Weigel on European History

I found George Weigel’s interpretation of European history (Commentary, Dec. 4) to be ridiculously inaccurate. He blames “Enlightenment secularism” as the cause of Western Europe’s problems over the last 100 years. He sees European civilization prior to this period as being superior because of the “enduring cultural effects of the Christian Middle Ages” and the “Jewish and Christian understandings of the human person as made in the image of God and therefore possessed of an innate dignity and value.”

These are noble sentiments, but the history I remember is of a Christian Middle Ages known for cultural achievements such as serfdom, religious wars and the systematic torture and murder of anyone who differed with the prevailing religious viewpoints. Later on, during the colonial era, European ecclesiastical authority demonstrated its respect for the innate dignity of the human person by validating and encouraging the enslavement and genocide of the technologically less advanced human persons of the world.

Weigel, not content with his hallucinations about the religious good old days, goes on to state that modern Europe is committing “demographic suicide” with its low birthrates. In fact, today’s relentless population growth is, without a doubt, the world’s most serious and intractable problem. Europe’s low birthrates are an ideal that other nations should strive for. These low birthrates will, in the future, enable Europe to enjoy relative affluence and stability while nations with exploding populations commit demographic suicide.

STEVE AUER

Malibu

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* I was fascinated by the thought-provoking column by Weigel. It is indeed sad that the high ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, for which we had some high hopes, were really responsible for all the dreadful calamities of our century. To prove his case, Weigel quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s explanation for these horrors: “Men have forgotten God.” But in all fairness one could say that some of the horrors have been caused by the excesses of religious zealots, so there is enough guilt from all sides.

There is also another explanation: One might point to the inherent flaws in human nature. For this I would like to quote Immanuel Kant, one of the great minds of the Enlightenment (the translation is by the historian Sir Isaiah Berlin): “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.”

EDGAR SELZ

Laguna Hills

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* Weigel believes that religion is necessary to maintain morality. How then does he explain Yigal Amir, Ayatollah Khomeini, Islamic Jihad, and the Vatican’s silence during the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition?

MICHAEL SIMMONS

Hollywood