The Buttiglione case as seen by Buttiglione

(Translated from Spanish by Peter J. Colosi)

Presentation at the VI Congress on Catholics and Public Life Saturday
November 20, 2004

I was a candidate to be a European Commissioner and I presented myself
at the hearing with an extremely Nicodemian attitude. If you recall
Nicodemus, the disciple of Jesus who had much fear, was not a very
valiant man, did not have much courage and was very prudent; I was
superlatively prudent. Some say: Buttiglione had the right to present
his Catholic principles, but he was imprudent, this was not the
appropriate place.

One may think: We would exhibit shame of our principles if we
cannot express them in public. But to this I do not want to respond. I
was afraid, I was not ashamed; fear and it was not of a provocative
manner. They introduced the category of sin into the political
discourse, and I said "no, in politics we may not speak of sin, we
should speak of non-discrimination, and I am solidly opposed to
discrimination against homosexuals and of any type of discrimination,"
but they insisted and I did not say that homosexuality is a sin, as many
newspapers picked up. I said "I may think." It is possible that I think
[this], but I did not tell them whether I think this or not, but it is
possible that I think it. But this has no impact whatsoever on politics,
because in politics the problem is the principle concerning
discrimination and I accept the principle concerning discrimination.
That was not enough, they were asking for me to have said that I see
nothing objectionable with homosexuality and this I cannot do because I
do not think this, and because in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
it is written that homosexuality is not a sin but rather an objectively
disordered condition from a moral point of view, which can become a sin
if one adds the subjective element, which is to say, full knowledge that
this is wrong and also freedom of the will which accepts this wrong
position. This I was not allowed to say that and for this reason I am
not worthy to be a European commissioner. This is not so important for
me, because in life there just are political battles, you win some, you
lose some, this is a normal part of life.

Catholics have the right to hold positions in the European
Union. Are we able to conceive of a form of prohibition of exercising
public office by Catholics because of their Catholicism? Because of the
fact that they take the position which the Church has? Some say that the
Catholic position on sexuality is aberrant and I do not want this to
become grounds for discrimination at the EU or in regard to holding
public office. But a catholic who says that perhaps it is possible that
homosexuality would be a sin can be discriminated against. I found
myself in a position in which I clearly had to decide with respect to
whether I would keep my position, between my faith (or if not my faith
at least the doctrine of my faith) or to accept being discriminated
against. For my faith I was able to sacrifice a seat in the EU, which is
not such an important thing. Ultimately, this is what happened.

I don't know if God would give me the courage to offer my head
for my faith, like St. Thomas More, I hope I am never in a position to
find out, but to the point of a seat at the commission, I can. But there
is a problem, it is a problem concerning the nature of democratic
institutions, because behind this we have the underlying problem of
liberalism and what it means to be liberal/free, and what it means to
have a liberal constitution or a liberal democracy in Europe today. We
have two visions, one which I consider to be effectively liberal and the
other, which I consider to be an antiliberal perversion of liberalism.

In the first vision, the State does not have an efficacious vision as
such, the State does not think about producing the values which are
necessary for civil life. The State knows that values need to be
produced by others: churches and the culture; values are produced in the
sphere of culture; and thus, the State has a positive attitude before
the sphere of culture, it recognizes the role of churches in society and
accepts the role they exercise. The other vision is a more continental
European vision, it is the vision of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau
thinks that the State should produce its values, that we need a civil
religion and the revealed religions, revealed in quotations marks, must
be subject to this state religion. This was the beginning of classical
totalitarianism, because Marxism, Fascism and National Socialism were
the civil religions of the Europe of yesterday.

And today, what is happening? What is happening is that there is a
section on the left in Europe with the tendency to affirm a new civil
religion, a new religion that affirms that it is not permitted to have
strong ethical convictions, and that democracy must base itself on
relativism, and that relativism means that there is no distinction
between good and bad. I think that this is wrong, I think that our
democracy needs a different foundation and that foundation is the
Christian notion of freedom, Christian and also liberal with respect to
freedom, which means that I have the right to think that you are wrong
and at the same time I am ready to give my life so that you may have the
right to be wrong, because if you have what is good not through your own
freedom, but imposed from without, this would not have moral value, it
would have moral disvalue.

Respect for the human person and his rights is the basis of an authentic
democracy. Cultural relativism is not an adequate foundation for
democracy. I would like to quote two very important authors who hold
this point of view. The first is a great expert on totalitarianism,
Benito Mussolini. Benito Mussolini wrote that fascism is the political
expression of the most modern currents of contemporary philosophy, that
is to say, of relativism. Because if there is not an objective truth
that we must respect, then each individual will have the right to
utilize whatever power he has: physical power, intellectual power, the
power to manipulate through media communications, in order to impose on
others his vision of the world. And this is not exactly what we consider
to be democracy, this is the beginning of totalitarianism.

The other author I want to cite is Plato. In The Republic Plato
explains to us that democracies die at the hands of ethical relativism.
He doesn't say "ethical relativism", he lives in the time of the
Sophists. If there is no distinction between good and bad, the
politician can do anything.

What motivation does the politician have to resist corruption, the great
danger of our democracies? What motivation does the politician have to
not manipulate public opinion? What motivation does the politician have
to remain faithful? Without conscience there is no politics and there is
a corruption from the inside of the democratic process. I think there is
something similar discussed in Veritatis Splendor, there we also have
this idea: The adequate foundation of democracy is not ethical
relativism, but rather the idea of the human person, of respect for the
human person, of the right of the human person and of the correct
relation between freedom and truth.

I want to add that also in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor there is
something else similar: the truth wants to be the form of human action
and can be the form of human action only through human freedom, this is
the mother of democracy. Europe has to choose between two models of
democracy, one or the other, and I believe that this is the matter being
decided in a democratic battle, in a democratic fight, which is going to
last many years. And the concern I have, and the hope that I have, is
that my particular case can be an occasion, an aid, not only for
Christians, for those who believe in the freedom to mobilize and to open
up a discussion about the adequate foundation of democracy.

Not all evil is only evil, there is always something positive in evil.
That which was for me an evil, I believe has something positive within
it for all of us. Perhaps for the first time one will speak about Europe
not to complain about bureaucratic problems, but rather to ask ourselves
what is conscience, what are values, and what is the identity of Europe.
And there are, of course, in Europe, groups, not so large, but very well
organized and mobilized, who see a non Christian foundation of Europe;
and the Christians, I don't know if they are a majority or a minority,
but they are very little mobilized.

I know that there is a discussion, "Are Christians a majority or a
minority in Europe? Is this Europe Christian or not?" I think it is a
false question. Europe is not Christian and nor is it non-Christian. I
believe there has never really been a Christian Europe, I believe that
Europe always lives the tension between faith and disbelief. It is
living it in our time as it has always lived it. And in this tension
between faith and disbelief we have to take a position. And we can be
victorious if in the first place we ourselves have faith, because
nothing has the power to convince as does conviction*Christians who have
no faith cannot convince others of the human truth of their position.

And in the second place, if we have the courage to mobilize ourselves
and to become actual in public life - which does not mean to impose our
positions on others, but to defend the liberty of all and to participate
with our vision of man. Sometimes we will have a majority, and at others
we won't, and Europe will follow its path, which it is a path of
dialogue between faith and disbelief, which is constitutive of the
conscience of Europe, of our conscience. I want to add some things
concerning the theme of this conference: "Europe, be yourself," which
means (I am the fortunate husband of a psychoanalyst who always says
that it is necessary to have in the family at least one person with a
serious job and that I may concede to myself the luxury of politics
because she has a serious job; and she has familiarized me a bit with
the thought of Sigmund Freud): Europe is like a man, everyone of us
forms his conscience in dialogue and in a relation with his father and
his mother; this dialogue is difficult, there are shocks, fights, we may
break with and reconcile with each other, it is not easy to be a son or
daughter, but it is more difficult to be a parent.

Someone who does not live in this dialogue condemns himself to
living superficially and cannot mobilize the profound depths of his human
reality. Who are the fathers and mothers of Europe? They are Socrates
and Christ, born of the encounter between the Judeo-Christian religion
and Greek and Latin thought. And of course there are many different
positions within this dialogue: Philosophers who say that Christ is a
philosopher, not the son of God, but the master of morality (Hegel in
the writings of his youth), or the Christians who say that Socrates in
reality is a prophet of Christ and prepared the pagans for an encounter
with Christ, Saint Augustine, we recently celebrated his anniversary, in
the City of God Saint Augustine gives us the idea that Christ is a kind
of Moses.

So, to be European means to participate in this dialogue, it doesn't
matter what position one takes in this dialogue but a person who remains
indifferent in this dialogue may well be an excellent person, but he is
not a European. And a Europe which does not have the courage to confront
itself with these roots - it is not as if they have some other thing -
it is as if they have made a complete break with their family. It is not
as if they can give themselves other fathers and mothers, it is not as
if they can be another person, it is simply the same person who lives
superficially, and does not reach the depths of his authentic identity.

In the same way, a Europe that does not have the courage to
enter into this dialogue, to confront these roots, is a Europe which
lives superficially. And we need a Europe that has power, and this is
the reason why I believe it is a bad thing that in the preamble there is
not only no mention of the Christians roots of Europe, but also the
Judeo-Christian and Greco-Latin roots of Europe. But a preamble is only a
preamble, and not so important.

I would like to add some things about the Constitution that we have: If
I had had the opportunity to write the Constitution, I would have
written something different, but this is the only one we have, it is the
only one that brings us all together. We need a constitution. It isn't
very good, but it isn't very bad either. It lacks the references to the
roots, but very clear in the first article of The Charter of The
Declaration of Human Rights is the clear reference to the human person
as the center of the juridical and political order, and this is also
fundamental and it is a fundamentally Christian idea; it is the same as
that which is at the beginning of the encyclical Redemptoris hominis:
God revealing to man the truth about himself (about God), revealed at
the same time the truth about man, that man is a person too. And person
means that he is free, that he has the duty and the right to look for
truth, but to look for it in his freedom and through his freedom because
the truth, as my old teacher Augusto del Noche always used to say: it is
a thing that no one can think for you, you have to think it: you, you
yourself have to discover it and if it is imposed then it isn't truth
because you didn't think it, it doesn't have the value of the truth.

And to be a person means also that freedom is given in order to
search for truth, but also to give oneself in love, because we are free
in order to have the possibility to fall in love. And here there is
something that may seem paradoxical: the man in love, the married man,
is more free than the man who is single. To create a community with a
woman, to promise yourself to her, to have children, to educate
children, is the highest expression of human freedom in the natural
order.

And here we discover another political problem., which is the problem of
the family. Because today the family is the subject most discriminated
against in Europe. To have children means that one of the two in the
couple, perhaps always the woman, must sacrifice an important part of
her professional career, it means that we have to spend much money on
the children, to invest a great part of our energies into the education
of the children, and all this is a fact that has social relevance, it is
a social role, because without children, Spain dies, Italy dies, Europe
dies, humanity dies.

And when children are mature they pay taxes and contribute to the
pensions of those who didn't want to have children - and for this reason
became more rich, and had more money to spend. Is this just? It is just
only if there is a politics which favors the family, which gives the
family fiscal justice, helps that member of the couple, perhaps always
the woman, who renounces a part of her professional career and for the
social tasks of the family, this is just only if there is a politics of
the family, which is not a solidarity with families, it is a duty of
justice before families. For this category is the most clearly
discriminated against in Europe and we have a culture that does not want
to recognize this, we have politics that does not want to recognize
this.

They attacked me also for being chauvinist, and I want to say
that I think that the problem of today is that the woman has a right to
a professional career but she also has the right to be a mother. And we
as men should not consider as second class, women as second class
citizens, who freely chose not to have a career in order to consecrate
themselves to the education of their children. They must not be a
discriminated group. On the other hand we must not fault those women who
desire to have a professional career and children: we need a politics
which permits a woman to freely choose how to divide her commitments, we
need work schedules which can be compatible with family schedules, etc.

If we don't do this, Europe will be over: we already have few children,
in a few years we won't have hardly any. And also there is the idea of
those who do not want to see this capacity of man to bind himself to
another, to form a community beginning with the family, and who think of
a Europe of isolated individuals who do not constitute community, who do
not marry because they are afraid of falling in love, and when they do
fall in love they don't have the courage to think that it can last
forever, a courage which is needed to commit oneself. And the result is
a Europe where children are not born and if they are born they don't
have the optimal conditions to be educated and to flourish and mature.
This means many things for the future, because this is going to be a
fundamental theme in European politics for the next years, and this is
not only a European question, it is a question of national states. There
is a pressure to legalize gay marriage, this is not the problem, the
problem is the abolition of marriage, it is the ignoring of the
difference between this reality which has a social function and other
forms of living together which I respect, but which do not have a social
function, and I don't see why the state has to sustain them, or why it
has to give them a social relevance.

In life private rights are proportionate to the instruments that those
couples who are not a family need to order their life. I am not against
the idea that the state facilitate in some ways that may help these
people to live better, but it is not a family, it is something different
than family. And to say that everything is a family is to say that
nothing is a family. Another observation about this Europe and
modernity: there is a vision that I do not share, which sees the history
of Europe as a process of secularization and also of
dechristianization, like a curve on a Cartesian coordinate system where
here is religiosity and here is time and the process of secularization.
Christianity diminishes until it disappears. I believe that this is not
certain. Catholics also have much responsibility in this vision of
history because they always idealize a past which is supposed to be more
Christian than the present, but do we really think that the 30's, the
years of communism, fascism, national socialism were more Christian than
the present years? I don't think so. I think that there has always been
a fight between Christianity and other things and this also exists in
the heart of every one of us. And we have had the years of the civil
religion of nationalism and fascism, and then it fell apart and in this
falling apart there was a period of rechristianization, the 50's, 60's,
and after with the 70's there began another curve of dechristianization.
Perhaps today we are in a change, we are entering a phase of
rechristianization.

You know what happened in the United States, they accused me of being a
theocon, which one does not know what it means, because in America there
are the neocons, but the theocons don't exist. Eh, I don't believe we
have to imitate America, but it is interesting and it is a problem for
the left that Europe is modernity; they are more ahead of us, they have
more technical progress than we do, they have more economic efficiency
than we do, and they have more religion.

This means that it is not true that the process of modernization is
necessarily tied to a process of dechristianization and it becomes
transparent when they say it is rural America: in America there aren't
59 farmers, there are 2 million agricultural entrepreneurs throughout
the whole US, the truth is different, it is that in America they have
already lived through the peak of secularization and they entered a
different period. Because they became aware, for example, that we can
criticize the family, that we can destroy the family, but we don't have
an agency that can substitute the family in its fundamental social role,
and family values became transformed into a fundamental element of the
political life of America. Not only among Republicans, because before
the freedom commission of the parliament of Europe not only was Bush
rejected, but so was Kerry, because he also has said, for example, that
abortion is morally bad, even though he thinks that it should not be an
object of juridical sanction.

He said that, and it does not correspond with the new autonomy
[autorosía] that they intend to impose, that they are planning to impose
on Europe. There has been a change. I think that a change is possible
also in Europe. There are interesting elements. In the plane on my way
to Madrid I was reading Il Corriere dela Sera and there was an
interesting poll. Do you know that that the clear majority of Italian
youth are against abortion? Did you think this was possible? It is so. I
want to say also that it is a majority of Italian youth, a much smaller
majority, but a majority of them, in favor of euthanasia. This signifies
that they are looking for their path and that in this search
Christianity is a viable option, and it would interest them, but we need
courage, we need courage in the Church.

I don't know if you like to read statistics, it is always very
interesting what you can learn there, and it has a great impact. Do you
know how many Italians think they are practicing Catholics? 57%. Do you
know how many of those go to Mass on Sunday? Half. What does this mean?
It means that many people would be able to practice more if the Church
had more capacity for attraction, more capacity for dialogue, more
capacity to be present among the people. Europe is not Christian but
neither is it non-Christian. Europe, like the Italian young people, is
looking for its path. In order to discover this path, in order to
discover Christ as an adequate response to the desire of the heart of
man, it is necessary that there be Christians who give testimony, who
have the courage to be that which they are. I could say many things, but
the time is up. And I consider it a privilege to have spoken with you
and a success that, it seems to me, no one has fallen asleep.