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Pope Benedict XVI warned in a 2006 book that “Western self-hatred” had become “pathological”, and that the decline of marriage, the family, and depopulation could be the death knell for European identity.
Pope Benedict, who was able to be laid to rest by his successor, Pope Francis, on Thursday after becoming the first pontiff in 600 years to resign his office instead of dying in post in 2013, was regarded as a conservative — or at least a liberal turned conservative — by many, and made a number of statements against signalling his concerns over Western civilisation’s direction of travel.
Some key examples of this can be found in Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, a book based on correspondence between Benedict when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, then President of the Italian Senate, published early in his pontificate.
In it, Benedict noted that in contemporary Europe, anyone who dishonoured Judaism or Islam would “pay a fine” — but that “when it comes to Jesus Christ and that which is sacred to Christians, instead, freedom of speech becomes the supreme good.”
“This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological,” Benedict argued, suggesting that the West had “lost all capacity for self-love” even as it was “trying to be more open” to foreign cultures.”
“All that it sees in its history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure,” he said — an assessment that seems especially relevant today, with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other ascendant woke-left ideologies seeking to eradicate much of the West’s built heritage and the history it represents.
“Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralysed,” he said, suggesting that it was “infected by a strange lack of desire for the future.”
“Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present… as a liability rather than a source of hope,” he said.
Benedict further argued that multiculturalism — “which is so constantly and passionately promoted” — would prove unviable “without the sense of direction offered by our own values.”
“Unless we embrace our own heritage of the sacred, we will not only deny the identity of Europe, we will also fail in providing a service to others to which they are entitled,” he explained, adding: “Multiculturalism itself thus demands that we return once again to ourselves.”