A welcoming home

“May this building” become “a home for the Church in Europe” and contribute “to the soul and the unity” of the continent: that’s the hope expressed by Bishop Adrianus van Luyn of Rotterdam, President of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) on the evening of 18 March, during the ceremony marking the inauguration of the organization’s new headquarters at 19, Square de Meeûs, at the heart of the “European quarter” in Brussels. The ceremony followed a Mass celebrated in the chapel of the new headquarters (dedicated to the co-patrons of Europe, St. Benedict and St. Edith Stein) by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels and President of the Belgian Bishops’ Conference, and by the auxiliary bishop of the same diocese and member of COMECE, Monsignor Josef de Kesel. The ceremony also marked the opening of the spring plenary assembly of COMECE which was mainly focused on the conflicts in the Middle East and in South-East Asia, on the role of the EU in this regard, and on the European elections in June. The assembly is due to end with a press conference this afternoon. Those present at the ceremony included Cardinal Péter Erdö, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and President of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE), CCEE general secretary, Father Duarte Nuno Queiroz de Barros da Cunha, and Mgr. Aldo Giordano, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the Council of Europe.Church in Europe “critical and constructive”. “The Church in Europe – said Mgr. van Luyn – should not be complacent and self-satisfied”, but be “in movement”, and this should be translated into her contribution “to the europeanization of Europe”. “Today the cultural tendencies of our age and political and economic power no longer bow to the imperatives of the Church”; other forces “have replaced her” and she thus “plays a different role in Europe, because she questions, in a critical and constructive way, the new aesthetic, ethical, technological and political developments” according to the Pauline formula “evaluate everything and hold fast to what is good”. According to Mgr. van Luyn “The Church in Europe wishes to pledge herself to what is good” and COMECE “feels this task to be part of its own duty”. Nonetheless, he warned, the Church in Europe “remains part of the Catholic Church of the whole world”: for this reason “she cannot limit her own action and its irradiation to the continent itself” but must continue to “contribute to the humanization of the whole world”. She must overcome her own confines. Only thus, concluded Bishop van Luyn, quoting Paul Claudel, “shall Europe find her soul and her unity”. In dialogue with the institutions. It’s important that the European Commission and the Churches continue their dialogue “on questions that are central for the building of a social Europe”, said Vladimir Špidla, EU Commissioner for employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. “The promotion of equality between man and woman, the reconciliation between professional and family life and the struggle against all forms of discrimination” are issues on which, according to Špidla, “the Churches can throw light”. “In this time of economic and social crisis” in which “the temptations to become inward-looking and reject the needs of others are becoming stronger”, “the defence and promotion of the values we have in common, namely tolerance, solidarity and justice, seem to me more than ever necessary”. In the Commissioner’s view, “the dialogue established over twenty years ago” with “the representatives of religions and Churches” is “mutually beneficial” and finds a “solid basis in the common commitment to build a free and united Europe, a Europe of peace and prosperity, in which all citizens” may “live together, united in diversity”. It is, he concluded, an “open, transparent and regular dialogue”, which the Lisbon Treaty “incorporates in the positive law of the Union” by recognizing its “specificity and importance”. A “strategy” for Europe. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Primate of Ireland and Vice-President of COMECE, is of a like mind: “I would have preferred to see a clear reference to the Christian heritage of Europe in the Lisbon Treaty”, he said, but since “it does not appear, the best way to reply to those who try to minimize the Christian contribution to the history of Europe” consists in “testifying to the significance, for the EU today, of the values that form its foundation”. In this perspective the Lisbon Treaty “offers new opportunities to channel these values in forms of structured dialogue between the Commission, the Churches and the religious and philosophic organizations”. However, insisted Archbishop Martin, “European Christians need a strategy” that “is not limited to reacting to single issues or events”, but “goes to the very heart of problems through a critical discernment of values”. “Christians – he said – must affirm their own commitment to Europe and, without being ashamed, offer their own contribution” by presenting “the things of God in an authentic, demanding and uncompromising way”.