A specter is haunting Europe ”” the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.
Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.
German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.
… and this has what exactly to do with religion in America?
Not in Greece
In reply to Fr Mark: I have just finished reading Joseph Ratzinger’s memoir Milestones (ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1998) in which he recalls the strange and powerful influence of Marxism on theology in Europe from the late 1960s through the 1970s (see p 137). We could say that via liberation theology this has had a powerful influence in the USA, as much as in Europe. If it is true that socialism in Europe is in a long-term decline, it signals the end also of the associated stream of theology with its belief in economic determinism, and salvation seen largely in political terms. Though, in truth, post-modernism , took over the running some time ago as the favoured academe contrarian position.