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| Cologne 1945. Iconically, the Cathedral Was Spared! |
The end of the Second World War has left Germany and the whole of Central Europe in a state of material ruin and social disintegration such as we have not known since the Thirty Years War. And behind the blasted cities and the ruined lives there is the deeper spiritual tragedy of Europe's fate. For during the last 100 years Western Man has had an opportunity unique in the history of humanity. Science has given us powers over nature and man which surpass the wildest dreams of former constructions of utopias. But then powers have been perverted to the service of death, so that they now threaten to destroy the very civilization that has created them. What is the cause of this tremendous failure? It is the result of a profound dislocation that has taken place between the spiritual and material development of our civilization.
The knowledge of our men of science has outstripped the wisdom of our statesmen and the latter have lost touch with the spiritual foundations on which our civilization was founded. Europe was built on Faith and Freedom and Law.
A godless society becomes a society without law, and a lawless society becomes a society without freedom. The 19th century believed that liberty was the panacea for all human ills and that it had only to be applied to politics, to economics, and to culture to bring about the millenium. But we have now seen that freedom may mean the rule of lawlessness and oppression and the unleashing of the dark forces of cruelty and destruction which have been partially controlled by the age long discipline of Christian civilization. Freedom is not enough. Even Law is not enough, unless it stands on something deeper and higher than the will and power of man. This foundation is Faith and so long as this remains it is still possible to rebuild the shattered order of our society and our civilization.
It is therefore to the Christians of Germany that I speak tonight--to the men and women who have kept the truth through these dark years when the forces of evil seemed triumphant--for they have at once the heaviest task and the greatest opportunity that has ever fallen to the lot of man. It is true that the task and the responsibility is common to us all, but it is in Germany that the power of destruction has gone furthest and where the necessity of restoring the shattered foundations of social order is more pressing and unavoidable. We in the West have talked a great deal about the problem of reeducation--often, I fear, in a superficial political sense. But it is very certain that if European civilization is to survive, it is necessary to carry out a profound revision of our political and social ideas, to eradicate the false ideologies that have led the nations to destruction and to restore the essential moral principles on which the life of states no less than the life of individuals depends. The modern state--and above all the totalitarian party state--has forgotten what justice means. It has founded itself upon a conception of mass power and mass interest which is sub-moral and inhuman.
In the past when Christian peoples chose their rulers they did not ask them what was their political ideology or their party allegiance. They asked them if they would do equal justice in mercy and truth, defend the cause of the weak and keep the laws committed to them as a sacred trust.
Even today in the English coronation rite, when the bishop takes the sword from the altar, he says "with this sword do Justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the Holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss and confirm what is in good order; that doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue and faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ." No doubt it will be said that all this is merely of archaeological interest and means nothing to modern man. Nevertheless these were the ideas that shaped the political institutions of Christian Europe and they bear witness to a deep seated instinct that something higher than power and material interest is essential to the constitution of the state. The loss of this intuitive recognition of divine justice as the supreme principle of social and political order is, (as Pius XII has said) the ultimate source of all the evils that afflict the modern state. It is not easy to restore this foundation when political life has become profoundly demoralized and when public opinion is hopeless and bewildered. But the greatest of the present catastrophe calls for great remedies and after all we have seen in the last years, it is clear that neither political violence nor technical efficiency can provide the solution. It is here that Christians can give a lead, for they stand for just those principles and values which the totalitarian state lacked and for the lack of which it has brought the nation to destruction. What Europe needs is not men of violence who embody the will to power and the lust of conquest, nor yet cunning politicians who can juggle skillfully with group interests and party combinations. She needs just men--what our Christian ancestors called good "justicians"--who will restore the lost prestige of Law.
The "common man," of whom we hear so much, has a natural will to justice. He may be guided by error and prejudice and passion, but he never consciously and deliberately desires an unjust government, any more than he desires a corrupt judge or a dishonest banker or an adulterous wife. The poor burg gets these things in the same way as he gets famine and war, not because he wants them but because he can't help it. If he cannot find good rulers, he chooses the bad ruler who promises him most--the most eloquent or the most efficient or the most formidable of the claimants to political power. But it is the business of Christians to see that the will to justice of the common man is not permanently frustrated in this fashion: to guide and enlighten public opinion in the true interests of the people; even, if necessary, to seek out men of good will who will stand up before the people as champions of justice for the reestablishment of true social order. That was how the Christian state was founded amidst the anarchy and confusion of the dark ages in Western Europe and it is only in this way that the present breakdown of European civilization can be checked and the foundations of a new international order created.
Christopher Dawson, BBC Talk to the Christians of Germany September 1, 1945.
The main ideas of this historic address on the unique Christian responsibility before the demands of Justice and good social order is very much akin to the more recent Address of Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament for which he was roundly applauded and received a standing ovation, despite the minority boycotting nay-saying (intolerant) bigots.