Can Africa offer lessons as Europe loses self identity?

Opinion and Analysis

Pope Francis speaks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. PHOTO | AFP 

By MUMBI NGUGI

None other than Pope Francis has warned that Europe has lost its way and risks losing its soul and self-identity.

In a recent speech before the European Parliament, he decried not just the obvious economic and demographic decline, but the more subtle and crippling aspect of this malaise: the loss of a people’s soul and sense of self.

These core elements constitute the true measure of a human being, but according to the Pope, their absence in Europe today has led to a vacuum of ideals, ethical systems lacking kindness, intellectual discourse devoid of wisdom and a cultural identity crisis.

He argued that, “… the great ideas which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their attraction, only to be replaced by the bureaucratic technicalities of its institutions”.

Critics will of course argue that the Catholic Church has no moral authority to be dispensing advice to anyone given its numerous scandals, and that to do so is the pot calling the kettle black.

But most would also agree that the personal integrity of Pope Francis himself is above reproach. Further, his non-Western worldview offers the necessary distance from which to dissect the European malaise with a measure of dispassionate objectivity.

Europe takes pride in its secularism and unlike other Western societies such as the US, invoking the name of God in public is widely associated with a certain type of irrationality.

And yet, many non-European visitors often sense the true spirit of Europe inside its hauntingly-beautiful churches, echoing not just the tragedies of the past but also the great ideals which have shaped much of the modern world.

This mass rejection of organised religion in Europe today is understandable given the checkered history of the church. Nevertheless, Christianity is one of the cornerstones of Western civilisation with modern European institutions deeply rooted in its legacy, much as many on the continent are won’t to distance themselves from this reality.

Whilst respecting the democratic freedoms of other faiths, Europeans need to unapologetically assert their own identity and values. It is after all an integral part of their cultural legacy which, like any other, has had its successes and failures.

Unfortunately, their unwillingness to embrace this heritage has resulted, according to the Pope, in the “shameful and complicit silence of so many” in the face of horrific persecution and decimation of Christians in some parts of the world, atrocities which should be leaving all Europeans morally-outraged.

Rediscovering a sense of history would help remind Europeans that their greatest thinkers and philosophers were also deeply spiritual men.

The writings of ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato reveal a clearly transcendental understanding of human existence. For example, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave reveals the duality of light versus dark consciousness and the need for humanity to escape from self-imposed earthly illusions.

But as with all spiritual traditions, the ancients’ understanding of the divine was both time and culture specific.

The ideas of their intellectual heirs, the Enlightenment philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, rejected the “divine right” of kings to rule and the monarchies’ unholy alliance with the church leadership on the basis that we are all equal in the eyes of God.