The Pope's statement is at best a bit of special pleading, and at worst a distortion of the reality.

"Europe has developed a culture which, in a way never before known to humanity, excludes God from public conscience, either by being denied or by judging his existence to be uncertain and thus belonging to subjective choices, something irrelevant for public life."

Actually, one could say the same of America: our founding document could also be said to exclude God from public conscience. The Europeans have taken a different path from us in America, but in their own way they have imposed a similar separation of church and state. One has only to look at European history to understand why: their universal European experience of widespread suffering and death imposed by those who believed they knew the mind of God and used force to impose those beliefs on others. Millions of people lost their lives in religious warfare, and Europeans are rightly concerned about the role of religion in public life.

The difference is that their separation is for the most part socially enforced, while ours is legally enforced.

To illustrate, my wife tells me, from her experience living in Lyon, that even religious people in France, perhaps the most avowedly secular of European states, regard talking about one's religion to anyone but an intimate friend to be a solecism equalled in America only by insisting on sharing intimate details of one's sexual practices with a complete stranger.

Given the rantings of the religious right here in the States, and the apparent fragility of the First Amendment's religion clause, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps the Europeans made a better choice.

John, in the past you have made the argument that Bush is the right man to confront the Islamic world precisely because of his faith. I agree with this. He and the Pope both hope (in different ways) to ease the conflict by splitting jihadists from more moderate elements in the Islamic world.

The trouble is, moderate elements are hard to find. And that's not surprising, given how bloody-minded Mohammed was. Nevertheless there is a tradition of separating state from mosque in Shi'a Iran and Iraq. The US may be able to work with Shiites. But the Pope is fooling himself if he thinks the cultural and physical aggression of oil-rich Sunnis will be stopped by a reassertion of Christianity in Europe.

I assume Benedict wrote his screed before the votes in France and Netherlands. I'll bet it never occurred to him that the Euro Constitution would be spurned -- and largely for parochial reasons, not because of Christian grumbles. The Pope speaks for an older Christian Democratic elite largely supplanted by the secular Eurocracy, but I doubt he is any more capable than Dominique de Villepin of understanding the revolt in France.

Odd, Communism has also led to the loss of millions of lives, yet there remain Communist parties that compete (and garner millions of votes) in the Continental European nations.

Religion is scarier than Communism? Who knew?

As for the idea of excluding God from the American conscience, I suppose that the Declaration of Independence (admittedly not a Constitution, but an important statement of principles intended for dissemination at home and abroad) and its references to the Creator is a fluke?

But then, what is one to make of the prayer that opens the sessions of Congress?

Or the references to God among the various state constitutions?

While this trend has obviously been shifting in recent years (if not decades), to suggest that the American polity has generally excluded God from public consciousness would seem to be incorrect.

Dave

The Constitution doesn't mention God, not because the founders ever imagined a world where "God is excluded from public conscience," but for the same reason it doesn't mention a whole lot of things. It's just a general framework, with the details to be left to legislatures. The one religious thing it forbids is a State Church. That's all "Establishment of Religion" means, in 18th century lingo. That prohibition has been cruelly distorted into a general ban on religion, but such would have seemed insane to the founders. Jefferson fought for freedom of religion in Virginia not to banish religion, but because all the many sects hated paying taxes to support the Anglican state church. God has never been excluded from public conscience in America; in fact the Establishment clause helped lead to an explosion of competing sects and denominations, a religious free market that is probably one of the reasons religion is healthy and vigorous in America, and not in Europe

The Europeans haven't separated church and state, they've abandoned religion. The churches are almost empty. The synagogues are empty for another reason. (And Europe hasn't had serious religious wars since the 17th Century. It's silly to talk of "millions of people lost their lives in religious warfare." The suffering has all been imposed by secular faiths since the French Revolution.)

But what's important in this is not answers, but THE QUESTION this asks us. It may, or may not, be the biggest question of our time. And it's one you are shying away from.

Because Old Europe is also dying. It is facing catastrophic demographic decline, with its non-immigrant population reproducing at way below replacement rate. Its economies are stagnant, in fact bankrupt if you consider future liabilities. Unemployment is chronically above 10%, its immigrants not assimilated, but trapped in slums....and its best minds go elsewhere to flourish. And the days are long gone from when Europe was where one looked for exciting new ideas and developments. That's death.

THE QUESTION is, are these things causally connected with the loss of faith? And is the ailment spreading to our country? [Question: What's the one state with a declining population, despite considerable immigration?]

Europe is dying. I recently mentioned reading Lamy of Santa Fe. What a shocking change our times are, from the days when ardent young French priests and nuns went as missionaries to a needy world. What are the French or the Germans ardent for now? Nothing. They aren't for anything. They are dying, just like a person is dying if they've lost interest in new things or experiences.

That's THE QUESTION, why are they dying? One sees similar things in our own secular leftish "blue" populaces. They've become machines for generating excuses for doing nothing. "Bush lied, we're off the hook." "Abu Ghraib, oh goody, that means we're still the good guys, and don't need to do anything." That's paralysis. That's death.

Correction: I wrote, "THE QUESTION is, are these things causally connected with the loss of faith?"

I should have said, THE QUESTION is, "What's happening? Why does Europe (and Canada, and Japan) seem to be dying?" One of the possible answers is the loss of faith. There are other plausible answers.

Given the rantings of the religious right here in the States, and the apparent fragility of the First Amendment's religion clause, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps the Europeans made a better choice.

Dave, it's odd that, what with all the impending theocracy in the U.S. and all, I am free to shout all day that I think Christians (or Muslims, or etc.) are weak-brained fools, and their religion asinine, without falling afoul of any "inciting religious hatred" laws - a freedom not enjoyed, so I hear, in certain enlightened European nations. I know I pay for that freedom by having to endure the horror of tolerating the existence of people who disagree with me about embryonic stem-cell research (oh, the humanity), but, all in all, I prefer our set up.

As for your wife's experience in Lyon, what exactly is so admirable about people who equate any public discussion of religious belief with vulgar exposure of private sexual matters? Nobody likes obnoxious proselytizers (and America certainly produces her fair share of 'em); they have no manners. But the precious distaste displayed toward belief has nothing to do with good manners, either - unless you believe prissiness is a form of good manners. I laugh at religion as much as the next heathen, but the day I start drawing in my skirts and squealing in offended propriety at the sight of missionizing Mormons on the street, Witnesses leaving tracts at my door, ladies in hijab at the grocery store, or a co-worker mentioning his church - please, someone put me out of my misery.

P.S. Attacks on the establishment clause don't come only from the ranting right.

P.P.S. John, I think it's just flat wrong to say that traditionalists are not offended by other people's religions. Sure they are. One can be offended by both secular decadence and different traditional beliefs. Hell, with some people, you name it, they're offended by it.

Well, of course traditionalists can be offended. But that's not what's driving people to jihad. If any substantial number of Moslems were converting to other religions, it might be different. Or maybe not.

Traditionalist Moslems aren't worried because their daughters want to become Christian, but because they want Barbie dolls, and to blog about boys, and to wear shorts...

Also, a lot of what moves people from just being offended, to becoming violent, is our weakness. People, most of the time, attack those they think they can beat.

The more I think about it, the more I think the Pope is literally correct to say that omitting that clause could incite attack. It's like acting uncertain and nervous and stumble-footed when walking on a dark urban street. You're just asking to get mugged.

Europe is announcing loudly that it doesn't believe in the very core of its civilization. That's just asking for trouble. In fact, we should stop being nice to them, and just start telling them what to do, or else.

I can't see why one needs assume the the demographic crunch in Europe has anything to do with the decline of religion. It seems to me much more simply explained by the combination of the decline in birthrates that comes to any society as institutional sexism declines, combined with an closed attitude towards immigration.

And you say:

"It's silly to talk of 'millions of people lost their lives in religious warfare.' The suffering has all been imposed by secular faiths since the French Revolution."

Go read your history John. That's just plain and simple ignorance speaking. "The suffering has all been imposed by secular faiths..." Give me a break. Go read the history of the Thirty Years War. Go read Grimmelshausen's Adventures of a Simpleton. Do you think the cultures of Europe don't bear the imprint of that history?

I am so tired of Americans who apparently can't be bothered to try to understand other cultures or people. Do you even know how the French, for instance, view government? It's as different from the American view as their experience was. For them, government was seem as a bulwark against the power of the nobility and the Church; today it is seen as a bulwark against corporate power.

I'm not saying they're right, but you'll have utterly no chance of understanding what's going on in other countries and why they make the choices they do until you take your blinkers off and try to see the world through their eyes, understanding their history, and how it molded their culture.

Dave, I believe you've misconstrued John's "The suffering has all been imposed by secular faiths since the French Revolution." Granted, it is syntactically ambiguous. Still, I think we can credit John with knowing the dates of the Thirty Years War.

I am so tired of Americans who apparently can't be bothered to try to understand other cultures or people. Do you even know how the French, for instance, view government? It's as different from the American view as their experience was. For them, government was seem as a bulwark against the power of the nobility and the Church; today it is seen as a bulwark against corporate power.

What precisely does John say here that indicates an ignorance of French history and culture? As far as I can see, he's positing certain hypotheses about the relation of culture and religion that I have elsewhere seen advanced by learned Europeans. At any rate, I would find it difficult to to separate the ignorant from the well-informed on the basis of the above contrasitng speculations about demographic decline.

(And if, as you correctly point out, the experience of Europe re Church v. State is not comparable to America's, why do you implicitly make an "apples to apples" comparison by suggesting that "perhaps the Europeans made a better choice" in these matters?)

Dave,
I'm perfectly aware of the Thirty Years War--like I said, 17th Cent. And since Europe was vigorously Christian through the 18th and 19th Centuries, it's a stretch to imagine her turning against religion in the 20th because of lingering memories of Wallenstein.

Also, note my correction. Loss of religion is just one possible answer to The Question (Why is Europe dying?). I can think of others.

And I'm well aware of how the French view government. (For instance one of the ironies of the French rejection of the stifling and statist EU Constitution is that to many Frenchmen it was too Anglo-Saxon and free-market.) I know a whole buncha stuff about how European countries think, and view the world. Not only because I'm well read, but also because us right-wing bloggers obsess over the subject. There's probably not a single day when I don't read blog-posts on what's happening in Europe.

So what are you reading, among the sort of bloggers you favor, on The Question? My guess, not much.

What are you thinking, about The Question? My guess, not much. You are avoiding it. The guff about how thickies like me don't "understand" other countries is a typical way of avoiding it. I understand a lot, thank you; the little blue-stater inside me would love to be living in Paris. Or North Beach. I fret about Europe because I care; they are "uncles and cousins."

[Actually, my theorizing is that a lot of what's happening in leftish thought and action right now is driven by a panicky avoidance of a subset of The Question. (See the latter half of this post). I'm working on a better post, tentatively titled "Raindrop Theory."]

It's too late for the "who are we to judge" stuff. This is crunch-time, to use a poor locution that fits the demographic theme. You know your history. When was the last time there was no French artist shaking up the art world? I haven't even heard of any French chefs lately. When was the last time there was no German chemicals and pharmaceuticals changing the world? The EU is comparable in wealth and size to the US. Where's their software? Their X-prize, iPod, WalMart? Where are the must-read authors? Philosophers? What tyrant trembles at Europe's frown? What oppressed peoples pray for European armies to free them? Where's the danger? The fizz? Who now learns a European language, in order to be "with it?"

This is spiritual death. Can it be avoided, or is it our fate too? You are a writer, and your writing will lose its fizz if it shys away from the painful questions. Actually, I think what's happening in the world today is very much in the realm of science fiction, and fantasy. I suspect Tolkien has more to tell us about what's happening today than almost anyone. (See this post)