Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent

Back in 2002, Pat Buchanan wrote the short article Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent (click on the title to read the article in full).

Noting that “economic union leads inexorably to political union,” Buchanan warns of a unified European state coming with a successful universal European currency (i.e. the Euro). It happened in the U.S. with Hamilton and it happened in Germany under Bismarck. Unlike Germany and the U.S., however, Europe as a whole is divided by a multiplicity of cultures and tongues. Will European technocrats attempt to eradicate this as they have done so well to eradicate the Faith along with Europe’s population? Who, after all, needs an atom bomb when a condom or an abortionist can do the same thing? Buchanan writes that:

Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America will add 3 billion to 4 billion people – 30 to 40 new Mexicos! – as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany. By 2050, the median age in Europe will be 50, nine years older than the oldest nation on earth today, Japan. One in 10 Europeans will be over 80. And who will take care of these scores of millions of elderly, before the Dutch doctors arrive at the nursing home?

Even the Euopean Union itself recognizes the rapid and dangerous decline.

As European nations continue to depopulate, immigration from the Middle East is accelerating and the numbers of European Muslims, who are not afraid of having children, are beginning to rise dramatically. As Buchanan says: “Just as Europe once invaded and colonized Asia, Africa and the Near East, the once-subject peoples are coming to colonize the mother countries. And as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are going up.”

Catholics must make the argument which supports national sovereignty, the separation of church and state, and the nature of the Catholic Church as the way to lead Europe and the world towards a union in a universal faith rather than a universal state. If we are to restore the faith to Europe and continue spreading it abroad, we must be able to articulate the nations under God and the calling of all men into the body of Christ.