Why is God important?” “

The priest isn’t a mere “bureaucrat”: he has the “power” of the Word… Convinced of this is Bishop Michel Dubost of Evry in France. At a meeting of bishops and national representatives of catechesis in Europe promoted by the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe on “Priests and Catechesis in Europe”, which ended in Rome on 8 May, Msgr. Dubost reviewed the relation between priests and the proclamation of the faith in our continent. An “alarming” situation? “The presence of ordained ministers tends to eliminate children from catechesis, not out of disinterest, but because they are overloaded with work”. That’s one of the findings of the survey of catechesis presented by the bishops of France at their last plenary assembly. Commenting on the French findings, Bishop Dubost said they showed that “priests today are in large part remote from catechesis”, especially due to “an unreal image of what catechesis could and should do”. The main danger is posed not so much by the fact that “priests are spending less time in catechesis”, but by their diminishing awareness of the fact that their “power” is based on the Word of God: “The exercise of catechesis – said Dubost – teaches ‘the profession’ of how to be a priest: in other words, it teaches him how to take an interest in the person listening to him, how to be clear and interesting”, and how to show that “everyone’s life can be entirely based on listening to and practising the Word of God”. Faith and “histories”. “Routine”, “dogmatism”, “uncertainty”: these, according to Karl Heinz Schmitt, president of the Association of German Catechists, are just some of the attitudes at the basis of the growing distance of priests from catechesis. Priests – said Schmitt – are not always able to grasp “what different histories” come into play, and sometimes conflict, when people request the sacraments, which still today remains the most frequent reason for their “meeting” with the Christian community. In the case of baptism, for example, “the history of the catechists and of the clergy, the history of the parents, the history of theology and the history of pastoral care intersect, creating “different expectations” in each. “Insecurity”, “lethargy”, “resignation”, “laxity”, and sometimes “retirement” from catechetical activity altogether, thus become the results of the priest’s meeting with a society in which parents generally request “a religious service that is undoubtedly important for them but that does not involve their permanent integration or initiation into the Church and into the community”. In a Europe in which “only about 10% of children after their First Communion or of their parents, after all the positive experiences of the attention devoted to them in preparation, return to church and rediscover their faith, the Church – in Schmitt’s view – “must serve the life of human beings and enable them to perceive the interest God takes” in mankind. An “alternative model”. From “service station” to “family of families”, from “clerical” community to community of participation, from an “elitist” to a welcoming community, from a “closed” to a “missionary” community: according to Msgr. Lucio Soravito, catechist of the diocese of Udine, these are the main transitions that the priest today is called to undertake in his community to “bear witness to a model of life alternative to that which privileges the production, possession and consumption of goods, rather than ‘free’ or disinterested human relations”. But to rediscover “social charity”, in other words “participation in the economic, social and cultural action aimed at promoting the common good”, the Church must start out from the consciousness that “gestures are not enough, words too are needed”: today, in Soravito’s view, “together with the community each believer is called to become a preacher of the Word and justify his/her faith to others”. In this sense, he added, turning the ecclesial community into a “centre of evangelization” means showing “how the Christian faith makes personal, family and social life more true, more just and more rewarding”.