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Easter ruminations about the state of Christianity in Europe

April 9th, 2012

Right-wing commentators in Hungary this Easter alert their readers to the possible consequences of denying Europe’s Christian roots. They fear that without basic Christian values, naked materialism will prevail, and qualities like solidarity, basic human kindness and morality will suffer throughout the secularized continent.

In the modern world, religious holidays have been turned into over-commercialized secular events, Miklós Ugró writes in Magyar Nemzet. And Easter, just like Christmas, has been turned into a shopping event, while the original message of the holiday is forgotten.

Ugró blames these developments on “the hysterical protests of ‘progressive’ elites” against any form of public recognition of Europe’s Christian roots. They forget, he writes, that such a recognition does not entail the propagation of certain religious views, but merely indicates the source of those core values which constitute the foundation of basic secular European norms.

In Magyar Hírlap, pro-government political analyst Tamás Fricz suggests that if it fails to maintain its Christian heritage, Europe has no future. As the Arab countries are held together by Islam and Israel is centred around a common understanding of the Torah, “Europe and the Christian world is held together by Christianity, and, more specifically, by Jesus.” Without a clear common identity, countries are defenceless against neo-liberal forces and “foreign influence which aim to destroy them,” Fricz remarks. If the secularization promoted by left-wing liberal elites advances, and succeeds in eliminating Europe’s common faith and its cultural foundations, solidarity and basic human kindness will also disappear, Fricz warns.

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