Contrasts and Contradiction

This book is a valedictory study. It follows my five books under the joint title “Footprints of the Twentieth Century” and presents the outcome of further research and reflection on the much broader subject of Europe’s Christian Heritage. As history over two millennia, it is a much more complex and controversial subject than originally thought. Persecution of the Jews dates from the early second century (AD) and continued in modern Anti-Semitism and the Shoa. When the Church becomes the official church in the fourth century and adopts the Roman structure of a single-headed authority, relations with the Jews and so-called heretics become politicized. Their disfranchisement becomes the source of further conflicts, wars and divisions; with the Islam, between the Greek East and the Latin West, in the Reformation and thereafter in the Enlightenment and the totalitarian ideologies (chapters 3-7). The third temptation of power (in the Gospel of Matthew) is at the origin of such political theology, of religious wars, of the Grand Inquisitor (chapter 2), and the doctrines of self-righteousness. Christ’s mission was: to be a sign of contradiction with his Mother Holy Mary. He was followed by the Apostles (chapter 1), it was practiced in Christian families, in Sacred Spaces and holy life (chapter 8 and 9), by Saints and creative faithful in education, arts and sciences (chapters 10 and 11). Faith grew primarily through them, that is from below. This books concludes (in chapter 12) with the Second Millennium reflections of Holy Pope John-Paul II on remembering the Year of Truth 1989, on purifying our memory, on developing a wider vision of peace, on living in freedom and human dignity and respect for life from conception to natural death, and on repentance and mercy. After its conclusion Europe has entered a new world war. All I can do is pray for peace.