A gift to be respected

The “responsibility for the gift of the creation that God gave to everyone and that today is being jeopardized by many new threats and challenges” was the main theme of the meeting of the CCEE-CEC joint committee held at Esztergom (in Hungary) from 19 to 22 February. In his opening address, the President of the CCEE (Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences), Cardinal Péter Erdo, underlined the “special responsibility” of Christians to the protection of the environment, since they are “stewards of something that in the last analysis belongs to God”. “Today – he added – many people are speaking of climate change, something that is of concern to us all. But we, as persons of faith, also have hope”: a hope that, at the same time, “is also a task” because it demands that we “regard the world with responsibility”. The Church’s approach. Environmental concern is not something new for the Church: “for several years now and on more than one occasion – said Father Duarte da Cunha, general secretary of the CCEE – the Church in Europe has dealt with such questions”. And when she intervenes on this issue, she does so with her own approach. “For the Church – explained the priest – it is absolutely clear that the question of the environment and of the safeguard of the creation must be tackled through a moral judgement illuminated by faith and associated with everything that involves the person and society. From social questions, such as justice and peace, to attention to the dignity of life and the promotion of the family, everything that concerns man also interests the Church and forms part of the great Mission to enable others to get to know Jesus Christ. It is evangelization, I am profoundly convinced, that will bring the best fruits to ecology”.Commitment to the environment. The meeting of the joint committee ended with the publication of a final communiqué. “As human beings – write the Churches of Europe in their joint statement – we need to see ourselves as stewards of creation and not as its exploiters”. To foster this educational process, the Churches have decided to support an initiative long promoted in the Orthodox world and re-launched by the European Ecumenical Assembly at Sibiu, namely, to use the period from 1st September to 4 October as “a time to contemplate, care for and celebrate God’s goodness in creation”. Another concept underlined at Esztergom was that of “closely” linking concern for “effective stewardship of creation” with “a concern for justice in our world”. “CCEE-CEC members recognized – the press release continues – that as Europeans we need to share a sense of solidarity with the poorest in the world, who are the primary victims of our lack of responsibility towards creation”. The future of ecumenical collaboration in Europe. Promotion and knowledge of the Bible in Europe, safeguard of creation, migration and peace: these are the issues on which “future CCEE-CEC cooperation” will converge. The final communiqué of the meeting in Esztergom also speaks of future projects. During the meeting of the joint committee a “report” was presented on the activities of the CCEE-CEC secretariats, following the Third European Ecumenical Assembly at Sibiu. “It was decided that the network of EEA3 delegates would be given adequate relevance in order to promote the sharing of spiritual gifts from the various confessional traditions”. To this end a new updated version of the EEA3 website was presented; it is expected to go online soon. Father Piotr Mazurkiewicz, general secretary of COMECE, also participated in the meeting and underscored the atmosphere of “crisis” felt in the countries of the European Union: it is an “institutional crisis, due to the difficulties encountered in the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in some countries, a financial crisis involving and concerning all member states, and an environmental crisis” which is of concern to all member countries and “which will be the backdrop against which the proceedings of the next international Conference on Climate Change will take place (Copenhagen, December 2009”. Lastly, CCEE and CEC examined the work of the Joint Committee for Relations with Muslims in Europe, whose mandate expired in January, and announced that the next annual meeting of the CEC-CCEE Committee would take place from 8 to 11 March 2010. The monographic theme will be Migration.