Lubbers, the problem solver, the no-nonsense politician, the thinker, the pragmatic, sometimes the hustler. Yes, in that third phase of life, there was an interest in refugees, peace and the environment, but you can see that more with successful politicians after their goodbye. Nothing less true. Certainly Lubbers was not the traditional Christian Democrat, let alone a KVP like Romme or even Robert Schuman. They could explain that their political choices were directly distracted from their religious beliefs. KVP leader De Korte was able to defend the preservation of New Guinea in 1961 without a hint of doubt by appealing to natural law. In the most positive sense, this was the case with Schuman. The recently opened archives show this direct link between his conviction and his European policy. Freedom, reconciliation, solidarity, responsibility and, above all, subsidiarity: These are the constituent concepts, or should they be, to this day of the great European project. For more than two generations Catholic social doctrine has determined the thinking and choices of countless Catholic politicians, based on a perhaps somewhat static neo-thomistic vision.

We were formed at monastery schools throughout Europe. Lubbers take them into account in choices and orientations. In 1991, a hundred years after the first major social encyclical Rerum Novrum, he asked if we could deliver a Christmas card, which he could send to his relations as Prime Minister with that reference. Another thing other than the correct Season's greetings today! And when suddenly the European debate in those years rediscovers the forgotten concept of 'subsidiarity', from an encyclical of forty years later, Quadragesimo Anno, Lubbers, like no other, is able to explain to the First Chamber, that this is not simply a push back from Brussels claims to the national level, but also the lifting of cases to the supranational, who belonged there. From a great topicality, now that the debate seems to be becoming less or more Europe, while it is a better Europe!

And yet that doctrine, that approach, has not become decisive. When our generation became really politically interested, it was something new. The Vatican Council will broaden our vision and vision. Catholic social doctrine becomes much more an inspiration, an orientation, with place for questions, dialogue, especially a call for commitment. To work for the common good, the Bonum commune, as a vision. And as a basis especially that unique human image: the human person, who finds his or her realization only in relation to the other, in respect and solidarity. Like Ruud's own attention was also very clearly focused on the well-being of the people he knew. That person and society, from there through lifelines like justice, that solidarity, that stewardship finds its way to that general, the individual interest transcending, well-being.

In April of this year, President Macron, in his remarkable speech to the French Episcopate, will bow to the actual significance of this notion and, precisely, of the Personalism, which is or should be the Leitmotiv of the European Christian Democrats.

That expansion in Catholic- and don't forget the reformatorical-social thinking . I like to refer to the enormous power of expression in those days of the World Council of Churches . . was an appeal to all people of good will for a new commitment. Therefore, the new union of the Christian parties had to take place under the mark of "apple." Apple and Person: so also calling, as we are now talking about the vocation of the entrepreneur and the politician, and in that sense Lubbers pointed out are both professional responsibilities. Responsibility as a counterconcept, as a restoration of balance also in a culture that focuses on rights and claims. Human measure and the importance of community as a counterweight to anonymity, alienation. Great thinkers of the Council such as Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx become his new inspirators, teachers and not rarely friends. Typical for that second phase in Catholic-social thinking is also the rise of the Liberation Theology and the great interest of Lubbers. During a trip through Latin America, organized by Cebemo, he was fascinated by it and became an interlocutor with leading thinkers such as Leonardo Boff.

In those years, there was a second revolutionary expansion in Christian-social thinking. At present, there is still a misunderstanding in many quarters, that this doctrine essentially pertains to domestic socio-economic relations: A third road between raw capitalism and the Leviathan of the state power. We owe a great deal to the polder and the Rhineland model. But that is not what the young people of the peace and reconciliation movement between France and Germany were talking about, in the footsteps of Pax Christi, in the burning of the border trees, in the European ideal. Predicting the outbreak to a new international thought, awareness and responsibility. Following that Council, there will be an incessant series of encyclicals about the new relationship mondiality and political responsibility.

In our country personified by Marga Klompé: Development is the new word for peace and in its first Cabinet will do justice to that axiom even at all painful cuts. Never was our contribution to international cooperation as great as it was then! And that was his commitment to peace. The fact that this was sometimes appreciated differently has to do with the misunderstanding, that conviction and inspiration in these areas are decisive. No, in the well understood Christian-social thinking they cannot do without expertise, knowledge of things, realism and... courage. "For that time of ours, we ourselves are."

And that belief must always be fed, with study, dialogue. That's why Lubbers' career has been a student.

With the lesson also for our contemporary politicians: Catholic and Christian social doctrine is not a textbook that you can put aside after reading. The continuous confrontation of reality and values also requires constant space for reflection and orientation, dialogue. Space also in our time for the guidance reports of the Scientific Institute such as Creation and Rent Mastery and Public Justice.

This dialogue seems to be given new impetus, with theologians and church leaders, with related politicians and entrepreneurs, with economists and scientific institutes here, in Europe and worldwide. With a Governor of a Bank of England or the President of Unilever, with Macron or Pope Francis: united in that joint care for humanity and the earth. United too, Christianly or not, around the solution power of now sometimes rediscovered thinking, now that it is becoming increasingly clear that vision and vision are needed to rise above the flat floor and the perspectiveless of a policy, which draws its inspiration mainly from moving along with daily opinion polls.
Study, dialogue, reflection.

And that is why the third phase of Lubbers' life has not been a break with his earlier commitment, that embrace of environment, the Earth, the refugee, and not to mention the interfaith dialogue. The third stage also in Christian-social thinking: that new perspective of the reconciliation of globalisation with human dignity and of stewardship of Creation with the development of peoples.

The circle is closing. With that last encyclical of Francis, in which everything comes together, Laudato Si', but which also ends with a quote, flowing from an anonymous pen and codified in the Earth Charter: "Let our time enter history as an era of a new reverence for life, of... sustainable development, an intensification of the transformation, the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life."

Two years ago, on the Schaepmandag in Tubbergen, Lubbers will make another passionate appeal to take this "his" Earth Charter together with that unique pope's writing about transformation and creation to heart, in politics. It was about his last public performance, again a papal writing as an inspiration. But with that great difference, it may now be said that this time a pope is not quoted by a politician in the past, which sometimes happened to the brink of being, but in fact he uses the words of someone else, that of a Dutch statesman in his third phase of life. The third phase also pertains to Catholic social thinking.

The first stage, the old one, perhaps some static Catholic doctrine, the second stage from those same basic principles to balance globalisation with justice and humanity and finally the third stage in which the dialogue of religions, care for the earth and Creation take precedence over all people of good will! That's that quadrangle inspiration expertise engagement so infinitely much more than pragmatism or skill.

And that will also determine his legacy: Does today's Christian democracy, which has room for reflection, for inspiration, for formation, take into account the Framework School, CDV, the work of the W.I. . . to re-bend and reconnect, a realistic vision? That is what our society demands, and that is no less than the authenticity, the basis of existence, the added value of Lubbers' and our political movement, or should be, also for its own future.