"Turkey and the future of the European Union
By William John Hagan
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Much against the desires of revisionist historians, Europe is the epicenter of the Christian world. It was not the Church of Jerusalem, under Saint James, that spread the message of Jesus Christ to the world; it was the Church of Rome and its twin pillars, Saints Peter and Paul, who laid the foundation for a unified European culture. The sole coalescing force that had brought together a people as diverse as the Europeans was the spread of the Roman Catholic Church during the dying days of the Roman Empire. As with the spread of Islam in the Middle East, the Roman Church in its early years often acted in a most un-Christian fashion. The persecution of Europe’s Jews, the Knight’s Templar, and the Gnostics were bloody and horrific. However, the faith followed a course not found in its Eastern Islamic counterpart, and developed into a modern religious philosophy that can be regarded as one of the most significant institutions on the planet. When one speaks of the Church today, we refer not only to its mother in Rome but to the entire Christian faith, from Catholicism and Anglicism to Protestantism."
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