education" "
Finding the “right way” to reach the hearts” of the young”, “discerning the signs of the time and the work of divine grace that acts in the heart of persons”: in the view of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, called to celebrate the opening Mass, this is the main aim of the Symposium of European bishops. Young people today, he said, “have a need for an education that is not just transmission of facts, notions, or science, but also a transmission of values and great ideals, just as the heart of the young is great”. The education of the young in the faith is, therefore, “among the greatest challenges faced by the Church today”. “Transmitting to the young a clear consciousness of their own identity” is the first challenge that the Church needs to tackle, in an age like our own, “characterized by pluralism and relativism”. “If we want young people to have a profound sense of their own identity the cardinal added it is essential for us to oppose the attempt to forget, or worse still to sever, the roots with the past of European civilization”. The “marginalization of religions”, called by the Pope “an injustice and an error in perspective”, must therefore be rejected, and assent given instead to a European unity that transcends “the logic of a mere monetary and economic union”, starting out from the consciousness that “in the course of the centuries Europe and Christianity have been inseparably intertwined and mutually enriched with those values that have become the soul of European civilization”. “If the bell-towers and cathedrals built in Europe through the centuries end up serving only to illustrate picture-postcards concluded Cardinal Re the youth of this old continent, that for centuries represented the hub of the cultural and political events of the world, will see their humanity gravely impoverished”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1 N.ro relativo : 16 Data pubblicazione : 26/04/02
