Italy: an alliance for education”Education is needed and teachers capable of teaching are needed. But it’s difficult to obtain either the one or the other if there’s not a heritage of values and knowledge, let’s say a tradition, that is considered worth handing down”. That’s the observation that forms the leitmotif to the preliminary Report of the Committee for the Cultural Project of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), “The Educational Challenge”, which will be presented in Rome on 22 September. The aim of the Report is to “encourage a reflection on the state of education and, more generally, on the existential and socio-cultural reality of man today, in the light of Christian anthropology and experience”. It also aims to “promote a consciousness that may give rise, in our country, to a kind of alliance for education able to involve all the protagonists interested in the problem, ranging from families to schools, from the world of work to that of the media”. All this should be seen in the light of the Pastoral Guidelines of the Italian Church for the next decade, which will be dedicated to what the Pope, in the letter he sent to the diocese of Rome in January, called the “educational emergency”. “In our time, at least in the West – writes Cardinal Camillo Ruini, chairman of the CEI Committee for the Cultural Project, in his preface to the Report – education has become a problem, in a new way”. Especially, in the cardinal’s view, “relations between the generations have become more insecure and problematic, in particular in terms of the transmission of models of conduct and models of life, so much so that there is a tendency to speak of a rift or indifference between the generations”. In this scenario, “the chance of a genuine formation of the person seems reduced and precarious”. For her part, the Church, points out Cardinal Ruini, has always had “educational work” close at heart and now intends to assume responsibility for the “educational emergency” by promoting “all round collaboration”, also with non-believers.France: campaign for the catechism”Together let’s go towards Jesus”: that’s the slogan of the advertising campaign (also prominent on its poster)to publicize the catechism, launched in recent days by the eight dioceses of the Isle de France: Paris, Meaux – Seine et Marne, Versailles – Yvelines, Evry – Essonne, Nanterre – Hauts de Seine, Saint-Denis, Créteil – Val de Marne, Cergy-Pontoise – Val d’Oise. The objective of the project, explain the dioceses, “is to offer families that don’t think of the catechism for their children, or don’t dare to attempt this adventure, the chance to discover its riches”, in the conviction that “if many children are not enrolled in catechism, this is due not to a rejection of this initiative, but to the lack of information about it”. The campaign, which will last three years, is “openly missionary because the aim is to involve families of all types: baptized or not, families of standard, single parent, re-composed or enlarged type, often on the margins of the Church”. Posters to advertise the campaign have been displayed in shops; banners displayed on the facades of churches; and flyers are being distributed in all places frequented by children and their parents. The campaign has also activated its own dedicated website: www.catechisme.idf.catholique.fr, to demonstrate that “the transmission of the Word of God also takes place through such current educational means as games, mime and drawing”. The website invites children to discover the stories of the great personalities of the Bible, the lives of the saints and the inspiring “witnesses” of our time, to join together in prayer and to have faith in the Church, and reminds parents of the “existential questions” posed by their children: life, death, happiness, justice, and the future of the planet. Hungary: Days of Catholic CultureCardinal Péter Erdö, Archbishop of Budapest and President of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference, blessed the new bookshop of the “Saint Stephen Society”, the publishing house of the Holy See in Hungary and the oldest in the country, on 15 September. “Acting with faith and placing oneself at the service of the spreading of the Gospel – said the cardinal during the bookshop’s inauguration – means realizing the missionary mandate entrusted to Christ”. On the same day Bishop Andras Veres inaugurated the “Days of Hungarian Catholic Culture”, now being promoted for the first time by the Hungarian bishops to show the richness of the national heritage of sacred art. During the three-day event, with a packed programme of over a hundred events in different localities, churches and diocesan collection exhibited their treasures to the public.
