The issues of life and death, which were at the centre of a symposium promoted by the European bishops in Rome in 1989 on the theme: “contemporary attitudes to birth and death: a challenge for evangelization”, remain more relevant than ever. “In this Europe where the vast majority of the population turns to the Church only on the occasion of birth and death Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini had then said, on opening the symposium the Catholic Church is urged to express the heart of the Gospel”. “This he added – is the Good News we need to proclaim: each human being that comes into this world is preceded by God’s love and his/her destiny will be to return to God”. The problem of pain was touched on by the president of the German bishops, Cardinal Karl Lehmann. “The ideal of a life without pain he said is not per se negative. All the dreams of a better and happier life have this component. Nonetheless, pain cannot be completely suppressed without removing from life the necessary suffering that is inherent in it. The ‘culture of painkillers’ is not at the service of man” and “the narcosis of life is a fundamental enemy of the human community. Not only does it make us incapable of supporting our own pain, but it also makes us incapable of perceiving and sharing the pain of others”. John Paul II also spoke at the European symposium. “The Church said the Pope, on receiving the participants in audience must, in the first place, restore to contemporary man the full truth of his having been created as a fruit of a gift of love. On God’s part, above all: the entrance of a new human being into the world does not occur, in fact, without God being directly involved in it through the creation of a spiritual being; and it is only love that moves him to bring into the world a new personal subject, to whom He intends to offer the possibility of sharing his own life”.
