I tread carefully here.
One of my first lessons as a boy growing up as a protestant in a protestant Britain was "never make mock of another man's belief".
That has caused me, as it was meant to, to steer clear of religious discussions, advice that I found very useful in Canada.
However........
Culture matters. And religion is culture.
In Europe religion is Christianity, Christianity is the Church and the Church is Roman.
That tautology drove European history up until 1945....... at least.
The Church was never a fan of liberal democracy. In fact one of her favourite sons, in 1942, proclaimed the following: "We believe that state cannot pursue effectively the common good of the nation unless it answers to a single leader .... We must remember that authority comes from above, not from below: we condemn parliamentary democracy and liberalism." (Young Trudeau, 1919-1944: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada - Max and Monique Nemni) Pierre Trudeau was 23 years old he wrote that. Churchill and Roosevelt had just agreed the Atlantic Charter months before. Canadian ships were being sunk in the St Lawrence and in the Atlantic. Canadian soldiers had been bloodily repulsed at Dieppe. Other Canadian soldiers were advancing through Italy on their way towards Rome. Mussolini who, along with Franco, Salazar, deValera, Petain, was one of the heroes of the catholic model of socialism celebrated by the Church and Trudeau, had less than a year before his empire fell in September 1943.
At Christmas 1944 the Pope, Pius XII issued the following encyclical:
Democracy and a Lasting Peace.
The Pope had a problem. The horse that he had backed had ended up losing to the liberal democrats of the world. He had to come to terms with the victors and, at the same time try to keep a hold on his flock by maintaining his authority.
He Wrote
We direct our attention to the problem of democracy, examining the forms by which it should be directed if it is to be a true, healthy democracy answering the needs of the moment, our action shows clearly that the interest and solicitude of the Church looks not so much to its external structure and organization—which depend on the special aspirations of each people—as to the individual himself, who, so far from being the object and, as it were, a merely passive element in the social order, is in fact, and must be and continue to be, its subject, its foundation and its end.
CHARACTERISTICS PROPER TO CITIZENS IN A DEMOCRATIC REGIME
20. When, however, people call for "democracy and better democracy," such a demand cannot have any other meaning than to place the citizen ever more in the position to hold his own personal opinion, to express it and to make it prevail ...
PEOPLE AND "THE MASSES"
21. Hence follows a first conclusion with its practical consequence, the state does not contain in itself and does not mechanically bring together in a given territory a shapeless mass of individuals.
22. It is, and should in practice be, the organic and organizing unity of a real people. The people, and a shapeless multitude (or, as it is called, "the masses") are two distinct concepts.
23. The people lives and moves by its own life energy; the masses are inert of themselves and can only be moved from outside. The people lives by the fullness of life in the men that compose it, each of whom—at his proper place and in his own way—is a person conscious of his own responsibility and of his own views.
24. The masses, on the contrary, wait for the impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits their instincts and impressions; ready to follow in turn, today this flag, tomorrow another.
25. From the exuberant life of a true people, an abundant rich life is diffused in the state and all its organs, instilling into them. with a vigor that is always renewing itself, the consciousness of their own responsibility, the true instinct for the common good.
26. The elementary power of the masses, deftly managed and employed, the state also can utilize: in the ambitious hands of one or of several who have been artificially brought together for selfish aims, the state itself, with the support of the masses, reduced to the minimum status of a mere machine, can impose its whims on the better part of the real people: the common interest remains seriously, and for a long time, injured by this process, and the injury is very often hard to heal.
27. Hence follows clearly another conclusion: the masses—as we have just defined them—are the capital enemy of true democracy and of its ideal of liberty and equality.
There is much more in the same vein. I find it a marvellously clear explication of the Church's position on authority. I also find it antithetical to everything that my culture instilled in me.
I raise this not to denigrate the Church or anyone's beliefs, to debate kneeling or standing, icons or statues, the Triune God or her 9 billion names but to demonstrate the cultural divide between the UK and Europe, within Canada and between Revolutionary America and Tammany Hall America.
There are those that find solace in letting others define Truth and abiding by that. Those people are culturally attuned to the acceptance of supra-national organizations like the Church, the UN, the EU, the League of Nations, the Socialist International, the Comintern, the International Standards Organization, globalization, internationalism and Davos. They demand Platonic clarity. These are the leaders and followers of the EU.
On the other hand there are those that just wish the freedom to live their lives undisturbed, happy to live their own lives as they see fit and to let their neighbours live theirs.
By the way, in 1946 Pius XII elaborated on his thoughts of 1944 with his "allocution to the roman patriciate and nobility"
"Nobility and the Traditional Elites" encouraging and counselling them on how to reclaim their position in society.
My first point is that the corporatists survived the liberal democrat victory.
The second point is that they did not roll over and play dead.
Cheers.
Oh, and PPS, in case it needs saying, when I say Europe I mean the Continent. In Britain we had the Establishment Church and all of us dissenters and non-conformists.
ff topic: but I see where it can fit in.
