The “post-Lisbon” age

The COMECE Spring Plenary Assembly is being held in Brussels from 14 to 16 April. It is being attended by 21 bishops representing the 27 member countries of the EU. The President of COMECE (Commission of the Episcopates of the European Community), the Most Rev. Adrianus van Luyn, Bishop of Rotterdam, introducing the assembly, devoted ample coverage in his address to current developments in the EU, following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, and offered a reflection on what might be the contribution of the Church in this context of the economic and financial crisis. Here is a résumé of his introductory report. Lisbon Treaty. “We are now effectively living in the ‘post-Lisbon’ age and the practical consequences of this entry into force of the Treaty have not been slow in coming”, said Bishop Adrianus van Luyn, welcoming the role that the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is now playing: in particular COMECE encourages him to “explore, in dialogue with the representatives of member states, the possibilities of compromise, independently from the national interests of the rotating Presidency of the Council, and to seek a solution in the common interest of the Union as a whole, without losing sight of the specific interests of individual states. Combating poverty. Central theme of the COMECE plenary assembly is “2010, European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion”. President van Luyn deplored the fact that, “although social security systems in the EU are among the most advanced in the world, too many Europeans still live in conditions of poverty: 16% of the population is below the poverty threshold; one European out of ten lives in a family is which no one is working; 19% of children (19 million in all) are at risk of poverty”. In their discussion ‘in camera’ the bishops enquired into the causes of poverty, but they also analyzed the specific programmes implemented both by the Commission and by the Churches and their organizations. Since last December, moreover, a group of representatives of COMECE, CEC, Caritas Europe and Eurodiaconia has been drafting a document that will analyze the question with the aim of proposing specific policy measures to combat poverty in Europe. Van Luyn declared: “This is a long-term campaign and will only be crowned with success if it is able to bring together those who are its victims in order to turn them into the subjects themselves of the anti-poverty campaign and if it is not exclusively concentrated on the solution of material difficulties, but implements a more global approach”. EU dialogue and European Churches. Speaking of dialogue between the EU and the European Churches, van Luyn announced that “a new meeting between the leaders of Churches and religious communities and Presidents of European Commission, Parliament and Council will be held on 19 July”. As has become the custom since 2006, “these meeting especially have a symbolic importance, but they also reflect the dialogue that is slowly but surely being developed between the Churches and the EU”. It will be advisable, stressed the COMECE President, “to furnish the existing dialogue with a more cogent structure, in order to bring to fruition what is slowly being developed”. The bishop’s position on last December’s Copenhagen summit on climate change was firm: van Luyn spoke of “disappointment” and “failure”, both due to organizational problems, but especially due to the fact that “between the developed and emerging countries, the G77, there exist deep divides that will become ever more visible in future”. To ensure that the conferences in Bonn and Mexico planned to be held by the end of the year do not also fail, what’s mainly needed, “more than any accord on precise figures for emission reductions, is a change in mentality” in the sense of “climatic justice, in other words, a fair distribution of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as changes in lifestyles”.The order of values and the crisis. After reviewing the economic and financial crisis that has hit Greece and Europe, the President of COMECE proposed a reflection on what ought to be the Church’s contribution in this context. And he declared: “the origin of the crisis should be sought in an erroneous order among values”. “Since the word ‘crisis’ means distinguishing and separating the more important from the less important, the violence of the crisis demands that we take radical decisions … and that we concentrate on what’s essential: defending human dignity and the common good for our generation and for the generations to come”. We need, said the Bishop of Rotterdam, “to rediscover the right balance between the understanding of man as free individual and the person as relational being”, “between legitimate individual interests and common interests, between legality and justice”. And he concluded: all this “cannot easily be translated into a legislative framework. The link between fundamental values and laws, instead, is represented by these elements linked to an interiorization, which at one time we called ‘virtues’. We need to rediscover and practice them. Only then will the crisis become a beneficent change”.