PM: We want a Christian Europe because we believe it is the only one that has a future
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday that 'we want a Christian Europe because we believe it is the only one that has a future'.
PM Orbán said at the inauguration of the Saint Christopher pilgrim's house in the Benedictine Abbey of Tihany that Tihany had become a meeting point between East and West a thousand years ago, adding that at the time of its foundation 'friars from the East lived, worked, prayed and converted (pagans) together with Western Benedictine monks among the sacred hills'.
'Europe's current rulers, sowing discord, inciting wars, and imposing sanctions had better cast a watchful eye over Tihany,' PM Orbán said. He called Tihany 'the sacred hill of the Hungarian nation', and noted that its vaults contained the remains of King Andrew I, the only burial site from the Arpad dynasty left intact.
Meanwhile, the prime minister said his government had helped renew over 3,000 churches and build 200 new ones in the Carpathian Basin. 'This is an achievement, appreciation and support to the religious world, but all Hungarians can also be proud of our respect for tradition,' the prime minister said.
'Christianity is culture and civilisation; we live in it: culture is everyday reality. Christian culture helps us find our way among the contradictions of life: it defines our approach to interpersonal relationships, including the relationship between men and women as well as to the family, success, work, and honesty,' he said.
'We Hungarians are European and Christian, so we cannot disregard that the foundations of European life are currently under threat,' the prime minister said.
'They want us to be what we are not, and to become the kind that we do not want to become. They want us to mix with people who arrived from other worlds, to mix traditional gender roles, and they would even get us involved in a losing war. Instead of the order of creation, confusion and the mixing up of things show up in every direction, the signs of a new anarchy, a new Babel,' he added.
PM Orbán said that it was painful to see that war psychosis had infected Europe.
He said the founders of Europe were Christian, and 'this is not what they invented the European Union for'. 'As a free Christian European nation we must not allow them to make decisions about the future of Europe above our heads,' he added.
Hungary has always won its battles for survival and for its Christian culture, but 'without Christianity there would be no Hungary … we have won under that sign and we will win again and again,' PM Orbán said.
PM Orbán quoted Romania's presidential candidate George Simion as saying 'the time has come for a Europe of nations, a Christian Europe', and said 'we are in complete agreement'.
He said Hungarians and Romanians have had a shared fate. 'We will not interfere in the fights of the Romanian presidential election now underway, but … we assure Romania's people and its next president that we stand on the ground of cooperation and will not support any attempt for isolation or political revenge against Romania or its leaders.'
Meanwhile, PM Orbán said: 'Christianity is the best protection against efforts to reorganise Europe as an empire.' According to Christian teachings, the closest community to an individual should have the responsibility to manage their own affairs. 'If a family is able to care for its members, she state should not intervene … a country should have the right to determine its path and its future should not be decided on in an imperial centre,' he added.
Hungary is a diverse country, with centuries-old cultural and religious communities, the prime minister said, adding that 'we firmly believe that we are all connected through the ideal of a Christian Hungary; where there is a church, there is not only past but future, too.'
'Where there is Christianity and patriotism, there is Hungary,' he said. In Hungary, 'faith, history, statehood, and culture are intertwined; the renewed Tihany Abbey is its shining proof, a symbol calling on us to respect the past and work on the future in the spirit of Christian freedom,' PM Orbán said.
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