Written in late 2004, shortly before Joseph Ratzinger's election as Pope Benedict XVI, this book addresses the serious issues concerning the new European Union and the drafting of a European Constitution, events with far-reaching consequences for the West and, indeed, the world.
The main questions Cardinal Ratzinger raise include: How did Europe originate and what are its boundaries? Who has the right to call himself European and be admitted into the new Europe? What about the spiritual roots of Europe and the moral foundation she is founded on?
Ratzinger sees the lack of focus on these fundamental questions in the formation of a new Europe as a grave problem for the future of Europe and the world. Europe's link to America and the rest of the world make these questions and reflections by the current Pontiff of critical importance in facing the future together.
"Pope Benedict XVI has long been an acute and compassionate analyst of the ills that beset Europe, a continent once the undisputed center of world civilization but now adrift and sinking in a post-modern fog. The Holy Father is more than a diagnostician, though. His prescription--a Europe that has rediscovered the human dignity implicit in its Christian roots while absorbing the best achievements of the Enlightenment--is applicable to the entire Western world as we face the challenge of a civilizational rival with a very different point of view of the human condition and human future. This small book gets the big questions of the 21st century exactly right." -- George Weigel
