Solidarity is the future

Solidarity “which pledges us all to active and responsible fellowship with others” is “the best cure for the economic and financial crisis from which Europe and the world are suffering. It’s the antidote to any future crisis”, said Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan, in his homily in Gdansk yesterday evening. The cardinal was speaking during the Mass that opened the Catholic Social Days for Europe on “Solidarity, the challenge for Europe”, being promoted in Gdansk (until 11 October) by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE). “De facto solidarity”. Cardinal Tettamanza spoke of Europe’s need for solidarity: “A great task stands before us, before the 27 member countries of the European Union and their 500 million citizens: the task of resuming and continuing the path towards a Europe of solidarity, both internally and externally, in favour of a world of solidarity; a Europe that is able to dream, project and foster an ever wider solidarity”. “In the European path towards unity and solidarity – the cardinal urged – what’s required is the generous use of all Europe’s human, social, economic, political and cultural forces. But that in itself is not enough: a robust educational effort to inculcate moral and spiritual values, indeed intrinsically religious values, is also needed”. In this process, “we are all convinced that the prophetic witness of words must be matched by the prophetic witness of deeds”. That explains the value of the “de facto solidarity” called for by Robert Schuman in 1950. Recalling the Schuman Declaration (9 May 1950), considered an important milestone in the process of European unification, and its statement that: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”, Cardinal Tettamanzi called Schuman’s expression “de facto solidarity” “really significant and stimulating, because it refers to a solidarity that cannot be exhausted in good intentions and fine feelings, but must be expressed in practice in daily life”. “Some perhaps generous but isolated gestures are not enough – warned the archbishop -, what’s needed is an overall lifestyle shaped by the logic of openness and charity to our fellowmen”.An “inherently political” force. “True solidarity – continued Cardinal Tettamanzi – is not an abstract ideal”, but “a personal and inescapable appeal to “stand up” and be counted, to assume responsibility for the needs of others, to give one’s own in material terms and even more so in terms of human participation and effort”. According to the Archbishop of Milan, “the continuation and propagation of the practice of solidarity releases a typically social, indeed an inherently political force, which pledges us all to active and responsible fellowship with others and the pursuit of integral human development”. “Solidarity and ethics depend on each other. Solidarity must be able to move amid the complexities of the changes and difficulties of our time. And ethics is the means of this discernment”. In the cardinal’s view, therefore, “only if solidarity and ethics work together” will we be able us to “overcome the crisis” because “there is no future without solidarity”. This is the challenge “that Europe awaits in the immediate future and that we wish to embrace in the sign of Christian hope”.The contribution of Catholics to European integration. “These Social Days are not an event that intends to speak solely to the Catholic world, but are also “a proposal for other Christian confessions, other religions, other cultures”, said Mgr. Piotr Jarecki, Auxiliary Bishop of Warsaw and Vice-President of COMECE, speaking to SIR Europe. “Solidarity is a terrain on which dialogue between Catholic and non-Catholic thought is possible and desirable” and “the reason for this convergence” consists “in the common conviction that the human person has an incomparable value and that together we can with greater effectiveness promote man’s dignity and rights”. In a videomessage to the participants, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, said that “European integration is only possible as a joint endeavour; it therefore needs its citizens’ involvement, your active involvement and participation”. Expressing his satisfaction both as President of the EU Commission and in a personal capacity for the commitment of the Catholic Church “to the pursuit of solidarity and justice”, Barroso observed that “70 years after the beginning of the Second World War and 20 years after the end of the Cold War”, these values – peace, freedom, justice and solidarity – “are and will remain the key references of the enlarged European Union of 27 member states. This is particularly important today, because the challenges we have been facing during the last months are not just an economic and financial crisis; they are first and foremost an ethical crisis”: and when “fundamental values are called into in question” we need to “remember that the EU is a Union of values – this Europe is not only about the efficiency of the markets and economic growth”. So Barroso’s conclusion is the importance for “our Europe to direct economic activity at the pursuit of the common good; our Europe is about putting the human being, each human being and the whole human being, at the heart of our policies”.