In a recent interview, Archbishop Emeritus Gyula Márfi of Hungary “warned of a multi-pronged assault against European Christianity from left-wing forces within the E.U.” 

In doing so, he said what many in the West, Christian or otherwise, know deep in their gut but dare not acknowledge for fear of being “canceled.”  

While the entire interview is well worth reading, a few excerpts are examined here.  According to the archbishop,

One of the most striking signs of the European Union’s anti-Christianity is that its constitution did not commemorate Europe’s Christian roots.

Indeed, and as the Catholic archbishop must surely know, none other than the highest of his order -- Pope Francis -- is also keen on disavowing “Europe’s Christian roots.”  As the Vicar of Christ, an avowed supporter of unchecked Muslim migration into Europe, once said:

When I hear talk of the Christian roots of Europe, I sometimes dread the tone, which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful. It then takes on colonialist overtones.

He did not clarify how the desire to preserve the national, cultural, and religious integrity of one’s own homeland -- in this case, Europe -- can have “colonialist overtones.”  But it didn’t matter; just using the guilt-ridden word “colonialist” -- which ironically refers to actions taken outside one’s homeland -- was apparently the goal.

The archbishop continues:

They [the E.U] write about Greco-Roman traditions and enlightenment, but not about Christianity.  Yet ancient culture and art have survived precisely because of Christians: the writings of Virgil, Tacitus, Homer, and others have been copied by monks deep in their cells.

This, of course, is true. All throughout Western school rooms, Greco-Roman civilization is presented as the West’s heritage, even though Christian civilization not only preserved it, but is the much more direct ancestor of the modern West.

Similarly, after discussing how Muslim violence severed the ancient continuity between the European and North African sides of antiquity’s Mediterranean, historian Emmett Scott writes,

This is something that has been almost completely overlooked by historians, especially those of northern European extraction. For the latter in particular, the Mediterranean is viewed through the prism of classical history. So bewitched have educated Europeans been by the civilization of Greece and Rome, that they have treated the more recent part of Mediterranean history -- over a thousand years of it -- as if it never existed.

The Hungarian archbishop also

lamented the erasure of Christmas in the public square, noting the growing trend of replacing the word ‘Christmas’ with ‘holidays.’ He recalled how the city of Brussels, the capital of the E.U., declined to put up a Christmas tree in 2012 for fear of offending its Muslim population.

There is, of course, no need to go back to 2012 for examples.  Expressions of Christmas, particularly the Nativity scene, are canceled every year throughout the West, often in the name of appeasing Muslims. A few examples come from the UK (here and here), Italy (here and here), Germany (here and here), and Belgium (here and here).

Most recently, during Christmas of 2022 in Sweden, at least one school -- a Catholic school -- canceled a Christmas holiday in order to accommodate Muslim sensibilities.

What makes all this appeasement especially loathsome is that, of all non-Christians, it is precisely Muslims who, far from reciprocating such “sensitivity,” do the exact opposite. If anything, the Christmas season often heralds nothing but a rise in the persecution of Christian minorities throughout the Muslim world.

As discussed here, however, and in agreement with the Hungarian archbishop,

Christmas is under attack in the West, not because of Muslims, but because of homegrown Western elements who despise the Christian holiday and everything it represents.  Rather than be honest, however, they use Muslims as pawns and pretexts. That, by the way, is the case with everything Western people are told they must suppress -- beginning with their religion -- in the name of “inclusivity.”  In the end, this exercise in self-suppression is not about accommodating minority groups but rather sabotaging Western civilization from within.

Finally, the archbishop connected it all by explaining why “Leftists” are dedicated to flooding Europe with Muslim migrants:

In my opinion, Muslims are also being called in to get Christ and Christianity out of Europe.  Today, Freemasons and Muslims are coming together to make Christianity disappear from Europe.  It was practically the same as it was in the age of the Savior, when the Scribes and Pharisees worked with their deadly enemy, Pontius Pilate, to get Jesus out of the way… In a multicultural, mixed society, the individual loses his identity, sense of identity, culture, faith, language, practically everything… [making people easier to manipulate for powerful corporations] who want to turn the whole Earth into a huge collective farm, where there are no ethnic, national and religious identities, only obedient workers and consumers manufactured according to standards.

Here the oft-asked question arises: why are leftists, whose “values” are antithetical to Islam, so keen on advocating for Muslims?  The answer is evident in the words of an ancient strategy: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  The Western elements that are forever protecting and empowering Islam, and which operate under various names -- “leftists,” “liberals,” “Marxists,” “progressives,” “social justice warriors,” etc. -- see Islam as a distant challenge. For the moment, Islam is a tool for them to combat their real and much closer enemy: Christianity, and the mores and civilization borne of it.

As the archbishop goes on to observe, European leftists “will ultimately ruin themselves” by embracing large-scale Muslim migration, as “Islam will never accept their liberal principles.”

That may be true, but their hate for Christianity, which poses an immediate and present danger to their agenda, overrides any future concerns they might have about Islam.  In their myopic obsessions, they overlook that Islam is on its way to becoming Europe’s majority faith in a paltry 25 years, at which point the jihadist crocodile will eat them last.

At any rate, it’s refreshing to see that there are some Christian leaders who understand what is going on, and why -- even if one needs to look to distant Hungary for such insights.

Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Defenders of the West,  is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Image: Public Domain