The 15 diseases of the Eurocrats

It takes the training of a Jesuit to be able to creatively head the roman curia, which is, to my knowledge, the oldest organization of our western society. Francis' Christmas speech, which he used to publicly describe the 15 most obvious sins of the roman curia[[1]]url:#_ftn1 , was certainly well received by those whose families have been suffering from sins of other members of this organization, which in the last centuries was one of the dominant powers of Europe. Like my grandfather directly after the war, when the Nazis had lost their power and the roman church stepped in, had to battle off false accusations of the local priest, who tried to put his own Nazi-crimes on him. My grandfather only escaped major punishment, because the support of the locals pressured the catholic officials in Freiburg to force the priest to revoke his accusations.
 
Now, only 70 years after these incidents, the catholic priests have  lost nearly all their former power in Europe and only their worldly counterparts are left to deal with. Historically priests and politicians developed as middle-men between the common people and higher powers. European kings and emperors derived their absolute power directly from God and only in the last decades their small representatives lost their status of being small goods. But the institutions and norms of our legal system are still shaped through this model. Like Daniela Dahn in her book “We are the state”[[2]]url:#_ftn2 rightly points out that the main principle of our legal system are still the roman law. So the German constitution talks about “common property”, but in the actual laws this is just private property of the state (and thus of its “servants”).
 
This de-deification of the political caste and the lack of our political model to reflect the development we are in, is one of the reasons for the political crisis we are in.
 
Today in Europe the most powerful part of the political system is based in Brussels and due to the lack of democracy and the separateness  of the European political elites form the European citizens it has developed many traits of the Roman curia. Also legally there are some similarities. The Curia forms its own state, the Vatican state, and is thus to a certain extend protected from Italian legal prosecution, and the European “civil servants” are protected by their legal immunity from legal prosecution of anything done in office.
 
This legal immunity needs to be revoked as soon as possible and new forms of governance, that reflect the development of consciousness of the European citizens should be introduced. To help this process, self-awareness and self-reflection by the political actors, as advocated by the pope[[3]]url:#_ftn3 , is an essential per-requisite.  And we can as well take Francis' list to arrive at the “15 diseases of the Eurocrats”:
 
The disease of feeling 'immortal' or 'essential'

The disease of excessive activity

The diseases of mental and spiritual 'petrification'

The disease of overplanning

The disease of bad coordination

The disease of spiritual Alzheimer's

The disease of rivalry and vainglory

The disease of existential schizophrenia

The disease of gossip and chatter

The disease of deifying the leaders

The disease of indifference to others

The disease of the funeral face

The disease of hoarding

The disease of closed circles


 
Christel Hahn, Tengen