The state of democracy in Europe is looking volatile, with lurches to the Left and Right going on all over the place and that are increasingly hard to predict.
EU elections in June saw some shift away from the previous progressive momentum back to more conservative power centres – but not as much as was expected.
At national levels, both Holland and Germany have seen parties on the Right become increasingly popular. Though an expected win for the National Rally in France got <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-great-miscalculation-of-the-president-of-the-rich/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">stymied by an alliance of factions on the Left coming together</mark></a> at the last moment. While the General Election in the UK – which though technically "out" of Europe post-BREXIT remains "of" Europe – saw one of the most disjointed and split reactions from the electorate in contemporary times.
On top of all that, at the start of July, Hungary began its 6-month-long turn of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been a staunch critic of EU institutions and their centralisation of powers at the cost of national sovereignty, and has continually spoken out in defence of “Christian Europe” and its values against the creep of modern secularism and its power brokers. This has seen repeated tussles between Orbán and the European Commission headed by Ursula von der Leyen. This week will see von der Leyen’s future as president of the Commission decided on Thursday 18 July when a vote will be held to decide the occupant for the next term of the Commission's presidency.
Set against the context of that maelstrom of political machinations and ideological tussles, the <em>Catholic Herald</em> spoke with Charles Coulombe about the history of Christian democracy in Europe.
Coulombe is a Catholic historian based in Austria, where he lectures in history at ITI Catholic University, founded in 1996 as the International Theological Institute at the request of Pope John Paul II. Coulombe has a special interest in the Habsburgs and history of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and has recently written a book about the last emperor of Austria, <em>Blessed Charles of Austria: A Holy Emperor and His Legacy </em>(2020)<em>. </em>
A prolific writer, in addition to working as a columnist for the<em> Catholic Herald</em>, he is currently a contributing editor for <em>Crisis Magazine</em> and <em>The European Conservative</em>.
<strong>How did you first encounter Christian democracy in Europe as an American in the 1970s?</strong>
I corresponded with Archduke Otto von Habsburg from the time I was in high school; he was a great part of my political formation. He introduced me to the more conservative varieties of Christian democracy. In 1979 he stood for the European Parliament in their first popular elections.
Originally the members of the European Parliament were chosen by the different European governments. In order to expand democracy, it changed to a popular election of parliament in 1979. At that time, the major groupings in the European Parliament emerge: labour/socialist, liberal, and the conservatives. The Christian Democrats gathered under the name of the European People's Party. That aroused a certain amount of interest in me, precisely because they did not call themselves European Christian Democrats. There were already people who by then were wary of the name "Christian Democrat”.
At any rate, Otto was elected via a safe seat for him in Bavaria, which, then as now, was dominated by the Christian Social Union, the more conservative wing of Christian democracy in Germany. I came across the manifesto and as young American kid who was Catholic, it looked really great. It was difficult to conceive of a political program in America that quoted Pope John Paul II, which it did in those days. It was a kind of politics that was very different to what I was used to back home.
<strong>Could you tell us a little bit about the history of Christian democracy? Otto von Habsburg didn't come out of a vacuum.</strong><strong></strong>
Well, that's certainly true. The roots of Christian democracy as we know it today go back to the period of the French Revolution. The name "Christian democracy" was primarily found in Catholic countries. The equivalent in Scandinavia, to some degree in the Netherlands and certainly in Britain was "conservative”. The roots of these ["Catholic democracy" and "conservative"] were a family of ideas that emerged in response to the French Revolution.
The French Revolution was the overthrow of the altar and the throne. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church (altar) and the Catholic state (throne) were seen as two facets of the same <em>Res publica Christiana</em>. This integrated Christian body began to break with the Reformation and the establishment of the state churches in Northern Europe, when suddenly the Catholics found themselves listed with heretic Muslims and Jews as outside the political body.
Protestant countries had a slow gradual secularisation over the course of the 18th century with the Enlightenment; that same process in Catholic countries resulted in the French Revolution.
The establishments in the Protestant countries fought the French Revolution and in 1815, the Protestant establishment and their Catholic allies thought they had put the genie back in the bottle. This wasn't true, but they didn't know this. So in 1815 we find a political bifurcation in both northern and southern Europe.
The split was between believers in Christianity as the guide for the State ( who were mostly monarchists) and disbelievers in this (who were mostly republicans). What was added to that was the Industrial Revolution. This created two new classes: the great bourgeoisie who owned the means of production and the proletariat. The big question of the 19th century was how to integrate the proletariat into the rest of society.
The Catholic – or conservative (in Protestant countries) – answer was to attempt to revive the medieval synthesis of altar and throne, the idea of society as a family, with the church, the monarch and all classes working in their respective fields.
Added to altar and throne were two new concepts: <em>subsidiarity</em>, which in those days would have been called local liberties, provincial rights, etc.; and <em>solidarity</em>, what they would have called class cooperation.
So we have these four concepts: altar, throne, subsidiarity, solidarity. From the 19th century until World War II, there were various names used to describe this collection of concepts, from guild socialism to corporatism to distributism.
<strong>What role did the Christian</strong><strong> democrats play in the beginning of the European Union? </strong>
After World War I, Richard Count von Coudenhove-Kalergi predicted that if Europe did not unite and overcome its internal antipathies, she would one day end up occupied by America and the Soviet Union. And this was what happened after World War II: half of Europe was occupied by the United States, and to some degree reformed in the latter's own image. In the other half, of course, the Soviet Union did a much more draconian job of it.
Where did that leave the surviving Catholics and conservative politicians? It left them in a position of not being able to do anything beyond what the American-Soviet dyarchy allowed. You could forget about altar and throne, but solidarity and subsidiarity were still permitted.
There was a two-fold response by the Christian democrats to this situation. One was the emergence of Christian democracy in various nation-states. This emergence attempted to use the ties between Catholics and Protestants, forged during the resistance in World War II, to make countries like Germany and the Netherlands into a single front against communism.
The other response was the union of Western Europe. For a man like Otto von Habsburg, this presented quite an interesting challenge. After World War I, he's raised by his mother, the Empress Zita, with the idea of a possible restoration of a central European Union under the Habsburgs. It's important to bear in mind that they did not want a recovery of Austria-Hungary per se, but rather a united Central Europe, a federation of sorts, under the dynasty and very heavily oriented toward the Church.
After World War II ends and the Archduke is stuck trying to see what can be done, he comes to the same conclusion that Coudenhoeve-Kalergi had after World War I and that the great founders of Christian democracy - Schumann in France, Adenauer in Germany, and De Gasperi in Italy - had come to: a united Western Europe. Loosely united, I must add, based on subsidiarity and solidarity.
Christian in emphasis, they looked to the crown of Charlemagne as a symbol of a reunited Europe. It is interesting to note that the first six members of a nascent EU, France, the Benelux countries, West Germany and Italy look very similar to the Carolingian Empire in terms of shape. The Carolingian empire was very much on their minds. Thus the Christian Democrats played a big role in the European Union, and by 1979 it looked as though a large part of their vision of a united Europe had been achieved.
<strong>How does the relationship between the Church and State play </strong><strong>out in Europe? </strong>
There were several problems. One of them was that after Vatican II, the political role of the Catholic Church altered tremendously. Prior to the council, the ideal was a Catholic confessional state; after the council, the Church made a huge point of saying, "Well, no, we don't want any special privileges for the Church. We want a confessionally neutral state that will nevertheless be informed by gospel values."
What the fathers couldn't realise is that this neutral state was a transitional phase. I think, personally, one of the major errors in approach for the Council fathers, was the thought that continental liberalism and Anglo-American liberalism were different, not just in degree but in type. Subsequent experience, I think has exploded that.
From the imposition of contraception, abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage by various governmental bodies on a more or less unwilling populace to the wholesale lockdowns of 2020-21, we know that liberalism in power is the same everywhere: nasty and brutal. But it would be hard to expect people living in 1963 to grasp that as easily as we can, with the knowledge of hindsight.
Unfortunately, the Christian Democratic politicians of the day were used to doing nothing without the permission and approval of the Church hierarchy. And so this led to some real grotesque [developments] after 1968 here in Austria for example.
The ÖVP, the local version of the Christian democrats, were gearing up for the fight against abortion in 1969. In those days, the Christian democrats would do nothing without the hierarchy. So the leader of the ÖVP approached Cardinal König, and said, "We're gearing up for this fight, we'll need the Church's support." Cardinal König’s response was: "No, no. I don't want another culture war." And so abortion came to Austria.
<strong>What has changed since the beginning of the European Union? </strong>
Since the founding of the European Union two major things have happened. One was the fall of communism. Now that was a very, very key moment. For those of us who lived through it, it was joy. I really can't tell you what it felt like having that burden lifted from our shoulders.
Secondly, there has been a growth in the power of the EU, a growth fuelling all its liberal tendencies. Liberalism might not seem evil, but in terms of the view of the human being and his relationship with God, that view is non-existent in both communism and liberalism. It's an old joke that separation of Church and State isn't bad, it's non-existent.
Every State has an animating philosophy and animating philosophical principle. It doesn't have to be religious: in the Soviet Union, it was communism. There is no God and Lenin is his prophet. And that [type of] "state religion” is what confers legitimacy and authority on the powers that be in the West today: we also have a state religion of sorts, and we punish heretics.
It's not a question as to whether we'll have a State Church and a ruling class, you'll always have that. Rather, it's always the question of which State Church, and what is that ruling class based upon? Whence comes its authority?
<strong>This gives a rather bleak view of the European Union at the moment. Is there still hope? </strong>
People often ask me if I think the European Union should be abolished. It depends. Firstly, I think, people really have to learn how the European Union works. I think that elements in the European Parliament which can be considered sane, not to say sound, should be encouraged.
As a rule of thumb, however, it’s always better to turn an institution to its original goals than to smash it and build something new. Sometimes you have to, but the less violence you do, the better it is, and if you can do so without retaining too much poison. You'll never reach perfection.
If the European Union can be returned to the vision of its founders, that would not be a bad thing. But I think one would have to go further back to what their founders held before the great dyarchy of America and the Soviet Union. I think what Archduke Otto conceived of the overarching vocation of the House of Habsburg is something that needs to be looked at: a Europe of the peoples, of the regions, of the Fatherlands.
Of course, during the Soviet-American dyarchy that ruled Europe for most of the latter part of his career, there could be no thought of restoration of the various monarchies of Europe, much less of an overarching Imperial throne as guardian of authority and justice over all of them. But our experiences of the past few decades have shown that the political and bureaucratic classes need an apolitical authority to rein them in; as such thinkers as Fr. Aidan Nichols have pointed out, the latter is also true of European structures as a whole.
In his excellent <em>Christendom Awake</em>, Fr. Adian wrote: "The articulation of the foundational and Judaeo-Christian norms of a really united Europe, for instance, would most appropriately be made by such a crown, whose legal and customary relations with the national peoples would be modelled on the best aspects of historic practice in the (Western) Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine ‘Commonwealth’ – to use the term popularised by Professor Dimtri Obolensky."
Fr. Nicholas goes on to say that "Such a crown, as the integrating factor of an international European Christendom, would leave intact the functioning of parliamentary government in the republican or monarchical polities of its constituent nations and analogues in city and village in other representative and participatory forms."
Today, the withdrawal of American hegemony over Europe will make Europeans increasingly more responsible for their own affairs – but, as a result, it also will liberate them from having to conform to American ideas of best governance.
If they are wise, they shall eventually adopt updated forms of institutions that have a long track record of success in the Mother Continent, rather than continuing to conform to views that are unravelling even in the country of their birth.
Now I know this return to the original Europe is going to sound radical, because it would take a lot of work to get this positive change in the European Union. You'd have to change popular views on everything from marriage to murdering.
It would be difficult, but I saw the reverse just in the course of my lifetime, and it was done, as every movement in history is, by determined minorities.
It seemed in the past that Europe would always be held in sway of Christianity. This is no longer the case. But we can reverse this change with a determined minority. <br><br><em>Photo: Otto Von Habsburg of the European Popular Party raises his hand as he seats behind number 215 during a vote at the European Palace in Strasbourg, France, 16 February 1995. (Photo credit ERIC CABANIS/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
