More Europe ? A Critical Christian Inquiry into the Process of European Intergration

by John Sweeney (Editor), Jef van Gerwen (Editor), Johan Verstraeten (Contributor)

A decade, a century, and a millennium are all ending and the European Union is facing unprecedented challenges and new questioning about its competence to meet them. A small group of Catholic academics, Jesuits and lay people, coming from five different countries, decided they would like to address this issue of European integration. They wanted to do so as a team, joining their different academic and national backgrounds in order to arrive at a common assessment of the process of European unification. They also wanted to discover what one could say about this secular event from a perspective of Christian faith and ethics. This collective work can be read, therefore, as an excercise in Christian discernment on an important 'sign of the times' by an international group of academics, both committed as citizens and as disciples. It contains both a number of historical assessments on the past and present of the European project, and a selection of systematic reflections, focusing on such burning issues as employment, North/South relations, financial markets and the meaning of European citizenship. The final result is a truly inter-disciplinary study, which combines elements of academic rigor, ethical assessment, and faith reflection on a major contemporary political event.

Contents:
The post-war journey of European integration / Thomas Giblin. --
How can we overcome a politics of inarticulacy? / Guido Vanheeswijck. --
Saying "no" to Europe / Thomas Giblin. --
Maastricht's loose ends: the 1996 intergovernmental conference / Damian Howard. --
The collapse of communism / Jean-Yves Calvez. --
Changing the relationship: the EU and the south / Bernard Lestienne. --
Reshaping the international financial system / Bernard Emunds. --
Towards an economy that celebrates human work / John Sweeney. --
The meaning of European citizenship / Norbert Brieskorn. --
Christian social teaching and Europe: a reflection / Johan Verstraeten. --
The European Union as part of our future / Jef Van Gerwen.

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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