The appeal to faith as the source of peaceful co-existence, the contribution of the Churches to the construction of the European Union, the centrality of the parish, and concern for the country’s social emergencies, immigration in particular: these are the main points in the final communiqué of the permanent Council of the Italian Episcopal Council, held in Rome from 11 to 14 March. The beginning of the work of the Convention on the future of Europe, on 28 February this year, gave the permanent Council the occasion to reaffirm the need for “the role, past and present, of Christianity and the Churches in European society and culture to be recognized”. “It is essential declares the communiqué that the European Union increasingly defines itself as an international player and interlocutor also at the political and diplomatic level, due to the original contribution it can make to the development of peoples and peaceful co-existence”. Further discernment is required “to determine the respective competencies of the Union, of the individual states and of the regions and local authorities, based on the principle of subsidiarity”. The Italian bishops do not conceal their “astonishment and irritation” at the recent resolution “Women and fundamentalism” adopted by the European Parliament which they say “seems to tend in some parts to lump Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, together with the various forms of fundamentalism, thus offering an unacceptable ideological interpretation, and one devoid of historical and cultural foundations. It was also pointed out “with sorrow” that among the various categories admitted to the “Forum of civil society” that will accompany the work of the Convention “a specific reference to religious interlocutors is lacking”, a sign of the tendency “to wish to confine the religious element to the exclusively private sphere”.
