Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that Europe’s immune system is being intentionally weakened and “our way of life, our fundamental worldview is coming under a targeted attack.”
During an interview with Magyar Idők, the prime minister said that others want us to be who we are not. “They want to take away our way of life and exchange it for something that is not our way of life,” he said.
PM Orbán said that we hear more and more frequently that the European Union’s founders “marked the way” sixty years ago, quoting the former foreign minister and prime minister of France Robert Schuman: “Europe shall be Christian, or shall cease to be”.
“Our starting point was always that we have the right to live our own lives. And when we had the strength, we defended this right. That’s why for years we have been working to make Hungary stronger and put it back on its own feet,” the prime minister added.
PM Orbán also said that as long as his government is in power, it would work to keep Hungary Christian and Hungarian, as well as do everything possible to keep Europe European.
“We Europeans – with or without confessing it, with or without being conscious of it – live in a culture that is structured by the teachings of Christ,” the prime minister said.
Hungarians have every right to see themselves as a Christian nation, he said. “Many people try to criticize us when they hear that people who profess to be Christian don’t let people from other parts of the world emigrate to Europe,” he said.
However, Christ’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” also means to “undertake and preserve all that we are and who we are,” he added.
He added that Europeans regard Christian culture as a source of pride and strength; Christian culture defines their everyday values. “It defines our perceptions of the nature of justice and injustice, of the relationship between man and woman, of the family, of success, of work and of honor,” he said.
“Regardless of whether or not we go to church, or, if we do, to which one, we don’t want to have to celebrate Christmas Eve behind drawn curtains to avoid offending somebody’s sensibilities,” PM Orbán said.