“Christ is King.”

As Easter approaches, we do well to consider that the vice president of the United States of America and author of Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance, believes—radically believes—in Jesus. He has made Him his savior, Lord and King. 

“Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of our present crisis?” Bishop Fulton Sheen asked in 1947.

Partly because men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation, and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times. Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world.

J.D. Vance, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, takes the Word of God, the Liturgy of the Church, and the philosophy of those like Sheen seriously.

So, it is with a deep sense of disappointment and true sadness that this faith leads both the Vice President and I to agree that, in Europe, Christianity is now defunct or, at best, in retreat. Vance stunned Europe by suggesting as much in his now famous speech to the Munich Security Conference.

Europe’s churches are empty. Mass on Sundays, in any Gothic cathedral, is virtually unattended, except for a handful of tourists. The actual celebration of Mass is typically conducted in a side chapel, fit for the dozen or so older worshipers who show up for the sacrament.

Europe is adrift without a soul and evolving into something unforeseen as it pulls rapidly away from its moorings.

In his book, The Cube and the Cathedral, George Weigel described a European culture that has become not only increasingly secular but, in many cases, openly hostile to Christianity.

The cathedral in Weigel’s title is Notre Dame, now overshadowed in cultural importance by the Arche de la Defense, the ultra-modernist “cube” that now dominates an office complex outside Paris.

“European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular,” Weigel writes. “That conviction and its public consequences are at the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale.”

Recall the rancorous debate over whether Christianity should be explicitly acknowledged when the European Union’s constitutional treaty was drafted. By the time the draft constitution was completed, a grudging reference to “the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe” had been shoehorned into the preamble’s first clause. This was about as much religion as Europe could stomach in a constitution that runs some 70,000 words.

Those practicing Christianity in Europe today enjoy a status not dissimilar to the closet status once reserved for smoking marijuana or engaging in unorthodox sexual activities. Few Europeans will mind if you do so in private, but please have the courtesy to keep it to yourself.

Today Christianity in the EU is considered at best a retrograde and largely atavistic practice barely tolerated in a self-described “progressive” society devoted to obtaining the good material life, including long holidays, short working hours, and generous government benefits. Don’t ask about military spending or enlistment.

Dare we ask what is the deeper source of European antipathy to religion?

Critics of Europe like Vance are on firm ground when they analyze the continent’s present condition—with its low birth rates, heavy government debts, Muslim immigration worries, and its tendency to carp from the sidelines when the fate of nations is at stake.

Like Weigel, one could sketch the worst-case scenario—the “bitter end”—for a Europe that is religiously bereft, demographically moribund and morally without a compass: “The muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter’s in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine—a great Christian church become an Islamic Museum.”

One need not find this scenario altogether plausible to feel persuaded by more measured arguments about Europe’s atheistic humanism. Without a religious dimension, a commitment to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its name. Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe in freedom and democracy, of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good life” on hold or put their own lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion.

The good of human freedom, by European lights, must be weighed against the risk and cost of fighting for it. It is no longer transcendent, absolute. In such a world, governed by a narrow utilitarian calculus, sacrifice is rare, churches go unattended and over time the spiritual capital that brought forth all that we know as the West is at risk of being lost. Europe runs on the fumes of its past significance and religiosity, but for how long?

More specifically, as the past is erased, re-written, or ignored, and the rich Judeo-Christian history of Europe is left behind, what will be the true cost?

As I ponder this thesis on Palm Sunday, I am reminded of Orwell’s quote, “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is obvious that “culture determines civilization.” Without its distinctly Christian history, neither Europe nor America will continue to be what it is.

Unfortunately, we may now have more accurately to write, “Europe will not again be what it was.”

For President Trump and his veep, JD Vance, America is now alone in defending freedom and upholding the tradition of faith and reason, however imperfectly we may carry out this task. May we pray this Easter that we strive to do it better.