EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - With EU personalities over the weekend speaking out on the occasion of Schuman Day, Robert Schuman himself, an early architect of the Union, has hit a hurdle on his way to becoming a Roman Catholic saint due to the lack of a miracle...the Vatican has been enquiring into his eligibility for 21 years. But despite abundant material testifying to his piety and good works, the Schuman dossier has hit a major stumbling block.
"I even asked him [Pope John Paul II] myself on this point ... and he answered clearly that in the case of a politician, it is necessary to proceed with great rigour and to demand a miracle," Pierre Raffin, the Bishop of Metz, wrote in a letter in 2004 forwarded to EUobserver by his office.
Despite the Vatican using the Euro, it is not in the EU because it is an absolute monarch therefore not democratic enough to be eligible to join (no really don't laugh). However that doesn't stop the EU wanting said absolute monarch to give one of their supposed founding fathers special status: sainthood.
However, apparently, the difficulty is:
When asked if the situation had changed under Pope Benedict XVI or if any new information had come to light, a contact in the Vatican's embassy to the EU in Brussels said: "We are still waiting for a miracle. One miracle is required for beatification and two for sainthood."
I can think of one miracle - that the EU has lasted so long.
I can say categorically, that if Mr Schuman is even beatified, then I shall leave the Catholic Church.
ReplyDeleteFor most of my life, I have regarded my Church as a bulwark against atavism and satanism. But I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that it too has been infected with the evil of the antichrist. To embrace the architect of the EU would be to confirm that belief.
www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5ghcWkbAkftMYXHaByutbPAgAGs_A?docId=6796860
ReplyDeleteHello! Although I am a big fan of the EU, even I have to concede that it is not democratic.
ReplyDeleteI have always found it a bit strange that the elected Institution - parliament - is restricted to an advisory and supervisory role, whereas one of the unelected Institutions - the Commission - is the motor of EU action.
Especially as some of our Commissioners were previously soundly rejected by the electorate; people like Patten, Kinnock, Mandelson and possibly others.
I am surprised that those who oppose the EU don't make more of these facts.
@Tim. I have always found it a bit strange that the elected Institution - parliament - is restricted to an advisory and supervisory role, whereas one of the unelected Institutions - the Commission - is the motor of EU action.
ReplyDeleteThe reason is that the EU was never designed to be democratic in the first place. Its founding father - Jean Monnet - designed it so that it would transcend national democratic politics which he believed were at fault for so-called 'populalism'.
That the Parliament is restricted largely to an advisory role (in other words a talking shop) is no accident. The EU is, largely, a deliberately designed unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy.
The EU is not and can never be democratic - not without ripping it all up and staring again which would defeat its raison d'etre.
John Paul II removed the office of "Devil's Advocate" to speed up the production rate in his saint factory.
ReplyDeleteThis official was there to search out anything discreditable in the life of the proposed saint and as a safeguard against over-enthusiastic promoters of the causes of fashionable candidates.