The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God

From Publishers Weekly
Paris's modernist La Grande Arche de la Défense and the Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame serve as metaphors for papal biographer Weigel's (Witness to Hope) examination of what has happened to Europe in the last several decades and its significance to Americans. Weigel, an American Catholic theologian who has lived and worked on the continent, defines the "Europe problem" as the sharp divergence of European views on democracy, the world and politics from those held by Americans like himself. For him, La Grande Arche ("The Cube") symbolizes the new Europe, retreating from democracy, en route to depoliticization, enamored of international organizations and intellectually Christophobic. Notre-Dame, which guidebooks claim would fit inside the Cube, embodies Europe's Christian history, now strangely absent from the constitution of the European Union. Weigel traces the "Europe problem" to the 19th-century rise of "atheistic humanism" and "the related triumph of secularization, or de-Christianization, in western Europe." He urges Americans to pay attention to what has happened there because it has implications for the future of democracy in the United States and throughout the world. In developing his thesis, Weigel draws on diverse sources, including the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who has been keenly interested in Europe's democracies. Readers given to pondering European affairs will find much to pique thoughtful discussion. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Catholic neoconservative Weigel maintains that the weighty preamble to the European Union's proposed constitution demonstrates what is wrong with Europe. The document doesn't mention Christianity as a factor in the formation of Europe, instead touting the nonreligious influences of the pre-Christian ancients and the Enlightenment. The omission produced heated debate but little rewriting, indicating, Weigel says, elite Europeans' hostility to Christianity and reflecting the union's bureaucratic orientation against politics, especially the democracy that Christianity, with its concern for individual human dignity, fosters uniquely among the great world religions. Weigel raises many questions about contemporary European actions, attitudes, and developments--in particular, the precipitate decline of the overall nonimmigrant European birth rate--on the way to concluding that Europe's leadership is bored with life. Those questions and a host of incidental observations are very intriguing and provocative, but Weigel's championing of Catholicism, Poland, and especially the Christ-centered humanism of the present pope as restoratives for a sick Europe may strike many as banking on very long shots. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Commentary
"One of the most lively, learned, and articulate intellectuals on the American scene."

National Catholic Reporter
"Riveting."

Wall Street Journal
"Clearheaded and elegant."

Mary Anne Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University
"One of America's most insightful and articulate intellectuals."

the late Eugene V. Rostow, former Dean, Yale Law School; former Undersecretary of State
"In the tradition of John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr...one of the outstanding social critics of our time."

Book Description
One of America's foremost public intellectuals argues that Europe's abandonment of its spiritual and cultural roots raises urgent questions about democracy's future around the world - including the United States Why do Europeans and Americans see the world so differently? Why do Europeans and Americans have such different understandings of democracy and its discontents in the twenty-first century? Contrasting the civilization that produced the starkly modernist "cube" of the Great Arch of La DŽfense in Paris with the civilization that produced the "cathedral" of Notre-Dame, George Weigel argues that Europe's embrace of a narrow secularism has led to a crisis of morale that is eroding Europe's soul and threatening its future-with dire lessons for the rest of the democratic world. Weigel traces the origins of "Europe's problem" to the atheistic humanism of the nineteenth-century European intellectual life, which set in motion a historical process that produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, the Gulag, Auschwitz, the Cold War-and, most ominously, the Continent's de-population, which is worse today than during the Black Death. And yet, many Europeans still insist-most recently, during the debate over a new EU constitution-that only a public square shorn of religiously-informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. Precisely the opposite, Weigel suggests, is true: the people of the "cathedral" can give a compelling account of their commitment to everyone's freedom; the people of the "cube" cannot. Can there be any true "politics"-any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedom-without God? George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is "No," because, in the final analysis, societies are only as great as their spiritual aspirations.

About the Author
George Weigel, one of America's most distinguished public intellectuals, is the author of a dozen books, including the international bestseller, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. Basic has been proud to publish his two most recent books, The Courage To Be Catholic and Letters to a Young Catholic. A Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, Weigel is also a consultant on Vatican affairs for NBC News and a frequent contributor of op-eds, essays, and reviews to numerous periodicals. He lives with his wife and family in North Bethesda, Maryland.


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Can the EU make the world safe for democracy? Not if it continues to deny its Christian roots, says Weigel (The Truth of Catholicism, 2001, etc.). Weigel's pithy polemic boldly assesses contemporary Europe. In his view, it's in peril. Its traditional populations are shrinking, and millions of Muslims are immigrating to western Europe; within 30 or so years, the majority of teenagers in the Netherlands will be Muslim. The EU is bent on pedaling "soft power" instead of military might, diplomacy instead of coercion-all well and good if it works, but hawkish Weigel suspects that it won't. What is the essence of the problem? It can been seen in the new EU constitution, which claims that European civilization grew from the soil of ancient Greece and the Enlightenment, making no mention of Christianity. Indeed, during the 2004 debate over the constitution, when lobbyists (including the pope) urged the EU to acknowledge Europe's Christian heritage, a Swedish member of the constitutional convention thought these lobbyists were joking, and many other commentators worried that mention of Christianity's role in shaping European mores might "exclude" non-Christians. (On that argument, Weigel wryly notes that the mention of the Enlightenment "excludes" postmodernists.) The author argues that this thin secularism, an agreement among Europeans to be officially neutral on matters of worldview, religion, and morality, will fail the very things the EU claims it wants to safeguard and promote: democracy and human freedom. It's quite a provocative stance, but Weigel sprinkles his own conservative Catholicism so readily throughout the text that readers who might have been persuaded by the contours of hisargument may well dismiss him as a right-wing nut. For example, admitting that America too has problems, he confines his list thereof to abortion, gay marriage, political correctness at universities, "courts usurping the prerogatives of legislatures," and the like. No mention of, say, environmental degradation or unchecked consumerism. Sure to be much discussed-and possibly to be remarkably influential.


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