Germany: “witness by life and not by words””Witness by life, instead of witness by words”: that’s the exhortation made by the President of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, during a pilgrimage to the monastery of Andechs on 20 June. In the presence of hundreds of Catholic pilgrims, the Archbishop of Freiburg appealed to Christians for a courageous witness of faith in society, which must be a “response based on the way we live”. “Today we cannot merely take for granted that the Christian faith is the obvious foundation of families. The Christian foundation has now become rather scarce”, admitted Zollitsch. Therefore “it’s important that today we increasingly learn to relate also to those who are far removed from the Church and those who at first sight seem disinterested in it, and that we extend to them the welcome of our communities”. “Often gulfs are dug, and walls erected, where bridges should be built instead. Let us take each other’s hand and seek reconciliation between us”. The head of the German Church also emphasized the Church’s task of solidarity. “It is the Christian hunger and thirst for social justice that urges us to go to the heart of the wounds that afflict the world: poverty, unemployment, exploitation, disease or fear. For that reason, too, we cannot remain silent in the current debate on the containment of expenditures. We must raise our voice wherever the danger exists of the poor, the weak and the disadvantaged being ignored. We must dedicate ourselves, so that there may be a decent life and a dignified life for everyone. It is up to us”, concluded Zollitsch, “to remain on the side of these [more vulnerable] people in the name of Jesus, and give them the dignity that is too often denied to them”.Poland: plenary assembly of the bishopsChristians cannot ignore the voice of reason that “knows how to defend the weakest, those who too often have neither strength nor voice, or are even stripped of the right to be born and to live”, declared Archbishop Jozef Michalik, President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, in his speech closing the work of the 352nd plenary session of the Polish episcopate (20 June). During the assembly, which was held at Olsztyn in north-eastern Poland, the bishops also approved the text of the statement on the display of religious symbols in public buildings. The document was issued just a few days after the examination of Italy’s appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg contesting the court’s sentence banning the display of crucifixes in public schools. In the final communiqué of the plenary, the Polish bishops also devoted their attention to the “various countries in the world – India, Pakistan, Sudan, Turkey, Iraq and Vietnam” – from which news of “bloody persecutions of our brothers and sisters in the faith” is emerging. They also entrusted “suffering Christians and all the persecuted to the intercession of the Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko”. The Polish episcopate also followed with close attention the election by universal suffrage of the President of the Republic (20 June), inviting the whole nation to participate in the vote in the days preceding the ballot. Without making any mention of specific candidates, the bishops underlined the fundamental importance of the right to life and pronounced their unequivocal opposition to artificial insemination, long discussed by still not regulated by any national legislation in Poland. Portugal: reviewing the Church’s pastoral methodDuring the Pastoral Days of the Episcopate held in Fatima from 14 to 17 June, the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference began a review of its own pastoral method, and published a document, presented as “a working tool and guide for the years ahead”. In it the bishops propose “a method of pastoral discernment: a process of observation, analysis and interpretation of the presence of divine signals in the real life of society and of the Church”. The aim is to “involve in a common and active approach the many different pastoral workers, both at the diocesan and national level, by effectively adopting a synodal spirit and style” – says the document. “The work of pastoral discernment will continue until March 2011. It will define the common pastoral guidelines which will be decided by the Plenary Assembly of November 2011, and be assessed at the end of the following three-year period (2014), when the results achieved will be evaluated and the decision taken whether to continue also the same road”. Describing the current pastoral situation in Portugal, the bishops’ document admits that: “The Portuguese Church, in its various dioceses, religious congregations, movements, new communities and lay associations, is dispersed between innumerable activities, meetings, commemorative days, congresses and institutions that are not linked together, and is unable to give effective vitality and significant innovation to the life of the faithful, or to irradiate signals of hope in society”. Describing the new pastoral method, the document of the Portuguese bishops identifies at least three priorities for pastoral action: “the need for Christian formation, to be better Catholics and bear effective witness to the Gospel; the fervent, creative and fruitful commitment in the task of new evangelization, through a new Christian and ecclesial way of being and acting in the world; and the reorganization of Christian communities, through the discovery of new forms of exercise of the ordained ministry and the implementation of the diversity of the ecclesial ministries”.
