Knowing Your Roots
While the German Chancellor was claiming at the weekend that modern Europe is "a dream come true," Benedict XVI, the German Pope, denounced the EU's Berlin Declaration for not mentioning Europe's Christian roots and declared that Europe could "not be built by ignoring its people's identities."
Pointing out that Europe's moral, cultural, and historical values had been forged by Christianity, he expressed concern over the continent's "dangerous individualism" and questioned whether Europe was "losing faith in its own future," asking "Does not this unique form of apostasy of itself, even before God, lead it to doubt its very identity?"
1 comments:
I have sympathy with Pope Benedict and do think it's a shame that European countries seem to be blind to all that is positive about their Christian heritage.
Certainly there are episodes in our past that we are rightly ashamed of, but Christians need to be clearer about drawing a distinction between what is integral to Christianity and what are the mistakes of the church, or even simply the mistakes of governments made during times when states took on the label "Christian" regardless of whether they reflected Christian values or not.
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