Article: Child-centred education

STRATFORD CALDECOTT

Insight into the true value of the child can be traced back to Christ, though it has to be said it remained mainly implicit during most of the succeeding centuries, and before the eighteenth century childhood was often considered merely a stage of weakness and immaturity to be got through as quickly as possible.

Accordingly, modern child-centered education tends to trace its origins back only to the Romantic movement, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778) in particular. Rousseau himself – not a great educator, but a considerable influence on educational thought through his novel Emile – believed in the natural goodness and value of the child, wanted education to be adapted to each new developmental stage, and placed great emphasis on the importance of the child's activity or active involvement in the process. We can trace his influence through several of the best-known educationalists of the succeeding centuries – though we can also see on all sides the bad fruits of an educational approach that centred itself so exclusively on the child that the tradition of Western civilization began to founder and be lost. Let us examine some representative figures, and what can be learned from them.

Friedrich Froebel

A century after Rousseau, Friedrich Froebel (d. 1852) is best known for the kindergarten, which was conceived as the centre of an interactive educational process based around the activity of the young child. For Froebel, the "game" is the typical form of life in childhood, and play is the key to education, capable of laying solid foundations for the adult personality. He once said that "Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul." Children in thekindergarten would typically learn through song, dance, gardening and the use of geometrical and other patterned blocks and toys – known as the Froebel "Gifts". These represent the basic building blocks of the universe and the symmetry of the child's own soul.

The Froebel Educational Institute lists the main elements of Froebel's approach as follows. Their influence on much modern educational practice is obvious.

1. Principles include

• recognition of the uniqueness of each child's capacity and potential
• an holistic view of each child's development
• recognition of the importance of play as a central integrating element in a child's
development and learning
• an ecological view of humankind in the natural world
• recognition of the integrity of childhood in its own right
• recognition of the child as part of a family and a community.

2. Pedagogy involves

• knowledgeable and appropriately qualified early childhood professionals
• skilled and informed observation of children, to support effective development, learning and
teaching
• awareness that education relates to all capabilities of each child: imaginative, creative,
symbolic, linguistic, mathematical, musical, aesthetic, scientific, physical, social,
moral, cultural and spiritual
• parents/carers and educators working in harmony and partnership
• first-hand experience, play, talk and reflection
• activities and experiences that have sense, purpose and meaning to the child, and involve
joy, wonder, concentration, unity and satisfaction
• holistic approach to learning which recognises children as active, feeling and thinking human
beings, seeing patterns and making connections
• encouragement rather than punishment
• individual and collaborative activity and play
• an approach to learning which develops children's autonomy and self confidence.

Don Bosco

Whereas Rousseau was a freethinker and Froebel from a Lutheran background, Don Bosco (d. 1888) was an Oratorian priest and became a Catholic saint. His approach was akin to theirs in some ways, and yet also rather different. Loving children very much, he was more concerned than Rousseau with their fragility and moral danger, and his educational philosophy was intended to produce "good Christians and honest citizens" – good citizens on earth in order to become good citizens in heaven. Nature and grace are not opposed, but interpenetrate for the sake of a final goal that could be called the supernatural fulfillment of the natural. Education must therefore serve the supernatural dignity and destiny of the child, allowing it to blossom in the social dimension.

Bosco rejected the repressive or preventive approach to education in favour of an approach based on friendship, appealing directly to the heart and to the innate desire for God ("reason, religion and loving-kindness" was one formulation, "cheerfulness, study, and piety" another). His pedagogy made use of music, theatre, comedy, walks and excursions – all in the tradition of St Philip Neri, the Oratory's founder. Though this approach is still "child-centred", it places a great responsibility on the person of the educator, since the young person is not expected to flourish naturally in this world without a relationship that offers personal attention and genuine love. But in this context, if such a relationship can be established, grace is able to flow and the development of reasonableness, imagination, empathy and conscience is much more secure. It is a kind of partnership.

Rudolf Steiner

Another great figure in child-centred education is Rudolf Steiner (d. 1925), the founder of a school of spiritual philosophy called Anthroposophy and the inspiration for around 1000 Waldorf Schools around the world. The schools began in 1919 when Steiner was invited to create one for the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory, based on the ideas in his 1909 book, The Education of the Child. Steiner believed in the need to educate with the spiritual as well as emotional, cultural and physical needs of children in mind, and believed that they progress through a series of developmental stages corresponding to the evolution of human consciousness itself. Abstract and conceptual thinking develops late, around the age of 14, and so the early years are more focused on art, the imagination and feeling. Subjects tend to be presented in a pictorial way, usually involving music, rhythm, routine and repetition (exposure to television and computers is minimized). The system relies on a strong relationship with a Class Teacher who normally stays with the same children from ages 7 till 14. Prior to that, the children attend a kindergarten where child-led play alternates with teacher-led activities in a carefully structured environment. The Upper School curriculum fosters independent thinking and is taught by specialist teachers.

Waldorf Schools are run collegially rather than by a Head Teacher, and assessment is by the teachers' observation of the children in their care rather than by formal examination. The children are helped to compile their own lesson books by hand in the Lower School, which prepares them for independent note-taking in the later phase. In general, this holistic approach seems to work – children are happy and sociable, and academic standards are often judged to be higher than in conventional mainstream schools.

Maria Montessori

The Italian doctor, Maria Montessori (d. 1952), developed her ideas around the same time as Steiner – by 1907, in fact, she thought she had discovered the true "normal" nature of the child by working with the disabled, and her work subsequently was to create an environment in which children (especially young children, up to the age of 6) could direct and pursue their own learning. The normalization of the child took place through a state of deep concentration, evoked by some task of the child's own choosing. The younger child has an immense capacity to absorb experiences and concepts which become foundations of the later personality, and a particular sensitivity to music, although abstract reasoning only develops later. The curriculum in a typical Montessori school or play-group is not pre-set, but consists in a series of challenges introduced by the teacher when the child seems ready for them.

Other examples of child-centred pedagogy might be mentioned, but the basic principle is clear. After observing children with loving attention, each of these educators came to certain conclusions about the nature of the child and the developmental stages that need to be taken into account. Each tried to devise an environment in which the child's natural question for beauty, goodness and truth might be pursued and facilitated. There are of course many differences in the exact delineation of the stages, but the rough pattern is similar in each case. The basis for a good education is a certain trust in the self-motivation of the child, combined with a reliance on the creativity, responsiveness and love of the teacher, who sets the terms for the learning environment and allows the child to flourish.

The Child I Used to Be

We all know there is a child still within us. That child has many aspects. It is ignorant, selfish, immature, confused. It may be desperately in need of love it has never received. But it is innocent and pure. I think it was in that sense that Georges Bernanos wrote, "What does my life matter? I just want it to be faithful, to the end, to the child I used to be."

Christianity has given a particular importance to childhood. It certainly transformed, over time, the way children were perceived in classical civilizations. From the statement of Christ, "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it" (Mk 10:15), it followed that there was something valuable and to be imitated in the state of childhood. Normally, throughout human history, children were told to grow up and become like adults, not the other way around. Childhood is an undeveloped stage, but in some ways it also represents a more perfect state, when we can see more completely what it is simply to be human. Until Mary Immaculate, no one had lived that human existence perfectly, but in her and in her newborn Child we see what it is to receive one's being straight from the hand of God and to show forth what it is to be loved and to love.

This is not to romanticize or idealize childhood, but to understand it in the light of a new fact: the Incarnation of the second person of the divine Trinity. God has a Son. We are made in God's image. The child from its first moment is the paradigm for the image of God, as well as a revelation of the meaning of being – its meaning as pure gift. This primordial meaning of the child is present even in fallen man, but clouded over and confused as time goes by and as the child grows.

The great educators have learned to appreciate the various stages of childhood and adolescence as the unfolding of human potential. Howard Gardner's theory of "multiple intelligences" was welcomed by many teachers (if not by most psychologists) because it seemed to confirm their experience of the multi-faceted nature of that potential, and gave them a vocabulary in which to discuss it. But intelligence, even in the plural, needs to be integrated within a broader theory of the human person as the manifestation of Being.

The first priority of the Catholic school must be to preserve and nurture the spirit of childhood in this sense – to preserve and help to restore (through the sacraments, especially the sacrament of confession and worthy reception of the Eucharist) the purity that alone enables us to "see God" (Matt. 5:8).

The child who has not yet sinned – or in the case of Mary and Jesus, the child who never sins – lives partly in eternity even while on earth; he has the fragrance of eternity around him. Purity is the reason childhood is so fascinating. To be pure is to be simple, in the sense of undivided. Impurity involves a loss of integrity, of integration; it is a dissonance, a crack in the mirror of the soul. (Every sin sets part of me against the rest.) The pure gaze of innocence is one that does not secretly look for what can be got out of something or someone. It sees things as they are in their own right. The energy behind the gaze is not diverted by a variety of passions. When a baby wants something, it wants that thing completely. Thus the child lives each moment more intensely than those who have grown old in sin. His eyes are clearer, his ears keener, his energy stronger. He lives in a wider universe, one that seems to go on forever, for he has not had the experience of many winters and summers, and of the flickering parade birthdays coming and going through the years. He has no yardstick against which to measure his life. This intensity of experience is partly a function of the way memory and imagination work. It is the memory of time that makes us old; remembering eternity makes us young again.

The first priority of the Catholic school must be to preserve and nurture the spirit of childhood in this sense – to preserve and help to restore (through the sacraments, especially the sacrament of confession and worthy reception of the Eucharist) the purity that alone enables us to "see God" (Matt. 5:8). The rules of morality are not there primarily for the sake of social order, tradition or convention; they exist for the sake of the order of the soul, its spiritual development and happiness. Yet an overly moralistic approach would be counter-productive. Not only can we not rely on rules and the policing of corridors for the preservation of purity and the development of conscience, these are not even the best way to begin. The soul needs love, as the positive force around which all its powers will congregate. It needs a degree of tenderness, if it is to flourish without fear. It needs attention, in the sense that others – the teacher especially – must listen to it and be receptive to what it has to offer, if it is to discover for itself what that is.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Stratford Caldecott, "Centering Education on the Child." Beauty for Truth's Sake blog (February, 2011).

This article is taken from a work in progress, a book specifically on the Trivium.

Reprinted with permission of Stratford Caldecott.

THE AUTHOR

Stratford Caldecott is the editor of Second Spring and of the forthcoming online reviewHumanum (for the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC). He is Director of the Centre for Faith & Culture in Oxford, England (for the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire). A Fellow of St. Benet's Hall, Oxford, he is the author most recently of Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education (2009), a book about the Liberal Arts and Christian cosmology. Stratford Caldecott is also the author of The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God, Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J.R.R.Tolkien, Catholic Social Teaching, The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind the Lord of the Rings, and Beyond the Prosaic: Renewing the Liturgical Movement. See his Beauty for Truth's Sake blog here.

Copyright © 2011 Stratford Caldecott

Article: Everything Proves It

DALE AHLQUIST

How do we know the Catholic faith is true? Because everything proves that it is true.

G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936

In Orthodoxy, his masterly defense of the Christian faith, G.K Chesterton writes: "It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it."

Chesterton's point is born out any time someone asks the question, "How do you know the Catholic faith is true?" We have a difficult time coming up with an easy answer. There are so many things we could say that suddenly we can think of nothing to say. None of the answers we could give appear to be sufficient by themselves, but when taken together, they make a case for the faith that is hard to dispute. Indeed, it is not that one thing proves it, it is that everything proves it.

And when we have our days of doubt, when we are confused by the incessant attacks and the personal disappointments, it is a good exercise to sit down and make a list of all the things that prove that the Catholic faith is true.

• The Church is the only consistent defender of morality and virtue. It defends marriage and the family. It defends children and babies and the unborn. It defends the poor. It defends peace and human dignity. It defends order and it also defends freedom. It defends the body and the mind and the soul.
  
  
• The Church is the only institution in history that has continually survived its own defeats. Chesterton even maintains that it has survived its own death. Several times in history the Church seemed to be done and destroyed. But it is still here. It has survived its own death, says Chesterton, "because it had a God who knew his way out of the grave."
  
  
• The history of Christianity is the history of the Catholic Church. The Church has not only carried the faith through history, it has carried the whole culture. The monasteries preserved the texts of the ancient world, keeping open our only windows to the past. When iconoclasts were smashing statues, Catholics preserved the art of sculpture. Catholic artists even brought sculpture inside paintings, giving them depth and dimension. They wrote music that we can still sing. The castles built in the medieval times are now museums or ruins. The Cathedrals built at the same time are still being used for their original purpose.
  
  
• All other Christian sects are a reaction against or a splitting off from the Catholic Church. They are always something less than the Catholic Church, never anything more. They lack something, whether it be a pope or a priest or a pronouncement. Whatever partial truth they cling to is something that they have received from the Catholic Church, whether it be the Bible or baptism or "bringing in the sheaves."
  
  

• Even the sins of the Catholic Church are evidence of its truth. Its failures only point to the great value of its precepts.

  History's greatest people, the saints, are Catholic. We too often forget how great they are. They have worked miracles, they have defied unbelievable odds, they have written monumental testimonies of truth, they have had exquisite visions, they have suffered unimaginable hardship with unexplainable joy, they have selflessly served their fellow human beings, caring for the sick and the dying and the outcast with astonishing charity. They have willingly died for their faith rather live without it. There may be outstanding individuals in history who did one thing well or lived notable and worthy lives: Buddha, Confucius, Spinoza, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and so on. But whoever you want to name, not one of them, not one of them, compares with the smallest saint, with St. Maria Goretti, with the Little Flower, with Don Bosco, with St. Francis de Sales, with Blessed Miriam Baouardy, with Mother Teresa. One saint is enough to prove the truth of the Church. But we have hundreds and hundreds, every one of them with an exemplary life worth contemplating and imitating.
  
  
• Even the sins of the Catholic Church are evidence of its truth. Its failures only point to the great value of its precepts. The world cannot abide the Church failing because the world unconsciously knows that the truth it proclaims must be upheld. Chesterton says that the sins of Christianity are one of the doctrines of Christianity. In other words, our sins point to one of our sacraments: confession. He says, "The Church is not justified when her children do not sin, but when they do."

The list goes on. We can always add to it. There is always another reason to believe the Church's teachings, always more evidence to support its truth. As Chesterton says, the Church "has endured for two thousand years; and the world within the Church has been more lucid, more levelheaded, more reasonable in its hopes, more healthy in its instincts, more humorous and cheerful in the face of fate and death, than all the world outside."

Everything proves it.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dale Ahlquist. "Everything Proves It." The Catholic Servant (2011).

Reprinted by permission of the author, Dale Ahlquist.

The Catholic Servant – a tool for evangelization, catechesis and apologetics – is published monthly and distributed free through parishes and paid subscriptions.

THE AUTHOR

Dale Ahlquist is the President of the American Chesterton Society and creator and host of the EWTN television series,"G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense." He is the author of Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton, G.K. Chesterton – The Apostle of Common Sense, and is the publisher of Gilbert Magazine, editor of The Annotated Lepanto, and associate editor of the Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton. He has written and lectured on Chesterton so much that he has not bothered getting a real job. He lives near Minneapolis with his wife and six children.

Copyright © 2011 Dale Ahlquist

Article: Christian Number-Crunching reveals impressive growth

GEORGE WEIGEL

The annual "Status of Global Mission" report is unfailingly interesting, sometimes jarring, and occasionally provocative. This year it's all three.

For 27 years, the International Bulletin of Missionary Research has published an annual "Status of Global Mission" report, which attempts to quantify the world Christian reality, comparing Christianity's circumstances to those of other faiths, and assaying how Christianity's various expressions are faring when measured against the recent (and not-so-recent) past. The report is unfailingly interesting, sometimes jarring, and occasionally provocative.

The provocation in the 2011 report involves martyrdom. For purposes of research, the report defines "martyrs" as "believers in Christ who have lost their lives, prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility." The report estimates that there were, on average, 270 new Christian martyrs every 24 hours over the past decade, such that "the number of martyrs [in the period 2000-2010] was approximately 1 million." Compare this to an estimated 34,000 Christian martyrs in 1900.

As for the interesting, try the aggregate numbers. According to the report, there will be, by mid-2011, 2,306,609,000 Christians of all kinds in the world, representing 33 percent of world population – a slight percentage rise from mid-2000 (32.7 percent), but a slight percentage drop since 1900 (34.5 percent). Of those 2.3 billion Christians, some 1.5 billion are regular church attenders, who worship in 5,171,000 congregations or "worship centers," up from 400,000 in 1900 and 3.5 million in 2000.

These 2.3 billion Christians can be divided into six "ecclesiastical megablocks": 1,160,880,000 Catholics; 426,450,000 Protestants; 271,316,000 Orthodox; 87,520,000 Anglicans; 378,281,000 "Independents" (i.e., those separated from or unaffiliated with historic denominational Christianity); and 35,539,000 "marginal Christians" (i.e., those professing off-brand Trinitarian theology, dubious Christology, or a supplementary written revelation beyond the Bible).

Compared to the world's 2.3 billion Christians, there are 1.6 billion Muslims, 951 million Hindus, 468 million Buddhists, 458 million Chinese folk-religionists, and 137 million atheists, whose numbers have actually dropped over the past decade, despite the caterwauling of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Co. One cluster of comparative growth statistics is striking: As of mid-2011, there will be an average of 80,000 new Christians per day (of whom 31,000 will be Catholics) and 79,000 new Muslims per day, but 300 fewer atheists every 24 hours.

Africa has been the most stunning area of Christian growth over the past century. There were 8.7 million African Christians in 1900 (primarily in Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa); there are 475 million African Christians today, and their numbers are projected to reach 670 million by 2025. Another astonishing growth spurt, measured typologically, has been among Pentecostals and charismatics: 981,000 in 1900; 612,472,000 in 2011, with an average of 37,000 new adherents every day – the fastest growth in two millennia of Christian history.

The report estimates that there were, on average, 270 new Christian martyrs every 24 hours over the past decade, such that "the number of martyrs [in the period 2000-2010] was approximately 1 million." Compare this to an estimated 34,000 Christian martyrs in 1900.

As for the quest for Christian unity: There were 1,600 Christian denominations in 1900; there were 18,800 in 1970; and there are 42,000 today.

Other impressive numbers: $545 billion is given to Christian causes annually, which comes out to $1.5 billion per day. There are some 600 million computers in Christian use, up from 1,000 in 1970. There will be 71,425,000 Bibles distributed this year, and some 2 billion people will tune in at least once a month to Christian radio or television. Seven point one million books about Christianity will be published this year, compared to 1.8 million in 1970.

The Big Lesson of the 2011 Status of Global Mission report can be borrowed from Mark Twain's famous crack about his alleged death: Reports of Christianity's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Christianity may be waning in western Europe, but it's on an impressive growth curve in other parts of the world, including that toughest of regions for Christian evangelism, Asia. Indeed, the continuing growth of Christianity as compared to the decline of atheism (in absolute numbers, and considering atheists as a percentage of total world population) suggests the possibility that the vitriolic character of the New Atheism – displayed in all its crudity prior to Pope Benedict's September 2010 visit to Great Britain – may have something to do with the shrewder atheists' fear that they're losing, and the clock is running.

That's something you're unlikely to hear reported in the mainstream media. The numbers are there, however, and the numbers are suggestive.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

George Weigel. "Christian Number-Crunching." The Catholic Difference (February 9, 2011).

Reprinted with permission of George Weigel.

George Weigel's column is distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3123.

THE AUTHOR

George Weigel, a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Roman Catholic theologian and one of America's leading commentators on issues of religion and public life. Weigel is the author or editor of The End and the Beginning: John Paul II – The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy,Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action, God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God,Letters to a Young Catholic: The Art of Mentoring, The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, and The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explore.

George Weigel's major study of the life, thought, and action of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (Harper Collins, 1999) was published to international acclaim in 1999, and translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Czech, Slovenian, Russian, and German. The 2001 documentary film based on the book won numerous prizes. George Weigel is a consultant on Vatican affairs for NBC News, and his weekly column, "The Catholic Difference," is syndicated to more than fifty newspapers around the United States.

Copyright © 2011 George Weigel

Article: Christianity – Alien Presence or Foundation of the West?

CHRISTOPH CARDINAL SCHONBORN

I see the situation of Christianity in Europe to be rather exciting and full of opportunity. A foreign body in Europe and also a root: that is the exciting position of Christianity in secular Europe.

Christopher Cardinal Schönborn

In the last two decades the European Union, with its 27 member states, has grown to be a global power which is able to keep pace with the great world powers. At the same time, trends questioning the Christian foundation of Europe, and aggressively opposing it, are becoming stronger in several countries and in the European political arena in general.

If you are to follow my thoughts about Christianity and the West, I will have to call on that openness to the world for which your American tradition is so well known. I will concentrate my comments on Europe, as anything that happens on this continent will impact the United States sooner or later and is thus relevant to carefully observe. My thoughts are more precisely formulated in this question: "is Christianity an alien presence or the foundation of the Europe?" My answer will be that it is both!

On the one hand, Christianity is one of Europe's roots and, to a considerable degree, Europe's future in the world depends on it remaining conscious of that fact. Knowledge of this is decreasing – and alarmingly so.

On the other hand, Christianity is for many a foreign element in a world determined by reason, Enlightenment and democratic principles. My thesis is that this Europe, and the Western world as a whole, will not survive without the foreignness Christianity brings. In other words: Europe can only play its role in the concert of world cultures when it retains Christianity, this foreign body, as a part of its identity.

However, isn't Europe already on the way towards taking its leave of the concert of world cultures? Demographically, for instance. And does this not also have something to do with the fact that Europe has become the least religious continent in the world? Here I would like to quote two Jewish perspectives on the subject.

Jonathan Sacks, the British Chief Rabbi, believes that a culture of "consumerism and its instant gratification" of material desires is responsible for the falling birth rate in Europe. "Europe is dying" Sacks said, according to media reports of a speech held at the beginning of November in London (during the 2009 Annual Theos Lecture given in London last November), because its population is too selfish to raise enough children. "We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change, and no one is talking about it."

The highest representative of Judaism in Great Britain described Europe as the most secular region of the world. At the same time it is the only continent experiencing population decline. The Chief Rabbi sees a clear correlation between religious practice and the high regard given to family life. "Wherever you turn today, anywhere in the world, and whether you look at the Jewish or Christian or Muslim communities, you will find the more religious the community, the larger, on average, are its families"

To be a parent involves "a great sacrifice" of money, attention, time and emotional energy, Sacks said and asked "Where today, in European cultures ... will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet born?" The Chief Rabbi compares the development of Europe to the decline of Ancient Greece with its "sceptics and cynics".

Sacks goes on to say that religious belief is fundamental to the cohesion of society: "God is back" he asserts, "and Europe on the whole still doesn't get it." That, he says, is its "biggest single collective cultural and intellectual blind spot".

A second Jewish observation is provided by Joseph Weiler, Professor of European Law at New York University who is himself an Orthodox Jew. In a sensational book[1] he questioned why it is that Europeans are so afraid to acknowledge the evidence that Europe has Christian roots. He spoke of a European "Christophobia". He also sees a correlation between this loss of memory and the demographic development of Europe.

A third spotlight: In October 2007, the Presidents of the European Roman Catholic Bishops' Conferences met for their yearly plenary meeting in Fatima, the Marian place of pilgrimage in Portugal. The theme was on the family in Europe. One of us came straight to the point with what seemed to him, and to many of us, to be a dramatic situation. Could there come a time in the near future when the greater part of European society says to Christians: You are a foreign body amongst us? Your values are not ours. European values are not the same as Christian values. You do not belong to us!

And if that were so? If this came to be? Would that be so surprising? Didn't Judaism feel this sense of foreignness in relation to the ancient kingdoms of the Orient and later on to Christianity? Isn't this foreignness also found at the core of Christianity? "Do not be conformed to this world" (Rom 12.2) the Apostle Paul admonishes the church in Rome. At the Last Supper Jesus said "If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you" (John 15.18). "Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul." (1 Peter 2.11) said the Apostle Peter.

They feel like foreigners in this world, despised and rejected. But they accept this foreignness: "Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil 3.20) says Paul. At the same time they long for the city that is to come (cf. Heb 13.14), the heavenly Jerusalem (cf. Rev 21.10).

These "foreigners" are anything but a sect that cuts itself off from the world. They want to give shape to the world and change relationships by changing people. They call this conversion "metanoia" and for "foreigners" they are very committed to building a more humane society.

How does that look now? Is it this strange mixture of hope in the life-to-come and commitment to the here and now that has given Europe its specific character? Or does Europe begin to find its identity only when it has liberated itself from the paradox of Christianity and from being dependent on the churches.

How does this relate to Europe's Christian roots? The attempt to acknowledge the Christian tradition as an important element of European identity in the preamble to the European Union's constitution failed. The arguments that were given during the discussion about the now-famous preamble were: Europe has become multi-religious and this must be reflected in its constitution. And: This democratic culture founded on reason and Enlightenment had to be won in a bitter struggle against Christianity. Both arguments are well-founded. However, I believe the conclusions drawn from them to be false. This is because their view of the role of Christianity in Europe's history is too one-sided, seen through the lens of certain prejudices and these arguments do not take account of developments within Christianity itself.

The framework within which we can debate our topic is somewhat limited. It seems to me that to do justice to the topic we need to roughly outline the most important historical stages of Christianity and Europe. I am aware that this is an almost impossible task. Any serious historian would advise against it. Even so, I will try, because if we do not take time to reflect on our history our deliberations concerning the present are groundless and without foundation.

So let me attempt to say something about the development of Christianity and Europe by giving examples from the major historical epochs. I will limit myself to the three great periods of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modernity. Even so it can only be an outline, an example of the most formative events.

1. Christianity – A Foreign Body in Antiquity?

"Christianity emerged in a world which is kept at peace, and at the same time, kept in chains during the Pax Romana. In the first centuries of its expansion, it encounters a universal political religion: the cult of the Emperor"[2]. Roman culture had no problem with the integration of foreign religions and these religions had no trouble integrating into the cult of the Emperor.

With one exception: Judaism and, in its wake, Christianity. Soldiers returning from their campaigns brought new cults with them, slaves and freedmen belonged to others. All found their place in the Roman pantheon. Only the Jews and the Christians refused to become one religion among others in the pagan pantheon.

As a result of this they were severely criticized for being hostile to society. Their claim to be the vera religio was seen as arrogant. Both religions were accused of fostering an "odium humani generis", a hatred of the rest of humanity.

There is a paradox in claiming to be the vera religio and at the same time claiming to represent the vera philosophia comprehensible to all rational people. An example of this is the Roman philosopher Justin (who wrote and spoke Greek). In his fascinating dialogue with the Rabbi Tryphon (from around 150) he describes his path to Christian belief. After trying out a good many of the fashionable philosophical schools competing at that time, he was not satisfied with any of them. While walking by the sea, he meets an old man who proclaims another philosophy, the centre of which is Christ. This philosophy captivated him. In it he recognized the true philosophy he had been looking for. Christianity – the true philosophy. Right from the start it is claimed that in the particular revelation through the prophets and Jesus Christ the truth has been revealed, universally valid and accessible through reason (or at least not in contradiction to reason).

The opposition is strong. It will manifest itself politically in great persecutions. Again, martyrdom is seen to confirm that Christianity is the vera religio, the vera philosophia worth dying for. "Sanguis martyrum semen christianorum" says Tertullian (the blood of the martyrs is the seed for new Christians). Given the fact of these great persecutions and hostility expressed in writings, the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the known world and its development into the state religion of the Roman Empire is a miracle. If the word "miracle" is too strong, then at least one must speak of it as being a development that is difficult to explain.

And so we come to the question: How did Christianity, this foreign body, become the root of Europe? This change is often illustrated by means of a scene from the life of the Apostle Paul. It is found in the 16th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. During his second missionary journey Paul finds himself in Troas in Asia Minor. "During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' When he had seen the vision," wrote Luke, who was accompanying Paul "we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them." (Acts 16.9-10)

And so it was that the Gospel first came to Europe via Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth and finally to Rome where Paul, like Peter, died for his faith.

What was it that came to Europe? A foreign import? An aid? Something that allowed Europe to become what it is? Or something from which Europe had to emancipate itself after a long process of Enlightenment, something it must continue to do today in order to free itself from foreign authorities?

Now that this "emancipation" is about to become a reality, concerned voices are raised that warn of the consequences of a de-Christianization of Europe. Upon closer examination we can find many examples of the fruits of these Christian roots.

I will mention three elements specifically:

1. Man is created in the image of God. That is what the bible speaks of in its opening chapters. The meaning of this can never be underestimated and, hopefully, it deserves to be seen as a "European" value today and in the future. The notion that man is created in the image of God is the basis of human dignity, the guarantee that it is unconditional and universal. It is a necessary precondition for the impossibility of this dignity ever being taken away: neither by wrongdoing nor disability, neither by religious nor by or cultural, ethnic or gender differences. Man is always "in God's image, according to His likeness" and this can never be taken away.
   
   I do not need to explain to you how much this view, indebted to this JudeoChristian biblical inheritance, is under threat today. It was already a strange concept at the birth of Christianity. In the culture of the Roman Empire, Jesus' teaching and practice of seeing the poor, the sick and suffering, as well as sinners, as especially beloved by God and worthy of his compassion was seen to be a shocking foreign element, not to mention this new understanding of the dignity of all mankind. Jacob Burckhardt describes this contrast in his book "The History of Greek Culture": A deformed person is not just a misfortune for the family, as it is today, but it is a horror, which requires appeasement of the gods, for the entire city, for the nation. These people were not to be raised... According to Plato even sickly people were not to live and were in any case not to leave behind any offspring."[3] Not to mention "other means of limiting the population such as abortion, the annulment of slave marriages which in itself led to the slaughter of a great number of children, the killing of children of the poor ..."[4] – Enough of the horrors of the ancient world, which provide such a distressing parallel to today's practices of eugenics, euthanasia and abortion.
   
   This was the one thing that Christianity could offer in opposition to the allpowerful mainstream of the pagan world: an alternative practice. In an early Christian document, the so-called "Letter to Diognetus", this Christian "alternative society" is illustrated beautifully:
   
   "For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of men either by country or by language or by customs. For they dwell not somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor do they lead an extraordinary kind of life.
   
   But while they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians as the lot of each is cast, and follow the native customs in dress and food and the other arrangements of life, yet the constitution of their own citizenship, which they set forth, is marvellous, and confessedly contradicts expectation.
   
   They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners; they bear their share in all things as citizens, and they endure all hardships as strangers. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is foreign.
   
   They marry like all other men and they beget children; but they do not cast away their offspring. They have their meals in common, but not their wives."[5] In brief, the Christians do not belong to a sect which hides itself away, but they offer an alternative which commends itself through its authenticity. At the European Bishop's Synod in 2000 Cardinal Walter Kasper said: "In the future, Christians will be recognized by what they don't do."
   
   
   
2. It is essential to name another legacy: The idea that there is one Creator and we are created in His image is at one with the belief in the unity of the human race. Humanity is truly one family. All people are, without exception, members of one human family. The reaction of the Roman philosopher Celsus (who also wrote in Greek) illustrates just how extraordinary this concept was in the ancient world. In his polemic against Christianity, he is said to have considered the suggestion that mankind is one to be "the language of rebellion". Greeks and Barbarians on one level? The mere idea was outrageous to him. It would have been unthinkable for him to agree with Paul's statement: "(you) have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all" (Col 3.10f). Max Horkheimer considered this belief in the unity of all mankind to be one of the most important contributions made by the JudeoChristian tradition.
   
   Will it again become a foreign body in Europe? The horrific history of racial ideology in the 19th and 20th centuries would suggest so. Has it been completely overcome? New xenophobic movements give us cause for concern, however understandable the fear arising out of excessive immigration may be.
   
   Pope Pius XII, who is often criticized because of his controversial stance during the Second World War, made a clear statement against this racial ideology in his less well-known Encyclical of October 1939, principally referring to the argument that the human race is one.
   
   "A marvellous vision, which makes us see the human race in the unity of one common origin in God ... (Eph 4. 6); in the unity of nature which in every man is equally composed of material body and spiritual, immortal soul; in the unity of the immediate end and mission in the world; in the unity of dwelling place, the earth, of whose resources all men can by natural right avail themselves, to sustain and develop life; in the unity of the supernatural end, God Himself, to Whom all should tend; in the unity of means to secure that end ... in the unity of its ransom, effected for all by Christ."[6]
   
   "This 'law of human solidarity and love' (Pius XII) assures us, that for all the rich diversity of persons, cultures and peoples, all men are indeed brothers and sisters." (Catechism of the Catholic Church 361). Is this "law of human solidarity and love" that Christianity implanted in Europe as an ideal and mission really to become a foreign body yet again?
   
   
   
3. Because man is made in the image of God, he possesses the gift that makes him most like God, namely, the gift of freedom. In comparison to the pagan gods who, like humans, were subject to the rule of fate, the Biblical idea of man brought freedom. If a man is to respond with love, a god who wants man to love him "with his whole heart" cannot want to force him to do so. This is the most profound root of religious freedom.
   
   The most powerful "invention" of the religion of the Bible is freedom: the ability God gives to man to decide for himself. Only a person who answers of his own free will can truly love God. Love banishes coercion. "Man cannot believe unless he wishes to" (Credere non potest nisi volens), says Augustine[7]. Despite the violations of this very teaching throughout Christian history, it still remains the basic principle for the rights of freedom that have made Europe great. Paradoxically, this view of freedom has been repeatedly questioned since the Renaissance. Deterministic modes of thought, the contesting of freedom through certain trends in brain research, and also certain currents in philosophy and psychology that question man's real freedom, are an astonishing reminder of the fatalistic views held by those powers that ruled Europe when Christianity arrived in the first century. Will we lose this freedom if we lose its Christian roots?

At this point, I suspect there will be massive protests: Didn't modern man have to win his freedom through a long and laborious struggle against Christianity? Isn't what was once the strength of Europe's Christian roots, not rather a dogmatic and moral barrier to freedom?

We must turn to this question in the second and third part of this text when we look at the Middle Ages and Modernity.

2. The Middle Ages – Europe's "dark" age?

So far I have taken three elements to illustrate what new things were brought to Europe by Christianity: the idea that man is made in the image of God, the idea that the human family is one and the idea that we have been given the gift of freedom. I could also name many others such as our understanding of time as being linear and not cyclical, that is the birth of history; an understanding

of work as illustrated by the dictum ora et labora summing up the Rule of St. Benedict, not in terms of slavish compulsion but as man's fulfilment and his participation in the work of the Creator[8].

But the problem is not with what we perceive of as the ideal of apostolic and early Christianity but "Christendom" in the form it assumed after the conversion of Constantine, above all with its establishment as the state religion by Emperor Theodosius in the year 380. It is precisely this Christianity which is the problem, with its enormous might and power, its cathedrals and monasteries and convents as well as its crusades and persecutions of heretics. In short: these are the "dark" middle ages from which we were saved by the brightness of the Enlightenment (and before that, by the Reformation). This image of a dark Christianity has a firm place in the canon of "justifiable prejudices" and comes up again and again when in present-day discussions it is claimed that "the Church" wants to take Europe back "into the darkness of the Middle Ages", with the Pope and the Catholic Church naturally being given top "ranking" on the Richter scale of reaction and general regressiveness.

But enough of the irony, let's come to the point. There has always been a great fascination with early, pre-Constantine Christianity. All, or let us say more carefully, many of the numerous renewal or reformation movements known in Europe have taken their bearings from this time when the Christian faith found its way into the hearts of the people without weapons, and without the protection and laws of the Emperor and state. We will return to this in our conclusions (you must still wait patiently for this).

Now, however, we will look at the 1000 years of "Christianity" between the conversion of Constantine and the beginning of the modern era. But a word in advance: After what has arguably been the darkest of all centuries in human history – the poet Ossip Mandelstam, a Russian Jew who was one of the millions of victims of the Soviet terror, called the 20th century the "century of the wolves" – those who continue to call the Middle Ages "dark" need to be told: "Study History".

In a certain way this new era of the "Middles Ages" begins with the Emperor's conversion to Christianity. Was it not justifiable for the persecuted Christians to have dreamt of this event? What would happen if the Emperor one day became a Christian? The freedom of the Church would be secure. They would be protected from persecution and they could develop freely. The dream was quickly over. What position would a Christian Emperor have? Does he rule over the church? The Apostle's words before the council in Jerusalem holds true for a Christian Emperor as well: "We must obey God rather than any human authority" (Acts 5.29). St. Ambrose of Milan opposed the newly converted Emperor with words which could be said to represent the charter of "The Freedom of the Western Church" (which is the title of a book by Hugo Rahner, 1943, written during the terror of National Socialism): "The emperor is in the church, he is not above the church. A good Emperor seeks to encourage the church not to fight against it. As humbly as we say this, we hold to it and are unshaken, even when we are threatened by the stake, the sword and exile. We servants of Christ have forgotten how to fear[9]."

With this the debate is started. This debate will shape the life of the western world for over 1000 years, unlike the eastern half of Europe – however more about this shortly: The process in which the imperium and sacerdotium, worked with one another and fought against one another, culminating in the dispute over the respective roles of the Pope and the Emperor.

Two Popes stand symbolically and effectively for the development that made the Christian West possible, but also led it into its deepest crisis. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) was greatly affected by the fall of Rome as he was a member of the upper aristocracy. He saw that the Rome of the East could only be expected to press its claims to dominate the Western Roman Empire but not to help it. That is why the Church itself began to take over the role of guardian and governor in the Western Roman Empire. Pope Gregory went as far as using symbolic language in an attempt to claim power for the Bishop of the Roman Church as Pontifex Maximus and to claim Rome as the caput mundi of a Christian Western Roman Empire. Although he only succeeded symbolically, it gave the Romans a new self-confidence and the Church a new purpose.

Two hundred years later his successor Leo III made a momentous decision. He asked the Franks for help and crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne Roman Emperor in 800 AD. The Byzantine Emperor felt this to be a serious betrayal of the unity of Christianity and the Empire. To this day the two "lungs" of Christianity, the eastern and the western, suffer from this mutual estrangement which continued to deepen until the final split in 1054. For Western Europe the Emperor's coronation was a crucial step in the development of its own "Western Christianity".

The consequences of this decision are well known: On the one hand, with the development of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation a high culture defined by Christianity emerged over the course of the centuries, the Latin Middle Ages. On the other hand, an equally lengthy conflict developed over who was to be the head of the empire: The Emperor, who was supposed to rule by divine commission, or the Pope as Pontifex Maximus, Christ's representative, who crowned the Emperor in the first place?

We know how the conflict ended: with the victory of the Sacerdotiums over the Imperium. However it was a pyrrhic victory. The belief that the Pope alone could manage to rule over all nations in Europe proved to be an illusion. The European kings and princes battled vigorously to create independent nations and obtain supremacy. They proved to be stronger. After many wars the medieval church state became a Sacerdotium with no importance/influence among the European powers. The only power the Pope held was in his role as spiritual, moral representative of a universal religion. The struggle over the sovereignty of the Empire, and then the "Church State" in competition with the worldly powers, weakened the Pope's spiritual importance more than it strengthened it.

The result of this was a deep-seated on-going crisis beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing into the Reformation, leading to the division of the western church, the religious wars, and finally culminating in Enlightenment and secularisation.

A lesson can be learned from this history. It is a mistake to believe that one religion, one denomination, can be strengthened by uniting itself with state and political power. Certainly religion needs the protection of the state (just as the state also needs the strength of religion) however it doesn't do religion any good if it were to be identical, so to speak, to state structures and political institutions. The distinction is necessary and it is good for both of them. That is the lesson of the long history of Christianity. It has always flourished best when it has not striven to do the same thing as the state but has demonstrated the inspirational, formative power of authentic belief.

Therefore, in this rapid overview of the Middle Ages it cannot be only about the conflictsacerdotium – imperium but above all it must be about those sources of strength of Christian life which made the West what it is. Before all else we must mention the religious orders and monasteries. One cannot overestimate their impact. Without the Irish monks there would have been no Christian mission. Knowledge of antiquity, pre-Christian as well as Christian, would have been lost. Monasteries were centres of science and learning. They fought for the purity of the faith. They cultivated the land, developed agriculture and the arts and crafts. They recorded and preserved history and they built communication networks throughout Europe.

Of course, there were periods of weakness and decadence. However, new waves of renewal emerged with unbelievable vitality. I can only name a few here. The first of which is the Cluniac Reform. Exactly 1,100 years ago, in the year 910, reform of the monasteries began in Cluny in France. Two hundred years later there were 1,200 monasteries spread across Europe living according to principles of this reform. There was a great energy in the social, economic, artistic and, of course, the spiritual realms. Pope Benedict XVI has said that through Cluny "a spiritual Europe began to emerge in the various regions of France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Hungary".

As Cluny began to show signs of decline, the next great wave of renewal followed with Bernhard of Clairvaux in the 12th century. In a very short time the Cistercians set up a close network of inter-communicating monasteries. As cities started to blossom in the 13th century yet another dynamic religious movement appeared: Francis and the Poverty Movement.

Has enough consideration been given to the freedom made possible by these renewal movements and how much Europe has been influenced by this? From its inception, Christianity allowed one to "step outside the temporal socio-political order". The idea that "man must listen to God more than man" brought an element of personal freedom to those wishing to oppose the pressures of society. One of the most impressive examples is that of the young Francesco Bernadone in Assisi in 1207 when he decided to forsake his father and the temporal authorities in order to listen to God alone. He gave his clothes back to his father so that he could walk naked with the naked Christ. Throughout the centuries, this freedom to follow a radical Christian life has set free great creative energy. Here we find one of the sources of Europe's inner vitality even in secular Europe, this radical way of following Christ continues to exert an effect. To be clear about my conclusions: I am convinced that in this lies one of the greatest potentials for hope in Europe. Just as the great renewal movements in Christianity blossomed in the Middle Ages and were energized, so too it has been in recent history and it continues to be so the present day. The Church (I am referring here to the Catholic Church but it is also true in other Christian churches) often has an undreamt of capacity for renewal. Why should we not have the kind of surprises ahead of us that the Poverello of Assisi triggered off 800 years ago?

3. Modernity: the Other View of Europe

Those who do not see Europe's roots in our early Christian heritage and its development in the Middle Ages, as I do, must undoubtedly find these roots with the Reformers and the Enlightenment, that is, in opposition to the Catholic Church. Modern Europe is, above all, a "child" of the Enlightenment which often articulated and fought for the implementation of its values and perspectives in opposition to the Church and against Christendom as a whole. Again and again the objection is made that the European view of human rights does not have its roots in Christianity but in a determined resistance to it, and in particular to the Catholic Church.

Exiting a Dead End Road: A GPS for Christians in Public Discourse

One thing is certain: the religious split of the 16th century shook western European society profoundly. We can hardly imagine the traumas that people went through on account of the division between the "new" and "old" beliefs. The resulting religious wars have been called the "hermeneutic civil wars" because the warring factions used different interpretations of the same Bible to legitimise their actions.

One of the most horrific outcomes of the religious wars was the "territorialisation" of the religious confessions: Cuius regio eius religio. One's place of residence came to determine one's religious denomination. Even today European politics suffers from the consequences of this principle: religious denominations functioning as the source of national identity whether in countries with an Orthodox majority or in the tragic conflict in Northern Ireland. In my opinion the catastrophic concept of "ethnic cleansing" as found in the Balkans is a consequence of this destructive principle. The expulsion of the German and Hungarian-speaking population of Czechoslovakia was a blatant example of this. The Balkan wars that took place in the 1990's is another instance. Given that the Habsburg "empire of many peoples" was an alternative and entirely contrasting model, it is no wonder that it was destroyed, though it actually anticipated today's goal of integration as hardly any other European phenomenon has ever done.

The religious wars had a second outcome: people had had enough of theological conflicts. They looked for a basis upon which to build a state free from theology and denomination. Thinkers such as Hobbes or Spinoza believed that this basis was to be found in mathematicalscientific thought. There are no heretics in physics or mathematics. Here was the basis on which law, ethics and metaphysics could be agreed upon, independent of a faith perspective. The incredible success of mathematical-scientific thought appears to prove that religion is reactionary and the scientific world view is progressive. Worse still, the religious wars appear to confirm that religions set people against each other and that Enlightenment sets them free.

If we try to dig deeper, the question of religion leads on to the question of the very question of God. It is finally addressed when we look at the crisis in Europe since the Reformation. The philosopher Odo Marquard speaks of "putting God before the tribunal": God himself is indicted. The old question of reconciling God's goodness with the presence of evil comes up again and in strong terms: Unde malum? Where does evil come from? The scientific world cannot answer this question. Their attempted answer was a belief in progress. At a single blow all evil would be eliminated, sickness would be overcome by medicine, injustices by economic advancements. Religion was replaced by belief in progress.

However, there are two problems. Firstly, future advances will not help me today. I will already be dead and the injustice and suffering that has already happened will not be taken away. Secondly, there is justifiable doubt about unlimited progress, because it doesn't exist. The expectations of salvation fostered by Marxism and other forms of belief in progress were not fulfilled. They could not be fulfilled because we are only guests on this earth. Our pilgrimage on earth is limited by time and resource. The question is sobering: Was that really everything?

In conclusion: Christianity – Root and Foreign Body

Christianity's place in Europe is paradoxical. It appears to be marginalized to a large extent. The churches are still there, albeit amongst the "also rans". But they have hardly any weight or influence. Nevertheless, I do not see them as "obsolete" in a Europe with ample spiritual resources.

In many respects it is like being back again at the beginning of Christianity. In a world that is religiously and culturally pluralistic, in a largely "pagan" world in which the Christian way of life practiced over centuries has been forgotten, where astrology, abortion, superstition and anxiety are dominant. Although Christians are a substantial majority in Europe, practising Christians are in the minority.

I see the situation of Christianity in Europe to be rather exciting and full of opportunity. It is in many respects a foreign body – yet it still evokes a feeling of home in many. Europe has a constantly increasing number of people who after living a fully secular lifestyle find their way to a conscious faith. They often describe the journey as a homecoming.

Herein lies the distinctive and unmistakable strength of Christianity: it confers a dual-citizenship, at once earthly and heavenly. It invites one to a loyal participation in society, taking on responsibility for the civitas terrena without wanting to overthrow it in order to create some utopian society. This quiet engagement with the temporal is founded on the fact of a parallel citizenship in the civitas Dei. This claim to be not only a citizen of the earthly civitas has aroused hatred of the church by totalitarian thinkers and dictators. The Christian is free with respect to the state because he is never only a citizen of the state. Never before has this "Christian freedom" been more clearly expressed than when the "confessing Christians", in the freedom of their faith, defied the totalitarian grasp of the state. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a shining example of this freedom and likewise the simple Upper Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter, to name but two.

This ferment of freedom is what Christianity has to offer Europe, as a freedom from the demands of the mainstream, from political correctness, or simply from the pressure of the latest fashions.

This freedom has a deeper source, an inexhaustible resource. We spoke at the beginning about the amazing phenomenon of the rapid spread of Christianity in its infancy. Among the many reasons for this, I see one in particular: this expansion has to do with the One who gave the church a clear mission and this promise, "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of time." (Matt 28.20). This saying of Jesus Christ is Christianity's most powerful resource and it continues to be so in the most surprising ways. This explains the inexhaustible power of regeneration in Christianity. So often declared as dead, it again and again experiences its resurrection in the power of the One who rose again.

A foreign body in Europe and also a root: that is the exciting position of Christianity in secular Europe. Europe is often critical of Christianity and that is good. Europe may need the healthy restlessness of the Gospel's prophetic voice, but Christianity also needs the voice of Europe asking critical questions in return. This does Christianity good. It wakes it up and challenges it. It questions Christianity's credibility. And why? Because I believe, deep down Europe longs for an authentic Christianity. In our hearts we Europeans, whether secular or religious, know that the root that will sustain Europe in the future is this: a credible Christianity that is true to its roots, however strange and foreign such a Christianity may at times appear to us.

Endnotes:

1. Joseph H.H. Weiler, Ein christliches Europa. Erkundungsgänge, Regensburg 2004, pg 71ff.
   
2. Hans Maier, Welt ohne Christentum – was wäre anders? Herder/Spectrum 1999, pg. 108.
   
3. Kröner-Ausgabe Vol III,7.
   
4. Quoted from Hans Maier, op. cit., pg 15.
   
5. The Letter to Diognetus. B.B. Lightfoot, Furman University (c) 1990
   
6. Pius XII. Enc. "Summi Pointificatus" KKK 360
   
7. Augustine, Tract.in Io.Ev.26,2
   
8. cf. Hans Maier,op.cit 9 Sermo contra Auxentium 36; PL16, 1018 B: Hugo Rahner, op. cit., p 10

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. "Christianity – Alien Presence or Foundation of the West?" a chapter in Exiting a Dead End Road: A GPS for Christians in Public Discourse (Vienna, Austria: Kairos Publications, 2010): 54-72.

This text is adapted from a lecture held at the Catholic University of America on February 3, 2010 and translated by Lucille Curran.

Reprinted by permission of Kairos Publications.

THE AUTHOR

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, was the general editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church. He is the author of Loving the Church: Spiritual Exercises Preached in the Presence of John Paul II, My Jesus: Encountering Christ in the Gospel, God's Human Face: The Christ Icon, From Death to Life: The Christian Journey, andThe Mystery of the Incarnation. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is the editor of Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Living the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vol. 1,Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4).

Copyright © 2011 Kairos Publications

Article: Bernard Nathanson Dead at 84

STEPHEN VINCENT

‘I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age.’ After putting thousands of unborn children to death, he became one of the great leaders of the pro-life movement.

Bernard Nathanson 1936-2011

Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, an obstetrician who oversaw the performance of about 75,000 abortions before becoming a leading pro-life advocate and a convert to the Catholic faith, died at his home in New York Feb. 21 after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 84.

After performing his last abortion in 1979 and declaring himself to be pro-life, Nathanson produced the 1985 film The Silent Scream, which shows sonogram images of a child in the womb shrinking from an abortionist's instruments, and the documentary film Eclipse of Reason, which displays and explains various abortion procedures in graphic detail. Both films had a significant impact on the abortion debate, solidified his credentials among pro-life advocates and earned him the scorn of his former pro-abortion friends and colleagues.

He also published a number of influential books, including Aborting America, written in 1979 with Richard Ostling, then a religion reporter forTime magazine, in which he exposed the deceptive and dishonest beginnings of the pro-abortion movement and undermined the argument that abortion is safe for women.

He often admitted that he and other abortion advocates in the 1960s lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions at that time, inflating the figure from a few hundred to 10,000 to gain sympathy for their cause.

In his 1996 autobiography The Hand of God, he told the story of his journey from pro-abortion to pro-life, saying that viewing images from the new ultrasound technology in the 1970s convinced him of the humanity of the unborn baby. Outlining the enormous challenge of restoring a pro-life ethic, he wrote, "Abortion is now a monster so unimaginably gargantuan that even to think of stuffing it back into its cage … is ludicrous beyond words. Yet that is our charge — a herculean endeavor."

He noted, regretfully, "I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age."

His pro-life witness could not easily be dismissed as one-sided propaganda since Nathanson had enjoyed such a high standing among abortion supporters as a co-founder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called NARAL ProChoice America), and as operator of what he called the nation's busiest abortion business. The facility was opened in New York City after the state's abortion laws were loosened in 1970 and abortion promoters realized that the high number of women seeking abortion could not all be admitted to a hospital for the procedure. A freestanding ambulatory clinic, in which abortion and recovery took about three hours, was an innovation devised by Nathanson and his colleagues.

Overall, Nathanson estimated, he presided over 60,000 abortions as director of the facility, instructed fellow practitioners in the performance of 15,000 other abortions, and personally performed about 5,000 abortions, including one on his own child conceived with a girlfriend in the 1960s.

Baptized Catholic

For more than a decade after he became pro-life, Nathanson described himself as a Jewish atheist, but in December of 1996 he was baptized a Catholic by Cardinal John O'Connor in a private Mass with a group of friends in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. He also received confirmation and first Communion from the cardinal.

About his baptism, he said, "I was in a real whirlpool of emotion, and then there was this healing, cooling water on me, and soft voices, and an inexpressible sense of peace. I had found a safe place."

Among those concelebrating the Mass was Father C. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest who had instructed Nathanson in the faith over a number of years.

"He was a pro-life prophet," Father McCloskey said in a recent Register interview. "He saw the whole culture of death coming, and knew that abortion was just the tip of the iceberg."

"He was a pro-life prophet," Father McCloskey said in a recent Register interview. "He saw the whole culture of death coming, and knew that abortion was just the tip of the iceberg."

Nathanson visited Father McCloskey periodically over the course of a decade, the priest said, and one day in 1994 announced that he wanted to become a Catholic. After his baptism, Father McCloskey said, "He practiced the faith, he frequented the sacraments, and spoke about his Catholicism unabashedly."

Nathanson later said that he was drawn closer to God while viewing a massive Operation Rescue event, when hundreds sat down in front of a New York Planned Parenthood building, blocking traffic. The sight of so many pro-lifers selflessly sacrificing their selves and risking arrest made him realize that they must be answering a higher call, he explained.

In an epilogue to the second edition of The Hand of God, Father McCloskey called the book "one of the more important autobiographies of the twentieth century," which documents "man's inhumanity both to humanity and to his personal self, and the possibility of redemption."

Another strong factor in his conversion was the book Pillar of Fire, by noted psychiatrist Dr. Karl Stern, who tells of his own journey from Judaism to the Catholic Church. Nathanson studied briefly under Stern in medical school, though at that time he did not know about Stern's conversion. It was only years later, when Nathanson read Pillar of Fire that he learned off his former professor's religious views.

Nathanson's godmother for baptism was Joan Andrews Bell, who had served more than a year in jail for blocking the entrances to abortion businesses.

She said she spoke to Nathanson by phone in February 2011, when he only had the strength to speak a few sentences. "He said he was praying for us, and I told him we love him and pray for him, too," she said.

"He will be remembered as a very strong advocate for the babies," she continued. "One factor stood out, knowing him over the years, and that was that he had a deep pain for what he had done in terms of abortion. I remember there were periods he was fasting; he underwent huge amounts of fasting to make up for it."

She said that he had "a deep and tender heart," and that once he saw the truth about abortion, he was determined to stop it. "He was like St. Paul, who was a great persecutor of the Church, yet when he saw the light of Christ, he was perhaps the greatest apostle for the Gospel. Dr. Nathanson was like that after his conversion. He went all around the world talking about the babies and the evils of abortion. Being his godmother was such an amazing thing, to see him come to Christ."

Nathanson was married and divorced three times before being married in the Church by Father McCloskey soon after becoming a Catholic. His wife, Christine, survives him, as does his grown son, Joseph, by an earlier union.

A Doctor's Son

Bernard Nathanson was born in New York City July 31, 1926. His father was a highly accomplished obstetrician/gynecologist who taught in various prestigious medical schools. Nathanson grew up with his younger sister in a secular Jewish home. As he explained in his autobiography, his father sent him to Hebrew school yet would question and undermine the teachings of the rabbis.

He described his father as an excellent and ethical physician who was less than exemplary in his personal life. He was dominating and overbearing, and cheated on his wife. Nathanson wrote that his sister "lost her personality" under their father's influence and committed suicide at age 49, an event that grieved his father so greatly that he never mentioned her in conversation afterward.

Nathanson followed in his father's footsteps, attending McGill University Medical College in Montreal, where he had his first experience with abortion after he got his girlfriend pregnant. He used the money received in the mail from his father to pay for her abortion, at a time when the procedure was illegal. "It served as my introductory excursion into the satanic world of abortion," he later wrote.

After graduating from medical school in 1949, he did his residency in Chicago and New York, at one time working in the same hospital as his father. In 1953 he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for a few years as an obstetrician/gynecologist.

After his military stint, he settled in New York and began building a thriving ob-gyn practice. While working with poor patients, he saw the scarring effects of illegal abortions on the women. He wrote, "Illegal abortion was in 1967 the number one killer of pregnant women."

In New York, he got another girlfriend pregnant and decided to perform an abortion on her himself. About aborting his own child, he wrote in The Hand of God: "I swear to you that I had no feelings aside from the sense of accomplishment, the pride of expertise."

He added, describing the abortionist's mindset: "icy; conscienceless; remorselessly perverting his medical skills; defiling his ethical charge; and helping, nay seducing, with his clinical calm, his oh-so-comforting professionalism, women into the act that comes closest to self-slaughter."

Busiest Abortion Business

While not giving up his ob-gyn practice, Nathanson became heavily involved in abortion in 1968 after meeting Larry Lader, a politically connected public relations master who was obsessed with overturning New York's abortion laws. In looking for an easy target to attack for media attention, Nathanson said, they chose the Catholic Church, whose opposition to abortion they blamed for every botched illegal abortion they brought before the media.

Bolstered by a coalition of abortion doctors and a burgeoning feminist movement, New York's lawmakers passed a bill to overturn the state's century-old abortion restrictions, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller on July 1, 1970.

Writing in The Hand of God, Nathanson described a turning point in his thinking: "I believe the fertilized ovum (zygote) to be a new individual launched along an unimaginably busy vector of life that terminates when the vector finally moves its 180 degrees to the negative pole."

Soon Nathanson was the director of the new Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH) in Manhattan, which he described as the "largest abortion clinic in the Western world," with referrals from all along the Eastern seaboard and beyond.

Looking back on those years, he wrote, "I had a young son and a wife, but I was hardly ever at home. I bitterly regret those years, if for no other reason than that I failed to see my son grow up."

As he became more publicly associated with abortion, he was treated as a "pariah" in legitimate medical circles and received fewer obstetrical referrals. For these reasons, he decided to leave the abortion facility at the end of 1972 and took the position as chief of obstetrics at St. Luke's Hospital, where he kept doing abortions for what he considered "medically justified reasons."

Yet the advent of ultrasound technology eventually convinced him that a true human being is killed in abortion, and he began to develop what he called the "vector theory of life." By this he meant that from the time of conception, the unborn child has a self-directed force of life that, if not interrupted, will lead to the birth of a human baby. He knew this was not "potential life," as the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

Writing in The Hand of God, Nathanson described a turning point in his thinking: "I believe the fertilized ovum (zygote) to be a new individual launched along an unimaginably busy vector of life that terminates when the vector finally moves its 180 degrees to the negative pole."

The trajectory of this insight would lead him to his own 180-degree turn in thinking and eventually to work against legal abortion and the industry that promoted it.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Stephen Vincent. "Bernard Nathanson Dead at 84." National Catholic Register(February 21, 2010).

This article is reprinted with permission from National Catholic Register. To subscribe to the National Catholic Register call 1-800-421-3230.

THE AUTHOR

Register correspondent Stephen Vincent writes from Wallingford, Connecticut.

Copyright © 2010 National Catholic Register