User blog:Scopatore/L'Occident, the Case for a Christian Union of Europe

In the last few years, I have always characterized myself as a Euroskeptic, becoming more firm on that stance with each passing year until I felt that the only way for the European states to maintain their national sovereignty and traditions is to abandon the European Union entirely. As I continue along my journey of deepening my knowledge of the history of the faith and Europe's history, becoming a more devout Catholic and fortifying my belief in monarchism, I have not changed on the subject of the European Union. The EU is a godless organization that seeks to promote secularism and liberalism in every place it can, and it is a shell of what several of the founders of the European Coal and Steel Community believed it would evolve into (something more faithful and akin to the Holy Roman Empire). The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the central component of European civlization, had essentially imploded following the changes of Vatican II, something nobody could have predicted, and the union as it stands today is an anti-Catholic organization. As such, I oppose this union wholeheartedly; however, I no longer oppose a union. Let me explain.

Throughout European history, since way back to the time of the Romans and the middle-eastern kingdoms that first declared Christianity their state religion, there has always been a powerful idea that Christianity was not just a faith one adhered to, but a communion—Christendom, or Res Publica Christiana—that every Christian realm were a part of, regardless of the various disputes among them. L'Occident is what this is known as in French, and Abendland in German. This idea has fluctuated in expression, but for Catholics, the most prominent existence of Christendom was in the form of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was not always an off-brand German knockoff of Rome as it is often seen by people, but it was initially supposed to be the temporal side of papal power (though it didn't exactly turn out that way). Regardless, the Holy Roman Emperor was seen as primus inter pares among the Christian monarchs of Europe; although people had allegiance to their king, they owed an ultimate allegiance to the emperor for he was crowned by the Pope in order to be the standard-bearer for Christianity against their enemies.