The Cube and the Cathedral

A few excerpts from Weigel's new book about the plight of Christianity in Europe:

European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular. That conviction has had crucial, indeed lethal, consequences for European public life and European culture.

Connoisseurs of political texts will note that the European constitution approved June 2004 contains some 70,000 words (almost ten times the length of the U.S. Constitution). Yet the one word that could not be fit into the constitution for the new Europe--"Christianity"--is the embodiment of a story that has arguably had more to do with "constituting" Europe than anything else.

Absent convictions, there is no tolerance; there is only indifference. (Weigel's narrower point: Because Europeans have no convictions, they're indifferent to the cultural suicide they are carrying out.)

Orthodox theologian David Hart wrote that it seemed to him 'fairly obvious that there is some direct, indissoluble bond between faith and the will to a future, or between the desire for a future and the imagination of eternity.' No faith, no future: 'This is why post-Christian Europe seems to lack not only the moral and imaginative resources for sustaining its civilization, but even any good reason for continuing to reproduce.'