The European Union and the Foresight of a Great Catholic Thinker

Today, the European Union’s anti-Catholic bent is well known.

                      

                     Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira

This was made patent by its refusal to mention Europe’s Christian heritage in its draft constitution and its promotion of contraception, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, same-sex “marriage,” and other aberrations.

It is similarly easy to see the damage the EU is doing to European culture.  In France, this came into focus when it tried to force the country to pasteurize the milk used to make cheese, which would have fatally damaged its flavor and texture.  Similarly, it has attempted to heavily tax alcohol, fundamental to the cuisine of almost every European nation.

It is also evident that currency standardization and lax borders are contributing to a failing sense of national sovereignty and identity.

But would these problems have been easy to see twenty or thirty years ago?

Professor Corrêa de Oliveira foresaw them more than fifty years ago, when a supranational European entity was first being discussed.  His opinions were controversial at the time.  That did not prevent him from expressing his concern.  He did so especially in two articles he wrote in the early fifties.

The first was published in the new publication begun under the TFP founder’s leadership, Catolicismo.  In it, he stated:

One of the most important dates in this century is, without a doubt, that of the meeting in Paris, in which representatives of France, Italy, West Germany and the little powers that make up Benelux—Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg—decided, in principle, to construct a European Federation, through the formation of one international governmental entity, and consequently a common authority, to grow as a superstructure, over the various national governments.

Inflamed with a love of history, Professor Corrêa de Oliveira was horrified:

As you can see, we are dealing with an immense happening. Nations that have filled History with the irradiation of their glory will disappear…and a new federal state will arise, whose future is difficult to foresee.^[18]

That is not to say that Professor Corrêa de Oliveira opposed any type of international governing body.

Indeed the Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne, was perhaps the institution he loved most throughout history, after the Church Herself.

However, as he explained in the same article, legitimate international bodies must be constituted for a licit and well-established end. Once they begin to exercise too centralizing a role, they become an aberration.

He further developed this thought in a 1952 article:

Each nation can and should remain alive and defined, within the supranational structure.  It must maintain its borders, territory, government, language, customs and law.  It must retain its own national character.... [Opposing this reality] is certainly not acting according to the designs of God, Who created a natural order, in which the nation is an indestructible reality.… [Any international body] should be the protector of national independence, not a nation-devouring hydra.

He particularly feared the secular nature he felt such a federation would adopt and the consequences this would have for the Church:

If the European federation places itself under the shadow of the Church, it will be inspired, animated and vivified by Her.  What of it then could not be hoped for?  However, if it ignores the Mystical Body of Christ, what can be hoped for from it?^]

It is easy to see which path the European Union has taken.