The American professor Joseph Weiler has intervened in an Omnes Forum, exposing his vision on the spiritual crisis of Europe. Once again, our media has had the opportunity to invite a thinker distinguished with the Ratzinger Prize, awarded every year by the Foundation that bears the name of the Pope Emeritus: in this case, the 2022 Ratzinger Prize, which the Holy Father will present to him in December.
It will be recalled that St. John Paul II had pointed out the convenience of seeing Europe not as a geographical unit, but as a "a predominantly cultural and historical concept, which characterizes a reality born as a Continent also thanks to the binding force of Christianity". (Ecclesia in Europa, 108). And that Benedict XVI, in 2004, stated that Europejust at this hour of its maximum success". for having exported its political model, its economic system and its way of life to many places, "she seems to have emptied herself inside, paralyzed in a sense by a crisis of her circulatory system, a crisis that puts her life at risk, depending, as it were, on transplants, which however cannot eliminate her identity.".
The Omnes Forum did not require a detailed treatment of the subject, and Prof. Weiler only summarized the main features of this crisis. He noted that political principles based on democracy, the rule of law and human rights are still indispensable, but they need to recover a content of which they have been emptied, in a process simultaneous with the forgetting or denial of their Christian roots.
Joseph Weiler has denounced three concrete expressions of this emptying: first, the privatization of faith, which is relegated to the realm of the intimate; second, a conception of the neutrality of public institutions that is false, because it leaves room only for a secularist vision; and finally, an individualistic reduction of rights.
Since the analysis refers to a spiritual crisis, and not only an economic, political or geopolitical one, the proposal outlined by the Ratzinger Prize 2022 does not think first of a project to reform laws or institutions. Weiler defended the validity of values that are beyond the law, such as: personal responsibility; the ability to seek peace also through forgiveness and reconciliation (as the European countries did after the Second World War, when they began the process of European integration); charity (in which the Christian horizon is even more visible), generosity, personal initiative, etc.
It is easy to transfer these considerations beyond the European scope, thinking of any developed democratic society; or to aspects not explicitly mentioned by Weiler: for example, cultural and religious diversity, today the object of special attention, on which he focused. Silvio Ferrari in a recent interview in www.omnesmag.comThe fact that it is an enriching element if it does not add just another empty principle or an apology for leaving a part of the citizens on the sidelines.
