The Cube and the Cathedral

The book is not long in pages, but the content was immensely thought provoking. The premise is established on one question, "which culture would better protect human rights?" One that is "stunning, rational, angular, geometric" and entirely secular, or one that is built with flying buttresses, nooks and crannies, holy 'unsameness' and founded on religious beliefs.

The question examines the future of Europe and eventually all of society. He argues that Europe is in a cultural and demographic decline. Families aren't reproducing, and church attendance is in decline. He quotes David Hart who wrote that it is "fairly obvious that there is some direct, indissoluble bond between faith and the will to a future or between the desire for a future and the imagination of eternity." Europe is not only declining culturally, but the ideological trends lead only one direction, hopelessness--no will to a future.

Europe embarked on its creation of the E.U. constitution by eliminating its historically religious (Christian) roots. "European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular." So shaking free of all religious hamstrings, and hang-ups European man is now free! Or so he thinks. But without the moral foundation, what is there left to hold man to the principles of democracy, and human rights without the moral foundation? Without things like justice and mercy, morality how far will we stray? Pierre Manet wrote "self-sacrifice gave way to self-mutilation and the frenzied love of death."

The Europeans have created the ultimate man made society. However, as Sir Edward Grey noted, "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God he can only organize it against man."


Some quotes:

• "inhuman humanism can neither sustain, nor nurture, nor defend the democratic project. It can only undermine it, or attack it."

• "For Europe to be built on solid foundations, there is a need to call upon authentic values grounded in the universal moral law written on the heart of ever man and woman."

• "One of the roots of the hopelessness that assails man people today is...their inability to see themselves to be forgiven, an inability often resulting from the isolation of those who, by living as if God did not exist, have no one from whom they can seek forgiveness."

• "Tolerance...is a civic discipline not just a personal attitude or a cast of mind."

• "Absent convictions, there is no tolerance; there is only indifference."