can't agree on Brexit...'

An interesting and balanced article from Dan Hitchens at the Catholic Herald:

Fimister speaks of a “culture of death – the general drift of all Western societies towards a weird, radically atomised individualism where you create your own identity”. This is so corrosive and demographically lethal that it cannot last – but it will cause “an enormous amount of damage in the meantime”.

How much this is the EU’s fault is an open question. But it is interesting to reflect that, when Catholics cast their votes on June 23, they will be giving their verdict on a project which, without Catholicism, might never have even begun.

Full article here.

The article captures well at least one aspect of the Brexit debate. One the one hand, the EU has a clear historical link with Catholic social teaching and a general consonance with the Catholic aim of international co-operation. On the other hand, some will argue that aspects of the EU, as it has developed since that foundation, are either directly at odds with that teaching, or at least at odds with the general well being of constituent nations and citizens. Father Lucie-Smith is surely right when he argues in an earlier article in the Catholic Herald (here):

Catholics believe in subsidiarity, solidarity and participation. That is not up for discussion. What is to be discussed is the best way of achieving this. It is surely arguable that we can best promote these goals from outside the EU as from within it. Again, what do we do when we find that there is an apparent contradiction between the goals? In other words, when we are in a political system that promotes solidarity at the expense of participation, and at the expense of subsidiarity?

(The lightly Eurosceptic tone which pervades the article is worth comparing with Father Lucie-Smith's earlier declaration that he would remain in the EU (here):

So why on earth vote to stay in? The answer is because I am a Catholic and, as such, an internationalist. The single greatest threat to world peace is nationalism. Serb nationalism and Russian nationalism between them have given us a series of wars in in Europe in the last two decades. 
 
Coupled with this is the threat of religious sectarianism, with which, Catholicism, properly understood, must always find itself at variance. The EU, defective as it is, does represent an attempt to overcome nationalism. The idea of Germany invading Poland would nowadays seem unthinkable. )


The basket of principles by which we will decide our vote are relatively clear, but the application of those principles to the present concrete case requires the virtue of practical wisdom, prudentia.

The European Referendum

With whatever enthusiasm (or lack of it) we face the coming EU referendum, it does raise important political issues that Catholics need to reflect on in the light of the principles of social teaching.

To kick off, a few interesting (albeit random)  resources I've come across:

1) A discussion of subsidiarity in Catholic social teaching and the EU. From the Reimagining Europe blog (here).

2) For the wearers of tin foil hats amongst us: 'Is the European Union a Catholic Plot' (From First Things here.)

3) 'Catholic origins of the European Union' (From Zenit, here.)

4) Address of St John Paul II to European Parliament 1988 (here) and Pope Francis 2014 (here).

5) The section of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church dealing with International Organizations here (sections 440-443).

No doubt I shall be returning to this...