Tuesday, September 23, 2008
EUROPEAN UNION HAS CATHOLIC ORIGINS
The question has repeatedly occurred to me: what is essentially wrong with a European Union given it's similarity to the United States?
Politics is not my thing, but I see the European Union as being similar to the union of the states that make up the U.S.--independent governments joined in solidarity.
Such a viewpoint, of course, contradicts the much more common viewpoint that the European Union is the foundation of the New World Order, and the New World Order is the haven of anti-Christ. Clearly there is something here I'm not getting.
Today Zenit offers an interview with Catholic Historian Alan Fimister on the Catholic origin of the European Union, and provides some insight on what is good and what is lacking in the current European Union:
The original idea of the European Union has deep roots in Catholic social teaching, according to the author of a book on Robert Schumann, one of the founders of the institution.
Catholic historian Alan Fimister, author of "Robert Schumann: Neo-scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe," published by Peter Lang, affirms that Schuman's actions in 1950 to found what would later be the European Union were, to a remarkable degree, the conscious implementation of the Neo-Thomistic project of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903).
In this interview with ZENIT, Fimister discusses the Catholic vision of the European Union's founders and what it means for a Catholic understanding of the European Union today.
Read the interview...
