George Weigel, Catholic Lite and the death of Europe

At First Things, George Weigel writes an article discussing the demographic suicide of Europe.  

He begins by recalling the main points of a book he wrote some ten years ago, and a particular response from an Italian Euro-parliamentarian:

“Look, we know we’re finished. We’re trying to arrange things so that we can die comfortably in our beds. Don’t you Yanks come over here and start stirring things up.” 

He notes that he was reminded of this after the recent French election where it had been pointed out:

that the prime ministers or presidents of Europe’s largest economies—and of all the European members of that exclusive global club, the G7—are without children

 He then turns to what he refers to as the Catholic Lite Brigade.

In recent years, the Catholic Lite Brigade has reasserted itself in western Europe and in the counsels of the world Church. It is time to ask whether Catholic Lite—as displayed in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere—does not have something to do with Europe’s demographic meltdown. It is time to ask whether Catholic Lite is not at least partially responsible, not only for Europe’s self-chosen sterility, but for Europe’s rapidly accelerating embrace of euthanasia. It is time to ask why Catholic Lite has been such an abysmal failure in forming public moral cultures in which self-gift, not self-aggrandizement, is the touchstone of human aspiration.

The gift of self, a hallmark phrase that echoes in the documents of Vatican II and the writings of Pope St John Paul II, is the antithesis of self aggrandizement.  

In our own culture, the failure to recognize that marriage
is a gift from God, a gift of self in the light of Christ, leads to a death, a self-inflicted death for our culture too.  


Be sure to read Weigel's article in its' entirety.