Cardinal Müller says Europe’s rejection of Christianity will lead to its downfall

(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller warned during a recent conference in Rome that Europe will “suicidally give itself over to its downfall” without Christianity.

During a conference titled “Eurogender Diktat: Christian Roots, Religious & Educational Freedom at Risk in the EU,” the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and other speakers discussed the dangerous consequences of European Union policies, particularly those reinforcing gender ideology.

So-called anti-discrimination measures claim to protect arbitrary identity-based categories at the expense of religious liberty and freedom of expression, the speakers argued, according to InfoVaticana.

This is because gender ideology treats gender as a social construct instead of a biological reality, defying God’s created order and will for human beings and the family and thus pitting itself against Christianity.

Event host Massimo Milani pointed out that, ironically, many “liberties” celebrated by modern Europe come from Christian principles.

“If today we in Europe and in the West in general can talk about human rights, of personal liberties, we must remember that if this is possible it is because we live in a society, in a free culture that owes this freedom precisely to the religious principles that have informed our culture for centuries,” he said.

In his own address, Cardinal Müller stressed that Christianity is inseparable from the foundations of Europe and indispensable to its very fabric.

Christianity did more than merely influence European culture, Müller said. It supplied the moral underpinnings of treasured ideals such as “human dignity, conscience, freedom and equality.”

Moreover, Europe as a whole was unified by its shared Christianity and its conception of the human person, he noted.

“On this foundation stands today the EU,” he said, warning that Europe without the Christian Gospel would “suicidally give itself over to its downfall.”

The efforts to sever Europe from its Christian foundations have caused its current crises, the cardinal declared. He went on to say that one of the biggest problems the continent faces is the dissolution of marriage and the family and of personal identity.

Instead of obviously persecuting opponents of gender ideology, the forces in control of Europe use “bureaucracy, regulation and cultural pressure” to undermine them, Cardinal Müller argued. 

Europe is thus becoming more and more “an experimental field for atheistic woke ideology” in which religion is gradually excluded from public life and from any role in which it can exert influence over it.

The cardinal criticized the influence of the “globalists of the New World Order” in this regard, calling out specific organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the Club of Rome.

Quoting Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture reflections on reason and faith, Cardinal Müller argued that Europe needs to expand its understanding of reason as something which can discern questions of morality, truth and human dignity, “rather than reducing human knowledge solely to what could be scientifically verified,” InfoVaticana noted.

Müller concluded by urging Europeans to embrace their Christian heritage rather than abandon it. Their future, he said, depends upon it.