December 2004

Religious and European: An Unacceptable Combination?

Michael Novak, Rocco Buttiglione, and Radek Sikorski

The European Parliament has used Rocco Buttiglione's religious views on homosexuality as justification for blocking him from joining the new European Commission. Several months earlier, European Union heads of state rejected language that would have acknowledged Europe's Christian roots in the draft European Constitution. Meanwhile, some European countries are toughening their policies on religious expression--this has been particularly noted in France, which has imposed a ban on headscarves in public schools. Are the words "religious" and "European" becoming antithetical? Is Europe enforcing a strict separation of church and state as an acknowledgement of its multicultural make-up, or is religion on its way to being all but publicly banned? On December 8, 2004, the NAI hosted a discussion with Rocco Buttiglione, Italy's renowned philosopher-turned-politician.    

Rocco Buttiglione
Italy's Minister for European Affairs

In a liberal democratic society, everyone has the right to commit sin. Having the freedom to sin also offers the freedom to be virtuous. This respect for freedom is a basic Christian concept. Christians believe that we are all sinners and all in need of God's mercy. Homosexuality may be a sin, but it is not a crime, and this is a basic distinction that must be made between the public and the private spheres. Likewise, the distinction between the political and moral must be made, but they are not to be mutually exclusive. They both belong to the public sphere of discourse.

Europe has been increasingly influenced by the ideas of the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, who presents a different view of democracy: the abolition of a hierarchy of values. Since values are inherently hierarchical in nature, the result is the destruction of all values. This philosophy suggests that men should not search for the truth because if they find it, they would begin making value judgments. This form of political correctness leads not only to a hostile separation of church and state, but to a new civil religion--one that has no respect for the freedoms of others. Ironically, the roots of this thinking can be traced back to the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau. In the book On the Social Contract, Rousseau wrote that an individual who begins to work for the state must fully alienate his personality from society.
 
Today, religious intolerance is gaining a strong footing in Europe. The European Parliament considers the Vatican to be the largest threat to human liberty, and it has passed about thirty resolutions against the Holy See--twice as many as against China, and more than three times as many as against Cuba. In Sweden a pastor has been sentenced to one year in prison for saying that homosexuality is a sin. And in France, a bill is being prepared that would make similar remarks punishable with up to four years in prison. The reference to Europe's Christian roots was not added to the draft European Constitution because influential politicians want to unify Europe based on the anticlericalism of the Third French Republic. They also do not want to recognize the Eastern European heritage. In that part of Europe, religion was crucial to the fight for freedom and the successful toppling of communism.   

Many Europeans consider anti-religiousness to be synonymous with modernity. Thus they cannot understand how the United States, which stands for modernity, can at the same time be religious. Their frustration with the American example gives hope to those in Europe who have not yet lost their faith.