Reaffirming "the reasons for believing"” “

No to a university “subordinated to and conditional on” the needs of production and the market, yes to a university capable of reaffirming the “reasons for believing” to contemporary man, through a language endowed with “a profound cultural quality”, but at the same time not abstract or “separate” from the reality of daily life. This, in sum, is the “spirit” of the working document proposed to the participants at the European meeting of university chaplains (Madrid, 27-29 September) to prepare the Symposium to be held in Rome, from 24 to 27 July 2003, on the theme: “Church and university in Europe” (cf. SirEurope nos. 30 & 34/2002). “Historical memory” and “social responsibility”: these – explained Msgr. Sergio Lanza , professor at the Lateran University – are two other important aspects of commitment for the Catholic universities in Europe. They are called to make their contribution to the construction of “a Europe of peoples” without “nostalgia for the past, but with full conviction in the intrinsic unifying force of Christianity and its historical role”, as hoped for by the Pope. Below we give a brief résumé of the working document, which was drafted by Msgr. Lanza. “Memory narrates the future”. For the European Catholic universities, “the historical memory narrates the future”, through an operation not of “archeology” but of actuality. Modern culture, in fact, “has cast a shadow over, aroused suspicion about, the Christian rebirth of Europe that followed the decline and fall of the Roman empire”. At the same time, the phenomenon of secularization, by “suppressing the substantial link with the past”, has effectively separated European civilization “from its Christian roots”, foundation “of the integral humanism that lies at the basis of the most fundamental rights on which the life of civil society still rests today”. That’s why it is essential for the university world to embark on a “historical revisitation of its own origins”, conceived as a “valuable indication” for its own future”, starting out from the consciousness that “the open exploration of the past results in a witness that becomes a cultural proposal and project of civilization”. Towards a “new humanism”. “The universities – says the document – are called to be, in conformity with their origins and most authentic tradition, centres in which the opening to knowledge, the passion for truth and the interest in the history of man are most effectively expressed. It is just by detaching itself from every explicit reference to the absolute, however, that the university institution has gradually become fragmented and compartmentalized, ending up by losing its own identity”. The “new humanism”, therefore, is the “original vocation of the university”. The university should not be a mere “container” of separate branches of knowledge, but a place where the “reasons for believing” may be restored to contemporary man, through a language endowed with a “profound cultural quality”, but also able to testify that “the question of God is not an abstract investigation, divorced from daily life”. “Social responsibility”. In a period of “far-reaching transformations”, in which “religion is subjected to the harsh pressures of privatization and social blurring”, there is, according to the European chaplains and delegates of university apostolate “a real risk of the scene being commandeered by the technocratic market, with its anonymity and its (claimed) ethical neutrality, from which neither justice nor solidarity can be expected”. But “the Christian sensibility must not resign itself to the university institution’s decline into pragmatic and functional subordination to the needs of production and of the market”. Without “claiming any hegemonic role”, the Church must commit itself “to a service of authentic humanism” that may be an “effective stimulus” to the formation, in the universities, of “strong personalities of professionals, researchers, men of culture, and protagonists of civil and social life”. Maria Michela Nicolais Mediterranean