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Every year on 9th May we celebrate Europe Day, and our bishops in England and Wales produce a special message and prayers for use in our churches. This day is what is also called 'Schuman Day', and it commemorates the real beginning of our present day European institutions with the launching of the 'Schuman Plan' and what became the European Coal and Steel Community on 9 May 1950 by the then French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman. Schuman was one of the key European statesmen who were responsible for setting up common structures among European states, and above all France and West Germany, in the years following the Second World War. He had been born in Lorraine in 1886, within Bismarck's German Empire, and actually served in the German Army in the Great War; he did not become a Frenchman until 1918. He thus embodied in his own history the rivalry of France and Germany, which had been centred on what was produced in his region - coal and steel. After the Second World War he realised, together with the French economist and businessman Jean Monnet and the West German leader Konrad Adenauer, that the best way to avoid future conflict between the two countries was to pool their production of these two commodities. So under his plan a 'community' was set up in which nations ceded this part of their economic sovereignty to a higher authority. From the ECSC the EEC eventually developed and today's EU. Schuman was unmarried and his life was marked by personal holiness and asceticism. He was a scholar and a philosopher - on his bookshelves were to be found annotated editions of Hegel and Andre Gide. It is really on the basis of this personal sanctity that there have been moves to beatify him (he died in 1963) which are likely to bear fruit in the near future. Schuman's devout Catholicism was intimately linked to his vision for peace in Europe, and it also excited opposition, particularly in Britain, which in 1950 was determined not to get involved in his plan. The late Catholic journalist Hugo Young, in his masterful study of relations between Britain and Europe, This Blessed Plot (London: Macmillan 1998), shows that this anti-Catholicism was characteristic of the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, and his deputy, Kenneth Younger. Young writes: "Schuman, he noted in his diary in May 1950, was 'a bachelor and a very devout Catholic who is said to be very much under the influence of the priests'. The Plan, Younger felt obliged to admit to himself, 'may be just a step in the consolidation of the Catholic "black international" which I have always thought to be a big driving force behind the Council of Europe.'" (pp.50-51) It is clear from Young's account of this period that one of the reasons why Britain in 1950 was not interested in joining the new community was historic anti-Catholicism, and much of this was focussed on Schuman because of the strength of his faith - some other key players, such as Adenauer and the Italian Prime Minister, Alcide de Gasperi, were also devout and serious Catholics. The moves to beatify Schuman go far beyond his personal qualities. His vision for a united Europe was rooted not only in his experiences of two horrific world wars but in his faith and the social teaching of the Catholic Church. The new community was intended to be built on co-operation rather than cut-throat competition; one of the aims of the much-derided Common Agricultural Policy was to help the poorest agricultural workers in Europe; the key concepts from Catholic teaching of solidarity and subsidiarity are also written into European structures. Of course things often have not worked: but much of this has been to do with rivalry among European nation states - and it was this rivalry that Schuman and the other founding fathers of the new Europe wanted to eliminate. Today's European Union needs to return to the vision of Robert Schuman, grounded in the social teaching of the Church. This teaching calls us to follow the preferential option for the poor, and Catholics within Europe need to campaign for policies towards poorer regions within Europe and poor nations elsewhere in the world (as CAFOD has recently urged) - policies which are just and reflect God's love for the poor. Schuman would have welcomed the accession to the EU in May of ten new member states, many of them with a deep Catholic culture - Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia - but he would have been appalled at the unfair terms of the accession treaty in terms of access to the agricultural policy and freedom of movement and employment, driven by selfishness and xenophobia. He would also have been dismayed at the determination of many to exclude from the new EU constitution any reference to Europe's Christian heritage, to the place of faith communities, or to God himself: this shows how far our present day leaders in Europe have moved from the vision of men like Schuman half a century ago. Europe desperately needs good and worthy role models. This is why the Holy Father has given us now six patron saints for Europe - Benedict, Cyril, Methodius, Catherine of Siena, Bridget of Sweden and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). If Schuman is added to the ranks of the 'Blessed' the common Christian culture of Europe will be enriched, but here we will need to educate people about what he achieved: ignorance about the history of European integration is widespread, even among Catholics. Schuman's example should inspire Catholics in urging that the place of God and religious faith is recognised in the new constitution. The Pope and the Conference of European Bishops' Conferences (COMECE) have repeatedly urged Catholics to support both greater European integration and the pursuit of policies based on social justice, and it is essential that Catholics realise the importance of being loyal to their teachings about the future of Europe. If we are serious about Schuman's vision and achievements, we have to be clear that there is no place for 'Euroscepticism' in the Catholic community: as in 1950, much hostility to the rest of Europe in this country is rooted in anti-Catholicism, simply because we are a religious community which transcends national loyalties. This year Catholics have a serious responsibility to welcome the new countries which are joining the EU in May and to campaign for them to be treated fairly, especially those countries which are poor. In the face of bigotry stirred up by elements of the press we also need to make sure that people from the accession states who come to this country are welcomed and given pastoral care both through various ethnic chaplaincies in our dioceses and in ordinary parishes and Catholic schools. Schuman once wrote these words, which should be our inspiration: 'This whole community will not be able to and must not remain an economic and technical enterprise: it has to have one soul, the consciousness of its historical relationships and of its present and future responsibilities, and one political will at the service of the same human ideal.' |
