On <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />3 April 2005, nearly one thousand secular activists from France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Portugal and the UK joined in a demonstration in Brussels in support of Secularism in Europe. They marched from the Gare du Nord to the Gare du Midi where a public meeting was held. IHEU was represented in the march by Roy Brown and Babu Gogineni. The following is the text of RoyBrown's speech at the public meeting.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Last month a report appeared in the British Catholic newspaper, the Tablet – that while the Catholic bishops had been disappointed at the failure to mention Europe’s Christian heritage in the preamble to the new European Constitution, they were nevertheless satisfied that the access provided to the church by Article 52 would enable them to make up for “the perceived democratic deficit” at the heart of Europe. The pure irony of this suggestion appears to have escaped the reporter. Who are these people? And who elected them? Who asked them to make up for our democratic deficit? Who do they really represent?

● First, these self-appointed spokesmen for the people are all bishops of the Catholic Church.

● They are all men. (Women, of course, should stay at home, they have no business interfering in affairs of state.)

● They are all supposedly celibate. What do they know of human love, of sex (unless it is snatched illicitly in corners), or of family life? And how does this equip them to deal with issues as personal as family relationships, the birth of one’s child, or the suffering and death of one’s lover?

● As to who they represent, it is certainly not the men and women of 21st century Europe. They represent an ultra-conservative worldview, promoted for more than 1000 years by those who seek domination and control of our hearts and minds through fear. As John-Paul II lay dying last week, the world’s media poured out a stream of film clips showing this kind, warm, child-loving father figure fighting for the right of Poles to build churches, speaking out for the poor, blessing the little children, condemning war, and defeating Communism. But did you see any film clips of young African women dying of AIDS because of his policies? I didn’t. But then this was eulogy time, brilliantly stage-managed by the Vatican media machine. The day of reckoning will – as it must – come later.

Vatican policies on AIDS prevention, as on contraception, do not represent some transcendental moral high ground. They are, quite simply, unjustifiable. Even seen from a Christian perspective, they carry little biblical or theological justification. They owe more to concern for the hegemony of the Catholic Church than to moral good. They came about because, in the words of a previous pope, “to accept contraception would be to admit that the Protestants had been right all along”. As a result, efforts in the developing world to reduce the horrific toll of maternal and infant mortality, of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions, have been seriously undermined.

The pope’s abhorrence of contraception led to perhaps the most appalling abuse of moral authority the world has seen for over 50 years. Cardinals and Archbishops were obliged to lie to their flocks about the efficacy of condoms in preventing the transmission of HIV, and to promote the idea that abstinence was the only safe way to prevent infection. By promoting this idea to young African girls for whom abstinence was never an option, they condemned untold thousands – possibly even millions – to suffering and an untimely death.

Also conspicuously absent from the media carnival surrounding the death of John-Paul II was any mention of another important fact about his deeply conservative papacy: that during his 26-year reign, church attendance throughout Europe fell continuously, in some countries by as much as 50%. His homophobia, his opposition to women priests, to gay marriage, and to virtually every advance in medical science, coupled with his lack of concern for the human cost of his teaching, did not go un-noticed. More than ever, the Catholic Church has been seen to be morally bankrupt. Not for Europeans the idea that human pain and suffering are part of God’s purpose, or that they enable us to experience God’s grace. We would rather see a doctor than Mother Teresa.

How then can it be that the representatives of this medieval worldview now have easier access to the institution of the European Union than do the elected representatives of the European people?

The answer, it seems, is that the European politicians and bureaucrats have connived at just this outcome. Without even waiting for ratification of the new constitution, they have paved the way for dialogue – i.e. for the Church to participate in European decisionmaking – at every level within the European Commission from the president down. What this means is that before any elected member of the European Parliament has even become aware that new legislation is being proposed, it will have been discussed behind closed doors with these un-elected representatives of Vatican City. Kiss goodbye to any progressive legislation from now on.

What can we – the Secularists, Humanists and Freethinkers who really care about this issue – what can we do? The problem is not that Europeans are all committed believers, far from it. It is that they are complacently unaware of how their hard-won democracy is being sold out behind closed doors. It is up to us, we who really care about our liberal heritage, our democracy, and the separation of religion and state, to alert the people of Europe to what is being done in their name.

Every one of us must play their part in opposing the slow death of European democracy. If we fail, then within a generation the European Enlightenment could become nothing but a distant memory.