OK, then. I was sloppy with my words. I should have said: A pan-European political project (even though it wasn't, as it excluded the UK) with a profound basis in Catholic teaching.
Just read the language of the ever-popular Schuman declaration:
It proposes that Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe. The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.
The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. The setting up of this powerful productive unit, open to all countries willing to take part and bound ultimately to provide all the member countries with the basic elements of industrial production on the same terms, will lay a true foundation for their economic unification.
This production will be offered to the world as a whole without distinction or exception, with the aim of contributing to raising living standards and to promoting peaceful achievements. With increased resources Europe will be able to pursue the achievement of one of its essential tasks, namely, the development of the African continent. In this way, there will be realised simply and speedily that fusion of interest which is indispensable to the establishment of a common economic system; it may be the leaven from which may grow a wider and deeper community between countries long opposed to one another by sanguinary divisions.
Economic corporatism leading to an eventual political union that preserves peace and respects the dignity of mankind, without invoking a single word or precept of Socialism (remember, this is 1950)? That sounds like Christian Democracy to me.
I don't think it's possible to separate church doctrine from either the founders or from the (initial) results: The Robert Schuman archives are maintained by the Catholic Academy of Trier.
After the failure of post-World War I democracy and the rise of fascism and Nazism, and with the prospect of Communism on the march, western Europeans needed an economic order that could preserve democracy. Free trade would break the cartels that had underpinned reactionary politics that had brought Europe to the brink of a new Dark Age. Not conservative as in Churchill, De Gaulle, or Adenauer but reactionary as in Hitler, Mussolini, and Petain. The reactionaries found war one of the few reliable means of ensuring a high demand for steel (not to mention coal, iron ore, and limestone necessary for steel production) by creating armaments. Those armaments enticed arms races, misunderstandings, and wars.
I wouldn't make much of the similarity between the EU's building and the Tower of Babel in Breughel's painting; the modern building is an unimaginative cylindrical glass skyscraper, and the Tower of Babel is a cone.
