If we follow Augustine, however, the history of Europe’s political failures is not only the history of misguided ideas, but of misplaced love. The nations of Europe rebelled against their foster-mother the Church, and abjured their loyalty to the People of God, that is, the common Christian congregation to which all the tribes of Europe were converted. They loved their own ethnicity better, and thus became peoples who are not peoples, in Augustine’s uncanny phrase.

To make sense of this we need to peer deeper into Europe’s character.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JG29Aa02.html

Splendid, deeply unexpected piece on the history of the nation state in Europe in the context of Catholicism. I learned a lot in ways which revealed even more unknowns.