Pope Francis issued a wake-up call in a frank address (or was it a scolding?) he delivered Nov. 25 to the European Parliament. Good for him. But let’s not be smug about it. His knuckle-rap that a “self-absorbed” Europe needs to recover its soul applies with equal weight to North America.

How vividly I can still hear them — as though it were recently — the raucous cries resounding across university campuses in the 1960s and early ’70s: “Hey ho, hey ho, Western civ has got to go.”