Towards a new humanism” “

Universities in Europe today are called to avoid “two opposite risks: either passively suffering the predominant cultural influences, or becoming marginal to them”. This is one of the key points made in the “Lineamenta” (guidelines) on “University apostolate in Europe”, drawn up by the European Committee of University Chaplains on behalf of the Council of the European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE). “University pastoral work contributes to the development of the life of the university” and “to the development of a new integral humanism”, are two central theses of the document (presented to the press on 17 November), in which the “personalist and authentically humanist core of culture” typical of the Christian conception of man are re-affirmed, at a time like the present in which this dimension seems “marginal”, while the reduction of knowledge “to what is measurable” is prevalent. “Starting a serious dialogue between the Church and cultural and religious pluralism”: this, explained Msgr. CESARE NOSIGLIA, CCEE delegate for the school and university, is one of the objectives of this “working tool” – the first of its kind in Europe – which is now being sent to all the Episcopal Conferences of Europe for a “basic consultation” in view of the document’s final draft (planned by the autumn of 2005). THE CHURCH HAS “RESPONSIBILITY” FOR CULTURE. The “inculturation” of the faith and the “evangelization” of cultures “form an intrinsic part of the responsibility of the Church, especially in the context of a secularised society like ours today”, said GIUSEPPE DALLA TORRE, Rector of Lumsa (Libera Università Maria Santissima Assunta). “One cannot be a layperson outside the Christian tradition”, he warned, pointing out that today the famous affirmation of Benedetto Croce (“we cannot but call ourselves Christians”) is being translated “antithetically” into another “fashionable” expression which goes: “we cannot but call ourselves laymen”. On the contrary, in our continent – according to Dalla Torre – “everything speaks of Christianity, in spite of the strong gains made by secularization”. Hence the “particular significance” assumed today by the universities, “public or private, confessional and lay”, thanks to the “provocation” that “within themselves continuously recalls them to a verification of their own certainties, to a critical assessment of their own self-referentiality, and to a serious and dispassionate dialogue with other branches of knowledge, in particular that of theology”. “Even if no reference to Christian roots was made in the European Constitution – added Nosiglia – these roots exist and we cannot fail to take due account of them”, starting out just from our capacity to “overcome” the idea of university apostolate as a “specialist ministry” and transform it into the “ordinary pastoral service of evangelization and the promotion of culture”. A “RECOVERY OF IMAGE”. The principal aims of the document are as follows: “finally overcoming the restriction of university apostolate to the pastoral care of students at university and restore to it its own true character as a specific and salient aspect of the pastoral service to culture; understanding and implementing the university apostolate as a privileged means for ‘first evangelization’; and clarifying the relation between the structures operating at the territorial level (parish, prefecture) and the agents directly involved in the university field”. The document also calls for “an arduous and demanding recovery of image” for the universities of our continent, through projects of “cultural animation of the parishes”, “workshops of culture” in the universities, and “formative projects and cultural initiatives” that may help enhance the role of students. There are – as Msgr. LORENZO LEUZZI, co-ordinator of the European Committee in question, pointed out – over 500 university chaplains in Europe (of whom 139 in Germany, 81 in England, 73 in Spain). In Italy, where some 70 of the country’s 226 dioceses are also the seats of universities (not counting regional branches), there are 90 chaplains. In total, there are 76 universities in Italy, of which 14 non-state (but their number is growing, thanks to new entries and telematic universities). “Defending and reinforcing our own Catholic identity”: one may sum up in these terms, according to Father AUGUSTIN DEL AGUA, national delegate for university apostolate of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, the essential task that European universities are called to perform, at a “particular” time like the present “when the faith has no support in society” and is threatened by relativism. “The transmission of the Gospel message is particularly difficult in the modern world, as the Pope has frequently stressed, when he speaks of “cultural environments frequently alien to any spiritual or transcendental dimension”. “Behind us, the ruins, and before us the void”: that’s how Father del Agua summed up the condition of the post-modern individual. Co-operating to permit each historic process to proceed toward God and not conflict with man is therefore the direction in which the European universities must move, given that “a large part of the generations of young people who will most decisively build the future of our society” are present in them.