Is Europe Dying?

America's "Europe problem" and Europe's "America problem" have been staple topics of transatlantic debate for the past several years.

To put the matter directly: Europe, and especially western Europe, is in the midst of a crisis of civilizational morale. The most dramatic manifestation of that crisis is not to be found in Europe's fondness for governmental bureaucracy or its devotion to fiscally shaky health care schemes and pension plans, in Europe's lagging economic productivity or in the appeasement mentality that some European leaders display toward Islamist terrorism. No, the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale is the brute fact that Europe is depopulating itself.

Europe's below-replacement-level birthrates have created situations that would have been unimaginable in the 1940s and early 1950s. By the middle of this century, if present fertility patterns continue, 60 percent of the Italian people will have no personal experience of a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin;[1] Germany will lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany; and Spain's population will decline by almost one-quarter. Europe is depopulating itself at a rate unseen since the Black Death of the fourteenth century.[2] And one result of that is a Europe that is increasingly "senescent" (as British historian Niall Ferguson has put it).[3]

When an entire continent, healthier, wealthier, and more secure than ever before, fails to create the human future in the most elemental sense-by creating the next generation-something very serious is afoot. I can think of no better description for that "something" than to call it a crisis of civilizational morale. Understanding its origins is important in itself, and important for Americans because some of the acids that have eaten away at European culture over the past two centuries are at work in the United States, and indeed throughout the democratic world.

Getting at the roots of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale requires us to think about "history" in a different way. Europeans and Americans usually think of "history" as the product of politics (the struggle for power) or economics (the production of wealth). The first way of thinking is a by-product of the French Revolution; the second is one of the exhaust fumes of Marxism. Both "history as politics" and "history as economics" take a partial truth and try, unsuccessfully, to turn it into a comprehensive truth. Understanding Europe's current situation, and what it means for America, requires us to look at history in a different way, through cultural lenses.

Europe began the twentieth century with bright expectations of new and unprecedented scientific, cultural, and political achievements. Yet within fifty years, Europe, the undisputed center of world civilization in 1900, produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, a Cold War that threatened global holocaust, oceans of blood, mountains of corpses, the Gulag, and Auschwitz. What happened? And, perhaps more to the point, why had what happened, happened? Political and economic analyses do not offer satisfactory answers to those urgent questions. Cultural-which is to say spiritual, even theological-answers might help.

Take, for example, the proposal made by a French Jesuit, Henri de Lubac, during World War II. De Lubac argued that Europe's torments in the 1940s were the "real world" results of defective ideas, which he summarized under the rubric "atheistic humanism"-the deliberate rejection of the God of the Bible in the name of authentic human liberation. This, de Lubac suggested, was something entirely new. Biblical man had perceived his relationship to the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as a liberation: liberation from the terrors of gods who demanded extortionate sacrifice, liberation from the whims of gods who played games with human lives (remember the Iliad and the Odyssey), liberation from the vagaries of Fate. The God of the Bible was different. And because biblical man believed that he could have access to the one true God through prayer and worship, he believed that he could bend history in a human direction. Indeed, biblical man believed that he was obliged to work toward the humanization of the world. One of European civilization's deepest and most distinctive cultural characteristics is the conviction that life is not just one damn thing after another; Europe learned that from its faith in the God of the Bible.

The proponents of nineteenth-century European atheistic humanism turned this inside out and upside down. Human freedom, they argued, could not coexist with the God of Jews and Christians. Human greatness required rejecting the biblical God, according to such avatars of atheistic humanism as Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. And here, Father de Lubac argued, were ideas with consequences-lethal consequences, as it turned out. For when you marry modern technology to the ideas of atheistic humanism, what you get are the great mid-twentieth century tyrannies-communism, fascism, Nazism. Let loose in history, Father de Lubac concluded, those tyrannies had taught a bitter lesson: "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man."[4] Atheistic humanism ultramundane humanism, if you will-is inevitably inhuman humanism.

The first lethal explosion of what Henri de Lubac would later call "the drama of atheistic humanism" was World War I. For whatever else it was, the "Great War" was, ultimately, the product of a crisis of civilizational morality, a failure of moral reason in a culture that had given the world the very concept of "moral reason." That crisis of moral reason led to the crisis of civilizational morale that is much with us, and especially with Europe, today.

This crisis has only become fully visible since the end ofthe Cold War. Its effects were first masked by the illusory peace between World War I and World War II; then by the rise of totalitarianism and the Great Depression; then by the Second World War itself; then by the Cold War. It was only after 1991, when the seventy-seven-year-long political-military crisis that began in 1914 had ended, that the long-term effects of Europe's "rage of self-mutilation" (as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called it) could come to the surface of history and be seen for what they were-and for what they are. Europe is experiencing a crisis of civilizational morale today because of what happened in Europe ninety years ago. That crisis could not be seen in its full and grave dimensions then (although the German general Helmuth von Moltke, one of the chief instigators of the slaughter, wrote in late July 1914 that the coming war would "annihilate the civilization of almost the whole of Europe for decades to come"[5]). The damage done to the fabric of European culture and civilization in the Great War could only been seen clearly when the Great War's political effects had been cleared from the board in 1991.

From the H.L. Menken biography of Nietzsche:

There were two other children in the house. One was a boy, Josef, who was named after the Duke of Altenburg, and died in infancy in 1850. The other was a girl, Therese Elisabeth Alexandra, who became in after years her brother's housekeeper, guardian angel and biographer. Her three names were those of the three noble children her father had grounded in the humanities. Elisabeth - who married toward middle age and is best known as Frau Förster-Nietzsche - tells us practically all that we know about the Nietzsche family and the private life of its distinguished son. ((1)) The clan came out of Poland, like so many other families of Eastern Germany, at the time of the sad, vain wars. Legend maintains that it was noble in its day and Nietzsche himself liked to think so. The name, says Elisabeth, was originally Nietzschy. "Germany is a great nation," Nietzsche would say, "only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.... I am proud of my Polish descent. I remember that in former times a Polish noble, by his simple veto, could overturn the resolution of a popular assembly. There were giants in Poland in the time of my forefathers."

Europe's below-replacement-level birthrates have created situations that would have been unimaginable when the 1940s and early 1950s. By the middle of this century, if present fertility patterns continue, 60 percent of the Italian people will have no personal experience of a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin;[1] Germany will lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany; and Spain's population will decline by almost one-quarter. Europe is depopulating itself at a rate unseen since the Black Death of the fourteenth century.[2] And one result of that is a Europe that is increasingly "senescent" (as British historian Niall Ferguson has put it).[3]
[...]
Take, for example, the proposal made by a French Jesuit, Henri de Lubac, during World War II. De Lubac argued that Europe's torments in the 1940s were the "real world" results of defective ideas, which he summarized under the rubric "atheistic humanism"-the deliberate rejection of the God of the Bible in the name of authentic human liberation. This, de Lubac suggested, was something entirely new. Biblical man had perceived his relationship to the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as a liberation[;...] biblical man believed that he was obliged to work toward the humanization of the world. One of European civilization's deepest and most distinctive cultural characteristics is the conviction that life is not just one damn thing after another; Europe learned that from its faith in the God of the Bible.
The proponents of nineteenth-century European atheistic humanism turned this inside out and upside down. Human freedom, they argued, could not coexist with the God of Jews and Christians. Human greatness required rejecting the biblical God, according to such avatars of atheistic humanism as Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. And here, Father de Lubac argued, were ideas with consequences-lethal consequences, as it turned out. For when you marry modern technology to the ideas of atheistic humanism, what you get are the great mid-twentieth century tyrannies-communism, fascism, Nazism.

This is why religion in public service matters more than bureaucratic skills.

I would be willing to bet that all of the major protagonists were self-avowed Christians

That would likely be true with respect to Catholic dominated Austria and Hungary, Lutheran dominated Prussia/Germany, Anglican dominated Britain, and Orthodox Russia and Serbia. However, both France and Italy had undergone anticlerical periods prior to the outbreak of World War I. The Catholic Church, which lost the Papal States as part of the unification of Italy, did not recognize the legitimacy of the Italian government. In part due to reaction against the persecution of Alfred Dreyfus, France had entirely severed church-state ties. Although in 1914 the majority of Frenchmen and Italians were Catholic, the leadership of those nations was anticlerical.

Europeans and Americans usually think of "history" as the product of politics (the struggle for power) or economics (the production of wealth). The first way of thinking is a by-product of the French Revolution; the second is one of the exhaust fumes of Marxism.

Well, no. That first approach to history has antecedents reaching all the way back to Herodotus. And the second approach subsumes the first (at least in the opinion of the Marxists). The sort of demographic approach to history that the author is alluding to here dates at least back to Gibbon and probably far beyond. Not a promising beginning.

This is why religion in public service matters more than bureaucratic skills.

I finally read the entire article at Frontpage.com. I also read all the posts on this thread. No doubt Europe is not repopulating itself, but other than a Catholic theologian's conclusions after discussing what Europe has gone through the past 80 or so years, there seems little justification for requiring Christianity to be imbued into either their governments or ours. As a practicing Catholic, I presume you would abhor birth control measures which seems to be the biggest contributor to that situation.

But on another note, if a majority of Americans do not want religion permeating government, would you accept their judgment?

The secularist project is the culture of death. It is a broad phenomenon, which includes various tools of promiscuity, familiarity with and even desirability of, some death, -- e.g. death on the battlefield, abortion, or euthanasia, lack of interest in procreation, and inability to understand human dignity and freedom. The proposed cure is not letting priests run the government, as you probably imagine, but rather a revolution of the mindset, which cannot happen outside of the church. Catholics grasp the notion instantly, and so does the left.

the proposed cure is not letting priests run the government, as you probably imagine, but rather a revolution of the mindset, which cannot happen outside of the church. Catholics grasp the notion instantly, and so does the left.

I presume then that you do not believe in either democracy or a republican form of government? Do you believe in the freedoms we have here in this country? Do you believe that people have a right to chose for themselves what values they will embrace? These are not frivolous questions because what you appear to want could not ever come from the voting booth, and must therefore, come out of some other means.

The mindset does not come from the voting booth directly, but the place of the Church in the public square -- that is, in public display of religiosity and religious education, -- can be threatened by law. I would advocate abolition of laws that inhibit or dilute Christianity through legal means available to us.

I have doubts regarding the ability of the political system in Europe today to defend or even define liberty. If it rises up to the test, I'd be ecstatic. If it doesn't, and the chances are it won't, then some form of feudalism will replace it in a generation or two.

I think that the outlook for the United States is less bleak, first because it looks like Europe is going to go off the cliff first and we'll have a chance to learn from its demise, and second because the deposit of faith is stronger in the US. But the same virus that has infected Europe today is at work in our own system.

But the important question remains...Would you defer to the voters for such approval? If not, by what means would you advocate the abolition of such laws?

What is it about the political system in Europe that you believe works against those who vote there?

I would advocate civil disobedience in matters of Christian conscience, and avoidance of secular institutions. For example, the Vatican asked the Christian public servants in Spain to disobey the orders to marry homosexuals. This is a good start. It is already mandated on the Catholics to avoid secular schools when Catholic schools are available. The Vatican would do well, I think, to remind the Europeans of this obligation.

The defects of the European system are the centralizing trend combined with the secular relativism. This article did a very good job highlighting these defects. They lead to the gradual loss of freedom, even though electoral majorities might be available from time to time to effect these destructive changes.

I would advocate civil disobedience in matters of Christian conscience, and avoidance of secular institutions

I think most folks would not have any heartburn with that, as long as there was no imposition of theological law on anyone not desiring it, and that such civil disobedience did not unfavorably impact others.

The defects of the European system are the centralizing trend combined with the secular relativism. This article did a very good job highlighting these defects.

To be sure, Europe has its problems. The author is hardly an unbiased onlooker however. To reach such conclusions is simply to look deep within your faith and draw upon them as the "obvious" culprits. Given the political, military and economic history of Europe over the past 80 years, anyone could name a dozen reasons justifying where it is today, and they would be just as accurate, and probably far less agenda driven. The history of Europe over the past thousand years has been one of conflict, much of it driven by religious, especially Roman Catholic, objectives. The centralization (I presume you are referring to the EU) is far more the result of a desire for peace and stability than simply falling prey to secular relativism. As for Weigel and his agenda, you can't possibly think Weigel would arrive at any other conclusion, do you?

Dechristianization of Europe happened roughly at the same time. So, what is your theory?

I think you are once again hitting that logic trap. Because there was a drop in the rate of Christians in Europe during these bad times does not automatically make that the culprit, if a culprit exists. There are those who believe that the stable population rates in Europe are the best thing that could happen while Europe sorts out its priorities. Clearly the two specific reasons for the population growth rate reduction are birth control and emigration. Not sure though how that compares to the Black Death.

The author's view that among other things, the culture going defunct is resulting in civilizational suicide is not supported by the facts. Almost every nation in Europe has a higher literacy rate than the US. Whether we approve or not, crime rates are generally lower, and health is generally higher. I'm not aware of any of those countries that are not democratic, so apparently the people are satisfied with the progress.

Europe is a net importer of oil and does have environmental problems, so perhaps a stable or lowered population growth is a good thing, at least from that viewpoint.

It seems clear that the two wars and two tyrannies which left Europe devastated were the principal causes of its current policies toward centralization for security, to restore the environment, ensure economic stability, high education levels, and a healthy and prosperous population. If those goals are destroying a culture that permeated Europe in earlier periods, I see no Europeans shedding many tears. Nor do I hear any of them describing all of this as civilizational suicide. It may turn out that way, because most flirtations with centralized government and socialized economies have failed in the long run. But to believe today's Europe fails when compared to the historical Europe is simply to deny reality.

Indeed time coincidence is not proof. The proof is in the article -- at least in shorthand, and if certain code words such as "culture of death" are not meaningful to a non-Catholic, I can explain.

The literacy rates and such are surface. The overall contentment is in itself a bad symptom. What we have is the two wars, the two totalitarian plagues and voluntary depopulation (it is not population stability -- the numbers, and the comparison to the Black Death are in the article), accompanied by Islamization. Call it what you will, it is unprecedented and requires explanation. You did not offer any.

The proof is in the article -- at least in shorthand, and if certain code words such as "culture of death" are not meaningful to a non-Catholic, I can explain.

I assume you are referring to abortion? Generally liberal abortion laws together with more available birth control and later marriages all have contributed to this declining growth rate.

The literacy rates and such are surface. The overall contentment is in itself a bad symptom

Not sure how you measure an improved civilization if not for literacy rates "and such". Surveys show that most Europeans are happy with their lifestyle, they recognize the dangers inherent in the continual socialized way of life, especially the shorter work week, great retirement, and the lucrative welfare state. Still, none of this reflects any linkage to the lower level of influence of Christianity in Europe.

What we have is the two wars, the two totalitarian plagues and voluntary depopulation (it is not population stability -- the numbers, and the comparison to the Black Death are in the article), accompanied by Islamization. Call it what you will, it is unprecedented and requires explanation. You did not offer any.

What I offered you was a picture of Europe that was somewhat different from that which Mr. Weigel describes. Right or wrong, the lowered population growth in Europe is completely explained. You may call it the culture of death, and as for abortions, I can't disagree with that. But as a Catholic, I presume you would take the same position on birth control, which is a far greater factor in this growth rate. Your author discusses the two wars and the two tyrannies as part of all of this. Neither communism nor Nazism exist for all intents and purposes any more in Europe. Isn't that a good thing? The Black Death killed 30 million people in about 3 years. Please show me statistics reflecting that kind of impact.

As an aside, I recently saw an article that showed a sharp decline in the influence of the Church during and after the plague, because the clergy was telling everyone that it's God's will. Obviously, most people would simply not accept that, then or now.

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