A laboratory of faith” “” “

The 10th Symposium of European Bishops will be held in Rome from 24 to 28 April. This year it will have as its theme “Youth of Europe in a period of change. Laboratories of faith” (cf. SIREurope no.11/2002). The Symposium – promoted by the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE) – will be attended by 90 bishops and 34 young people, chosen by the Episcopal Conferences and by some movements. All the 34 Episcopal Conferences, from Albania to the Ukraine, will be represented. The discussions of the Symposium will also be followed by a delegation of the KEK (Conference of the European Churches) and by ten or so young journalists from various European countries. “On the basis of young people’s experiences of life and faith – explains the CCEE – new perspectives (opportunities and challenges) will be defined for evangelization and the inculturation of the gospel in Europe today”. Also expected to attend the Symposium are all the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences who will participate in the plenary assembly of the CCEE on Friday, 26 April. That Europe is in a period of change is a common perception: some regard this situation with anxiety, others with hope. The European bishops feel as their first responsibility the urgent need to give the inhabitants of this Europe the chance of a meeting with the person of Jesus Christ. This meeting has already transformed the life of so many and also the course of history, but it is still a “young” fact that in large part remains to be discovered in all its newness. The symposia organized by the CCEE in recent decades have always dealt with this basic theme: evangelization. We are now approaching the 11th Symposium in which the bishops wish to verify whether the world of the young and their experience of faith is a privileged opportunity or litmus test to understand more deeply, on the one hand, the social and cultural changes taking place in our countries and, on the other, the signs of a new phase of evangelization and the inculturation of Christianity in Europe. The religious experience of young people, albeit in an ambiguous way, seems to contain new indications on how it is possible to experience the faith in contemporary culture and how the Gospel can respond to the questions and tragedies of humanity in our time. The subtitle of the symposium quotes the expression that John Paul II pronounced before millions of young people at Tor Vergata in August 2000: “laboratory of faith”. Both the experience of young people and the symposium itself are considered as “laboratories”, in which research is conducted, hypotheses are tested, and new approaches identified. Perhaps something similar to what the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn diagnosed in his book The Structure of the Scientific Revolutions is also applicable to the “waves” of evangelization: “One enters in a ‘state of crisis’ of ‘normal’ science when problems emerge to which the scientific paradigm hitherto accepted is no longer able to respond. A ‘scientific revolution’ takes place when a breakthrough occurs and ways of solving the problems that have emerged are identified, and so a new shared paradigm gains ground”. Perhaps the bishops at the forthcoming symposium will help define for Europe the criteria of a new “paradigm” for the evangelization which is already beginning to reshape our lives, after an evident “state of crisis”, but about which we are probably still insufficiently aware. It is clear that as far as the life of the Church is concerned, newness does not spring from mere reflections on the present or the future, but can only spring from a return to the source of the Gospel that led to the birth of the Christian community in the first place, to the Tradition that transmitted to us the Revelation and the magisterium of our Pope who is already urging Christians along the ways of an evangelization of new quality. The fact that the bishops, delegates of all the Episcopal Conferences, wished a sizeable group of young people to participate in the symposium is a clear indication that the Church of Europe is looking with a horizon open to the future. The presence of delegates of other Christian Churches and of the episcopal organizations of Africa, Asia and America will also ensure that the work of the symposium will have an ecumenical horizon and that its deliberations will be spread to all the latitudes of the earth, with trust and responsibility.