The primacy of relations

Creating a network of persons capable of ‘mobilising’ for Europe, sensitising consciences and promoting integration: that’s the objective set by the fourth year of the ‘European Weeks’, promoted by the Catholic University of Lyon in recent days. This year the event is inspired by the theme of ‘Europe and its project: political and cultural challenges’. There are 23 participants from 10 European countries: journalists, educators, teachers and students from Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine and Hungary. A SPIRITUAL FIGURE. Inspired by a lecture given by Edmund Husserl in Vienna, in 1935, the Spanish philosopher and writer JORGE SEMPRUN recalled in his written text sent to open the ‘European Weeks’ that “Europe exists not only from an historical, but also from a quasi ontological point of view: Europe is a spiritual figure, a project in its profoundest philosophical significance”. “One thing – pointed out Semprun, former Minister for Culture of the Spanish government from 1988 to 1991 – is certain: modern Europe cannot even try to construct itself without those values that are ‘specific’ to it but at the same time of universal dimension. Already in 1935 Husserl spoke of critical reason and supra-nationality: these concepts need to be re-examined and actualised today, of course, but they remain the common foundation; especially in a phase in which immigration and the need to dialogue with radically different cultures are posing new questions to Europe in terms of integration and identification”. “And the sole common European language – concluded Semprun – must remain democracy, and more especially the democratic coherence between what people say and what they are willing to do”. A EUROPE TO BE COMMUNICATED. But how can the objective difficulties that have arisen in the process of European integration in recent months be overcome? One of the latest of these difficulties, and perhaps the most serious, dates to 29 May of last year, when France rejected the draft European Constitution in a referendum. “To transmit the idea of Europe, a political but also cultural idea – said JEAN-CLAUDE PETIT , journalist and President of the national Centre of the French Catholic Press – we must place ourselves in a future perspective, without remaining locked in the past, still less in the present. We must have the courage of tackling in all its scale the challenge of communicating Europe, in terms of content but also of ways and means. We must also develop a capacity to place ourselves in the shoes of those listening to us, in other words, of those who will come after us”. “For example – continued Petit – we must start out from the primacy of the subject, an imperative logic that we cannot do without; second, we need a network of persons, sensitive and capable of speaking but also of listening. And third, we need trust, interior trust: only by rediscovering the primacy of relations, including personal relations, shall we be finally able to transmit and diffuse the idea of a great Europe”. THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LYON. Founded in 1875, the Catholic University of Lyon now has some 7,000 students, of whom 1,300 foreigners. Studies are articulated in five different faculties: theology and religious sciences, philosophy and human sciences, law and economic and social sciences, letters and languages, and natural sciences. Apart from its historic seat in the Place Bellecour in the city centre, the University now has a new campus (opened two years ago), situated just a few steps from the railway station of Lyon Perrache. “Our university – explains the Rector MICHEL QUESNEL – intends to combine opening to society with its strong Christian ethic. Our Catholic identity, in fact, is an invaluable asset: for us the person is indivisible and must be considered in his totality. In an ever more complex society our mission is that of forming skilled and responsible men and women”.