The White Cliffs of Dover, England, as seen from Cap Gris Nez, France
Roberto de Mattei, "
Brexit and the Decline of the West" (
Corrispondenza Romana, June 29, 2016, via
Rorate Caeli, June 30, 2016):
The British referendum of June 23rd (Brexit) has sanctioned the definitive collapse of a myth: the dream of “a “Europe without frontiers”, built on the ruins of its national States.
The Europeanist project, launched by the Maastricht Treaty in
1992, had in itself the seeds of its own self-destruction. It was
completely illusory to expect the implementation of an economic,
monetary union before a political union; or, even worse, to envisage
using monetary integration in order to establish political unification.
The plan, though, to reach political unity by extirpating those
spiritual roots that bind men together was even more illusory. The
Charter of Fundamental Human Rights of the European Union approved by
the European Council in Nice in December 2000, not only expunges any
reference to Europe’s religious roots, but has in itself a visceral
negation of the natural and Christian order. Article 21, by introducing
the prohibition of any discrimination related to “sexual tendencies”,
contains, in nuce, the legalization of the crime of homophobia and pseudo-homosexual marriage.
The “Constitution” project worked on by the Convention on the Future of
Europe between 2002 and 2005, was rejected by two popular referendums,
in France on May 29th 2005 and in Holland on June 1st of the same year.
Nevertheless, the Eurocrats never gave up. After two years of
“reflection”, the Lisbon Treaty, which should have been ratified
exclusively through parliament, was approved by the EU Heads of State
and Government on December 13th 2007. The only country called upon to
voice their opinion on the referendum, Ireland, rejected the Treaty on
June 13th 2008, but unanimity being necessary from the signatory States,
a new referendum was imposed on the Irish, which thanks to very strong
economic and media pressure, finally gave the positive result.
During its short life, the European Union, incapable of defining foreign
policies and ordinary security measures, has turned itself into an
ideological tribune, which churns out resolutions and directives,
pushing national Governments to free themselves of traditional family
values. Inside the EU, Great Britain, pressed on the brakes to slow down
the Franco-German plan for a European “Super-State”, but instead,
pressed-down on the accelerator by diffusing, on a European scale, it
own “civic conquests” from abortion to euthanasia, from adoptions by
homosexuals to genetic engineering. This moral deviation was
accompanied in England by [a sort of] multicultural drunkenness,
culminating in the election of the first Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq
Khan in May 2016.
However, even in 2009, the then conservative Mayor, Boris Johnson,
invited all Londoners to participate, at least for a day, in the Ramadan
fast and then attend the Mosque at sunset. More recently, the Prime
Minister, David Cameron, contending the American presidential candidate,
Donald Trump, said he was: «proud of representing a country which is
one of the most successful multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-ethnic
countries in the world» (Huffpost Politics, 15th May 2016).
Brexit certainly signifies a surge of pride for a nation that has a long
history of antique tradition. Nevertheless, the identity and freedom of
a nation are founded on respect for the Divine and natural Law and no
political action can restore the freedom a country has lost on account
of its own moral decadence. The ‘no’ to the European Union was a protest
against the arrogance of an oligarchy which claims to decide - without
the people and against the people - the interests of the people.
Even so, the strong powers which impose Brussels’ bureaucratic rules are
the same ones that are undoing the West’s moral rules. Those who accept
the LGTB dictatorship lose the right to claim their own Independence
Day, as they have already renounced their own identity. Those who
renounce defending the moral boundaries of a nation, lose the right to
defend its borders, as they have already accepted the “fluid” conception
of a global society. Under this aspect, Great Britain’s’
self-dissolution itinerary follows a dynamic that Brexit cannot arrest
and which, rather, may be part of another stage.
Scotland is already threatening a new referendum to leave the United
Kingdom, followed by Northern Ireland. Further, when the Queen, who is
90 years old, leaves the throne, it is not excluded that some countries
of the Commonwealth will declare their independence. Someone said that
Queen Elizabeth had been crowned the Empress of the British Empire and
will die as the head of ‘a Little England’. This itinerary of political
disunion though, has as its final outcome the republicanising of
England.
In 2017 the three hundredth centenary of the founding of London’s Great
Lodge, the mother of modern Freemasonry, will be commemorated. Yet,
Freemasonry, which in the XVIII and XIX centuries used Protestant and
Deist England to diffuse its revolutionary programme throughout the
world, today seems determined to ditch the English Monarchy, in which it
sees one of the last symbols still surviving from the Medieval order.
After Brexit, scenarios of disintegration may open up in Greece as a
result of the explosion of the economic and social crisis; in France,
where the urban peripheries are menaced by a Jihadist civil war; in
Italy as a result of the unstoppable migratory invasion; in east Europe,
where Putin is ready to profit from the weakness of European
institutions to take control of eastern Ukraine and exercise military
pressure on the Baltic States.
The British General, Alexander Richard Shirreff, former Vice-Commander
of NATO from 2011 to 2014, foresaw in the form of a novel, (2017 War
with Russia. An Urgent Warning From Senior Military Command, Coronet,
London 2016), the break-out of a nuclear war between Russia and the West
in May 2017, a date which reminds Catholics of something. How to
forget, on this first centenary of Fatima, Our Lady’s words, that many
nations will be annihilated and Russia will be the instrument God will
use to punish impenitent mankind?
Faced with these prospectives the conservative parties themselves are
split. If Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in Holland and Matteo
Salvini in Italy are asking for their Countries’ exit from the European
Union and are placing their hopes in Putin, the positions of the
Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban and the Polish leader Jaroslaw
are very different; they see in the European Union and NATO a barrier
to the Russian expansion.
The Decline of the West ((Der Untergang des Abendlandes) by Oswald
Spengler appeared in 1917. One hundred years later, the German writer’s
prophecy seems about to be fulfilled. “The West” , before being a
geographic space, is the name of a civilization. This civilization is
Christian Civilization, heir to the classical Greco-Roman culture which
from Europe spread to the Americas and its faraway offshoots in Asia and
Africa. It had its baptism the night of St. Paul’s dream, when God gave
the Apostle the order to turn his back on Asia and “go through
Macedonia” to proclaim the good news (Acts, XVI, 6-18). Rome was the
place of St. Peter and Paul’s martyrdom and the centre of the
civilization that was emerging. Spengler, convinced of the inexorable
decline of the West, recalls a sentence from Seneca: Ducunt volentem
fata, nolentem trahunt (Destiny guides those who want to be guided and
drags those who don’t want to be [guided]”.
We however, counter Spengler’s relativist and determinist vision with
that of St. Augustine, who, while the barbarians were attacking Hippone,
announced the victory in history of the City of God, continuously
guided by Divine Providence. Man is the artifice of his own destiny and
with the help of God the twilight of civilization can be transformed
into the dawn of a resurrection. Nations are mortal, but God never dies
and the Church never wanes.
[Translation: contributor, Francesca Romana]
As one our readers observes: "Last two paragraphs are the missing pieces In the current Catholic
Church's claims for its own existence. Without stressing them she has no
business doling out morals. But her leaders now, overawed by
multiculturalism, don't seem to get it."
[Hat tip to JM]
Joseph Selling of the Catholic University of Louvain composed and edited a document, entitled "
This recalls, as one reader writes, some Frank Sheed:
[(University of Notre Dame Press: 2015)].
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "
Do the little things you have to do every day for the love of God. Renew this as your daily intention, though you do not have to be conscious of it before every act, nor make it every day. A life passed in this way will be rich, full of merits, even though you may from time to time have doubts that you accomplished very much. Many little deeds of virtue, many little refusals to commit faults, many little good works of every kind. Sanctity is within the grasp of everyone.