FRONT PAGE
The metaphor of the European project as a “cathedral” in construction, used in the Message of Rome , resulting from the Comece Congress Values and Perspectives for Europe : 50 Years of the Treaties of Rome , may puzzle. This is part of its power as a metaphor. It recalls the nobility of the European achievement. It salutes the skills, imaginative know-how of the builders of the new Europe. It alludes to the ethical and spiritual significance of the detail of EU commercial, economic and political policies. It hails the post-war European dream of peace, the rule of law, the sharing of resources and the pursuit of justice. And it lauds the new method by which its policies are achieved. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin explored this metaphor in his concluding remarks. Cathedrals require constant and high cost maintenance. Their interiors require adaptation to the needs of new generations. Successful adaptation must harmonise with the original plan. Each generation must care for the cathedral and ensure its openness to all, he recalled.Held ad limina apostolorum , in the city where the treaties were signed, as noted by the President of Comece, Bishop Adrianus Van Luyn, the Congress gathered some 500 participants from 31 European countries. Bishops, clergy, religious, catholic laymen and women, ecumenical delegates from the Reformed and Orthodox traditions, European politicians and EU civil servants – including some who had worked on the building site in the early decades of construction and a number of young men and women representing the future generations – exchanged ideas, pooled concerns and confirmed their determination to care for this “cathedral” of European construction.During an Audience on Saturday 24 March Pope Benedict XVI urged Christians to remain untiring in their efforts to build a new Europe “rich in its ideals and free of ingenuous illusions, inspired by the perennial and life-giving truth of the Gospel”. He invited them to take part in the public debate on European issues both at the European and national level. He pointed to serious symptoms indicative of the need for renovation.Recognition of the European achievement, appreciation of the community method are pre-requisites for all who would advance and renew the European project, as the recent Report to Comece, A Europe of Values suggests. So too is love of the neighbour as made in God’s image, the fundamental principle which inspired the founding fathers of the European project and which still fuels its unique method. For cathedral maintenance a respect for history, a strong aesthetic sense and multiple technical skills are de rigeur . Maintaining the “cathedral” of European construction is also a form of frontier work, in terms of Cardinal Attilio Nicora’s remarkable homily at the concluding Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. That frontier – between the old and the new Europe, between established mechanisms of governance and more participative forms thereof responsive to citizens’ desire to participate in shaping their Europe, between ethics and the details of political policy, between the necessary interaction of the sacred and the secular – deserves today more than ever the courageous, critical and imaginative input of Christian citizens and political actors.
