The Pope, the Congress of Vienna and peace
Take a point from the past so as not to compromise the future
by Marco Invernizzi
Nobody gets scared by the title, which just wants to put together in a single reflection different things but somehow all useful to better understand the situation.
Let’s start with the third, peace. Certainly Pope Francis would do well to insist on the duty to seek peace and to do so by leaving the logic of war, that is, by changing mentality. Changing mentality, however, means converting, that is, changing the direction of one’s life. Transposed into the political realm, it means renouncing nationalistic selfishness, repudiating violence as a means of asserting one’s own reasons, holding innocent life sacred and therefore entailing refusing war, which necessarily sacrifices the lives of civilians, and many other things. . All this preached and taught, but all this also taught by the same cat war between the contenders.
Sooner or later, however, the war ends, but how it ends is important. And this is where the Congress of Vienna comes into play (which, moreover, was not exempt from even important shortcomings). In 1815 the forces they had finally formed Napoleon (Austria, England, Russia and Prussia a Holy Alliance to fight the Revolution and defend the peace from the possible repetition of the revolutionary violence practiced by Napoleon. But they did not exclude France, which in 1818 was integrated into the Alliance, that is, they did not confuse Napoleon with the French people, despite the latter having served him, perhaps with enthusiasm. They did not make the mistake of 1918, after the First World War, when the victorious powers humiliated Germany and defeated instead of trying to integrate it. , thus favoring the advent of Nazi socialism and the Second World War.
Sooner or later the war in Ukraine will also end. But also on this occasion Putin should not be confused with Russia, trying to integrate the latter into a common project, as was attempted in 2002 in Pratica di Mare and as, in fact, the European powers did in Vienna in 1815. The constant invitation of Saint John Paul II so that Europe, after 1989, can breathe with two lungs, the western and the eastern, can be an important point of reference.
Peace is a very great good, but it presupposes justice and does not tolerate nationalism. The latter is not the alternative solution to globalism and relativism which are destroying the identity of peoples. Nationalism is the bad herb that undermined the peace that the Congress of Vienna, with its “European concert”, was able to guarantee to Europe until 1914. This will not be recognized by many pacifists, who love “liberal wars “Of the nineteenth century, but is instead confirmed by serious historians, for example Vittorio Criscuolo, in the preface to his book The Congress of Vienna (the Mill, 2015).
That the powerful of our time have the humility to look to Vienna, when to remedy the disasters caused by Putin’s iniquitous and insane Ukraine.
Friday, April 15, 2022