On the road with Europe

“Man is the way of the Church” and therefore “our attention is entirely devoted to the human person in Europe, to his/her personal, spiritual and social situation”. This, in brief, has been the commitment of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) for the past 40 years, whose anniversary will be celebrated in Rome November 22-23, and with the audience with Benedict XVI. With these words, Cardinal Peter Erdo, archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and CCEE president, drew the balance of a 40-year-long history. CCEE’s directive norms were adopted March 25 1971. CCEE was the fruit of the Second Vatican Council. It was a response to the urgency and difficulty for bishops from the whole of Europe to meet regularly and freely. Right from its origins, in fact, CCEE was thought as a body, which had to breathe “with two lungs”. Currently, CCEE numbers 38 members. It’s hard to consider all these 40 years of CCEE activity. But we can say that the inheritance of these 40 years is: 8 symposia, 6 ecumenical meetings, 3 ecumenical assemblies, 2 Catholic-Orthodox fora; 40 plenary assemblies (from 1995 with the presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences), the meetings of the General Secretaries, the Media Officers and spokespeople, and commission meetings on a wide variety of issues. In all hundreds and hundreds of meetings, documents, communiqués, and interviews about the witness of the Church in Europe. To love man in Europe. “All our attention – says card. Erdo – is therefore focused on the person in Europe, his/her personal, spiritual and social situation. We think in particular about questions linked to migration and problems connected with the demographic collapse: of the family, the education and culture of the respect for life to defend it in all its stages, from conception to natural death. Only the culture of love and life can guarantee a future. How can one not also think of the different dimensions of daily life in Europe and therefore of the political questions and the necessary relationships between Church and State? And our relationship with Creation”. “To love the human person means for us to give each person the opportunity to encounter and know Jesus Christ. For this reason – he continues – CCEE is particularly committed to evangelisation and care for the faith”.Ethics of life. “The Churches in Europe contribute through their faith and witnesses to the presence of Christian humanism”, underlines Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference and CCEE vice-President. “In our times, marked by relativism on a theoretical level, and by consumerism on a practical one, Christian faith is challenged to justify its plausibility and ability to answer people’s deeper questions”, continues His Eminence”. “My wish is that CCEE may continue along the pathway that it has followed over the past few years to delve ever deeper into the relationship between evangelization and culture in our times, and to demonstrate that Christianity is not only a gift to preserve, but also the task awaiting us to reinterpret the world we live in, beginning with human beings “created in the image and likeness of God'”. “Without a true respect of these primary values, which are at the basis of the ethics of life, it would be an illusion to think of a social ethics which, while having human promotion as its ultimate goal, eventually forsakes human beings in the very moment of their greatest fragility”.Europe and the Christian roots. “Europe – observes Msgr. Anton Stres, Metropolitan Archbishop of Ljubljana, president of the Slovenian Bishops’ Conference – is the Continent where Christianity lived its highest peaks, shaping its identity, and, despite two schisms, its fundamental values were formed. From Europe left the missionaries headed towards other Continents. For this, the body of the European Churches has a special meaning. CCEE was founded in the years when the Iron Curtain marked the division of Europe, and it significantly contributed to overcoming that divide”. Msgr. Franjo Komarica, Bishop of Banja Luka, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia ed Erzegovina says CCEE is “the work of the Holy Spirit for the Church and for humanity today. Only God knows the many precious fruits borne by the mutual encounters and consultations”. And then he adds a personal recollection: “I felt a great joy and comfort when, during my house arrests in 1995, I received words of support and protection by all CCEE and CEC members conveyed to me during their joint assembly. May the Lord generously reward them for this gesture of fraternal love! I pray to God as He follows with His blessing the works of the Presidency and of the Secretariat of CCEE for the good of the Church in the contemporary societies of Europe and of the whole world!”.