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During this year, two significant people – Noël Treanor and Marc Lenders – in relations between the churches and the European Union have died.

Image from the diocese of Down and Connor webpage

Archbishop Noel Treanor, who died suddenly on Sunday 11 August 2024, aged 73, was one of the foremost church representatives working alongside the European Union institutions in Brussels.  He joined the staff of the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences in the European Union (COMECE) in 1989 and, in 1993, became its General Secretary.  He served in that capacity until 2008 when he became Bishop of Down and Connor, returning to Brussels as Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union in 2023.  Earlier he had been Prefect of Studies at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and worked in several parochial and diocesan appointments in Ireland.

I worked closely with Noël when he was General Secretary of COMECE and I was General Secretary of the European Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society (EECCS).  He was always open to ecumenical co-operation and readily joined the dialogue meetings with the European Commission which EECCS had started in the early 1990s.  He also contributed much to the meetings with national governments when they held the rotating Presidency of the European Council, making it easier to arrange meetings with governments in predominantly Catholic member states.

Our closest collaboration was over the development of more structured relationships between the churches and the European Union which led eventually to Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty which, for the first time, gave a legal basis for an open, transparent and regular dialogue between the EU institutions and churches, religious associations, and philosophical and non-confessional organisations.

Our co-operation also came into play when the European Commission proposed to extend European anti-discrimination legislation to cover, among other things, discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief.  The original draft of the legislation would have made it difficult for churches to restrict appointments to their own members – a clash between the anti-discrimination principle and the right of freedom of religion and belief.  Together, we were able to mobilise national church organisations, particularly in Germany, Ireland, Finland and the United Kingdom, to take up the issue with their governments, resulting in a positive outcome in the Council of Ministers.

In all his dealings, Noël was courteous, kind and diplomatic but he was equally capable of being firm.  This was something I observed on numerous occasions but nowhere more so than when he and I spent much of a weekend negotiating with the President of the European Humanist Federation over the text of what I was to say when addressing the civil society hearing of the Convention on the Future of Europe on behalf of communities of faith and conviction.

Noël was a great communicator and did much both to make Catholic positions on European issues known to the EU institutions and explaining the EU to church people – something which he continued as Bishop of Down and Connor when he represented the Irish Bishops’ Conference in COMECE.

Revd. Marc Lenders, who died on 21 March 2024 aged 89, was a pastor of the Netherlands Reformed Church who pioneered the ecumenical presence at the heart of the European institutions.

The Ecumenical Association for Church and Society had been started by a group of European civil servants and local pastors in the 1960s, aimed at interesting the European Churches in the European project, as well as creating a network of mutual support.  The Association decided to employ Marc as their Secretary – at first a part time appointment, combined with Marc teaching religion in the European Schools.

Gradually, the work increased and some of the Protestant and Anglican churches in European Community states (then only six) together with the United Kingdom, set up the body which was to become the European Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society.  For years Marc worked in a minute staff team, rarely more than three, often only two.  Nevertheless, he made a substantial impact in his and the Ecumenical Commission’s contacts with the institutions, including advocacy for the Common Agricultural Policy to have the quality of rural life as one of its pillars and support for non-governmental organisations working against apartheid in South Africa.

Marc was also involved in the organisation of the Roehampton Conference of 1974 which was instrumental in mobilising people in the British churches in favour of British membership of the European Communities in the subsequent referendum.

In the late 1980s, churches became more interested in Brussels and Strasbourg as European legislation broadened and potentially affected the interests and status of churches. Simultaneously, policy increasingly impinged on areas of church concerns – employment, poverty, social policy and development aid.  Marc had played a major role in explaining the issues to the churches.

By 1989, for the first time, resources were available to increase the staff. I am very grateful to Marc for the warmth of his welcome when I arrived in Brussels and the generosity of spirit which enabled him to accept someone coming in to run the organisation which he had served for so long.  As Study Secretary, he was glad to be freed of administrative tasks and to be able to concentrate on what he loved most – thinking, imagining, and developing vision – and sharing it with colleagues and the wider Church, something he did until his retirement in 1999 – and indeed afterwards.

Keith Jenkins 14/08/2024

The European Studies Centre at St Anthony’s College Oxford held a seminar on 2 May 2023 with the above title.  The main speaker was Anna Grzymala-Busse (Stanford University).  There were also discussants with Polish antecedents.

From 1956, the Church gained concessions from, and dialogue with, the communist government.  (Perhaps, in reaction to the anti-Soviet rising in Hungary, this was a measure to suppress ‘inflammation’.)  It got building permits and paper quotas (for printing).  Myths surrounding a ‘Black Madonna’ image helped; between 1957 and 1980 this was taken round every parish in the country. 

The story was somewhat overshadowed by the election in 1978 of Cardinal Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II, serving until his death in 2005.  He had attended the Second Vatican Council of 1962 and supported its outcome – at risk of death threats and indeed attempts.  After a papal Mass in 1983 the Solidarnosc union’s slogans were displayed.  He was anti-capitalist but pro the EU.

The Church emerged in 1990 free from threats to its survival and in fact wealthy and a landowner, with state funding. Thus there was a continued presumption of a Catholic Poland.  This was supported partly by historical myths and invented histories.  Poland needed these, as did Ireland, rather than (say) Hungary.  The Church had moral authority and was non-partisan so could more readily represent the nation.  It was free to promote religious education.  Its condemnation of, for example, abortion was somewhat soft-footed for fear that this issue might be put to a referendum.  It supported EU membership in the 2004 referendum.  It had the power to vet official appointments. 

The Polish Catholic Church had now (30 years on) become rather less secure.  Child sexual abuse scandals were coming to light.  Mass attendances were falling, especially of the young who had grown up in a democratic (non-communist) Poland.  So were vocations for the priesthood.  There was growing public support for LGBT and gender issues, with protests in churches.  The Church was supporting the state in social provision, but not commensurately with its wealth.  Quebec was mentioned as a comparator.  A hypocritical element was visible in Poland, in that an influential person could always arrange an abortion.

Other Christian and non-Christian faiths were becoming more visible because of immigration, particularly from Ukraine, but also from Protestant Germany.  But the Polish Catholics were not investing in the evangelical or ‘happy clappy’ approaches which were keeping some of the potential flock within the UK churches.

Richard Seebohm 12/5/23

Campion Hall is an Oxford college which, as a ‘permanent private hall’, is also a Jesuit institute.  On 14 May I went to this year’s Campion Lecture there, on Developing Human Dignity in the Digital Age.

It was given by Paolo Carozza, a law lecturer at Notre Dame University in Indiana.  For the past two years he had moved on from human rights law as such to the impact on it of the electronic media and artificial intelligence (AI).  In this he looked to Catholic Social Teaching (CST), though this had yet to become media savvy (not his word).  His starting point from this was that every person was a child of God.  CST included the concepts of the preferential option for the poor and of the common good.  Jesus preached non-violence (turn the other cheek). 

But the issues he now saw were not denominational but attacks on human dignity from all directions.  Narcissism and tribalism were leading to bullying and violence against minorities.  The media and AI were enhancing fixed mindsets, as was also surveillance capitalism.  The (CST) concept of subsidiarity should lead to freedom of individuals and groups, but these trends were distorting it.  The media community served a vast network of undifferentiated people whilst very small teams were managing it.  It was naive to see any of this as contributing to the CST concept of solidarity.

Human dignity and the value of the human person were in treaties and legislation, but the consensus about these was allowing real problems to be evaded, partly with the concern for consensus.  In this digital age, we should perhaps rethink the principles.  It was Wittgenstein who said that we must revisit the rough ground.  Life lived on screen disembodied relationships.  It offered experience with no meaning.  Coercion wasn’t necessarily physical.   Facebook itself had admitted the fact of mental health risks.  Individual agency and freedoms were diminished.  Algorithms and AI were reducing the need – and hence the capacity – for individuals to take decisions (for example in screening job applicants).  Having new tools inevitably changed the worlds we lived in.  A typical unintended consequence was the way that GPS and SatNav travelling was undermining our understanding of spaces and distance.   Understanding more widely was at risk, not just the unknowable universe, but of matters moral, social, ontological, and ultimately of God.

We can’t wholly avoid the technology but alongside it we can seek a ‘thicker understanding’ of human dignity.    With human rights under threat and the need for privacy channelled into personalised and solipsistic (not his word) claims for rights, the search for truth was becoming more and more necessary – I don’t think he actually spoke of fake news.    (A Vatican Declaration on Human Dignity of 8 April this year mentions this, but in a section on digital difficulties which is something of a tailpiece to the document.)  Freedom of thought was under pressure, let alone freedom of religion.

Paolo ended by saying that he did not disown digital technology, whilst hoping that, with CST, we can be brought back from from the abyss (his word).

In the question period I was able to say that Quaker testimonies closely matched his Catholic advices, whatever our doctrinal differences.  I also mentioned a recent press finding that the screen-based young were losing the capacity for small talk, by which individuals can explore what other people are like.  Others mentioned globalisation as a threat to local dignity, and suggested that the media were undermining recognition for womanhood, and also respect for the non-human biosphere.

Given the small talk imperative, I found myself after the lecture in a group consisting of a Norwegian Lutheran theologian, a Peruvian historian concerned with the nation-building of the individual South American states, and a Christian Palestinian who was working on Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts at Thessaloniki.  They had each come up to Oxford for the day.

All this makes me recall that Campion Hall is a 1930s Lutyens building containing sensationally beautiful religious art from the mediaeval, renaissance and 20th centuries.

Richard Seebohm

23.5.24