The thoughts of Europe” “

The 11th ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops is now in progress in the Vatican. It opened on 2 October and is due to end on 23 October. It is devoted to “The Eucharist: source and culmination of the life and mission of the Church”. We publish some passages from the first interventions of the European Synodal Fathers. YOUTH. “Sincerely believing and culturally well educated”, but with “pronounced difficulties in understanding the real eucharistic presence in its true sense”: that’s how Cardinal Camillo Ruini, President of the Bishops’ Conference of ITALY, described the youth to whom he gave catechesis in Rome on the eve of Wyd in Cologne. “The difference between real change and simple change in meaning was in fact clear to them, but on the other hand it was difficult for them to understand how the eucharistic presence of Christ can be actually real, given that the eucharistic species always remain bread and wine to our senses and to any experiments”. “This difficulty has given rise to the equation, albeit not totally conscious, between what is real and what is experimentally tried and tested”. In the cardinal’s judgement, “the type of rationality and culture prevalent today poses to the communication of the faith the problem of how preliminarily to explain that genuine reality is far wider than what falls within our experience”. MARTYRDOM. “By banning our Greek-Catholic Church” the Communists “had a great fear of the God present in the Eucharist”, declared Archbishop Lucian Muresan, Metropolitan of Fagaras and Alba Julia of the Romanians and President of the Bishops’ Conference of ROMANIA. He recalled the heroism of so many priests, “modern martyrs” of the 20th century, who “offered all their suffering to the Lord”. “How many Holy Masses celebrated clandestinely in a spoon instead of a chalice and with wine made from some bunches of grapes found by the roadside! – he recalled – How many humiliations, when during the winter, at a temperature of minus 30°, they were stripped naked during routine searches! How many days spent in the notorious black room, as a punishment for having been discovered in prayer!”. LIFE. “A process of devaluation of the Eucharist is taking place” and “this also corrodes the social fabric of the community of the faith”, said the archbishop of Utrecht and President of the Bishops’ Conference of the NETHERLANDS, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis. However, he urged the Church to “have compassion bearing in mind the conditions to which men and women are subjected”. Rather that have recourse “to structural changes such as the access of married men to the priesthood”, he suggested that “we continue to bear in mind the fundamental intuition of life as gift and sacrifice”: only then can we “begin to live more ‘eucharistically’. COMMUNITY. “One has the sensation that, in the eucharistic vision of our faithful, an individualist, pietistic and more intimate practice of the Eucharist has gained the upper hand, to the detriment of its prevalently communion-creating and ecclesial aspect. The faithful want to communicate privately with Jesus, without communicating with Christ in his totality, Head and Body” of the Church, observed Archbishop Yannis Spiteris of Corfu, Zante and Cephalonia, apostolic administrator of Thessalonica ( GREECE). In the archbishop’s view, we need to put into practice “the affirmation that ‘the Eucharist makes the Church'”. Only in this way can we “increasingly transform believers into living ecclesial communities”. SACRIFICE. “Economic globalization and the free market are having the result that there is ever less space in the world for the spirit of sacrifice. The human being is often treated as merchandise” and “even Christians end up succumbing to these pressures”, seeking an easy religion, without precepts and without the cross”, said Bishop Edward Ozorowski of Bitetto ( POLAND). “Such tendencies – he continued – “may also be noted in the teaching on the Eucharist, of which many important aspects are emphasized: feast, communion, listening to the Word of God, sacrament… However, they are not the ‘key'”. Bishop Ozorowski also warned of the risks of what he called a “protestantization of the theology of the Eucharist, which is revealed as a fine rite but one of little significance for life”. ECUMENISM. “Inter-celebration, intercommunion, or the general hospitality offered to all the baptized are not possible in the Catholic Church. But the participation of individual non-Catholic baptized, in exceptional cases and on particular conditions, is explicitly permitted”, explained Msgr. Amédée Grab, bishop of Chur and President of the Bishops’ Conference of SWITZERLAND. He invited “pastors” to “bear in mind this possibility in their conduct towards those who don’t belong to the Catholic Church but who share the heartfelt prayer of Jesus for unity”. SILENCE. “Our culture is full of paradoxes”, remarked Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles and President of the Bishops’ Conference of BELGIUM. “The perception of the invisible is difficult for contemporary man, and yet there is undoubted interest in everything that lies beyond his horizon, beyond the parameters of efficiency and productivity”. Contemporary man – continued the cardinal – is a “man of action”, yet he “also conceals a huge hunger for the values of disinterestedness and self-giving” and “in many of our contemporaries there is a genuine thirst for silence”. All these elements of our culture, concluded the cardinal, “bear in themselves the seeds for an evangelization of our culture, and the best evangelization is precisely the celebration of the liturgy”. RECONCILIATION. “The experience of my country has demonstrated the power of transformation that the liturgy of the Word and homily are capable of working”, declared Bishop Sean Baptist Brady of Armagh, President of the Bishops’ Conference of IRELAND. According to Msgr. Brady, “words of Holy Scripture such as justice, peace and forgiveness have become the ‘lingua franca’ of the peace process”. “That testifies to the power of the Word, under the action of the Holy Spirit, to make all things new”, he added with reference to the “role played” by two churchmen (a former president of the Methodist Church and a Redemptorist priest) in the achievement of the signing of the disarmament agreement. “On so many occasions of great tragedy and violence, concluded Brady, the Word has helped to transform “attitudes of anger, vendetta and reprisal into actions of reconciliation, forgiveness and healing”. UNITY. “Baptism introduces Christians into the body of Christ, the Eucharist fosters their incorporation in the community and brings it to completion. So the Eucharist does not only express the unity of the Church, but actually produces it. As the constitutive element of unity, it cannot be dispensed with. On the contrary, it must be welcomed as the key moment to render our ecumenical aspirations practical”, said Msgr. Sofron Stefan Mudry, bishop emeritus of Ivano-Frankivsk ( UKRAINE), emphasizing that “a common participation in the celebration of the Eucharist between Catholics and Orthodox could be the light that illuminates us” on the way to unity. Such needs “are perhaps not very much present in official relations between our Churches” but “are increasingly to be felt in our daily pastoral work”. LITURGIES. “When we experience the life of the Church in the Eucharist, we cannot hope it to be ‘an experience devoid of tensions'”, said Bishop Dominik Duka of Hradec Kralové ( CZECH REPUBLIC). “Many of us are convinced that a ‘Tridentine liturgy’ and a ‘post-Vatican Council II liturgy’ exist. But that’s not true. There are different liturgies and there have always been ‘liturgical developments’. We must have great respect for the liturgy of the Oriental Church, and also for the new developments of the ‘Latin liturgy'”. “Different ways of veneration of Christ in Asia, Africa or Europe must also be admitted”, insisted Msgr. Duka. PENITENCE. “If Catholics lack the wish or the opportunity for sacramental reconciliation, it becomes impossible for them also to experience the deepest union with Jesus Christ and with the Church, fostered by the Eucharist”, pointed out Bishop Rimantas Norvila of Vilkaviskis ( LITHUANIA). The problem is compounded by “tendencies hostile to the Christian faith”, such as the diffusion of “esoterica, magic and occultism”. Hence the urgent need to “rediscover in a new light” the sacrament of confession for the “formation of consciences”. A “renewal of the practice of spiritual direction” is also needed”.