The meeting of the general secretaries of the European Episcopal Conferences, promoted by the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE), ended in Berlin on 28 May. Among the main question discussed: how to organize a secretariat, how to regulate relations with the State, how a Conference may experience a spirituality of communion, and how to conduct dialogue with the mass media. On this latter aspect, it emerged that “Church and mass media seem to obey very different rules: the media live in the immediate, the Church has the ‘calm’ of eternity; the media always seek novelty, the Church has been repeating the same message for two thousand years. The dialogue between them is as delicate as it is fundamental, and requires suitable training”. In Berlin discussion also focused on the European Union and in particular on enlargement and the process of drafting the constitutional Treaty. “The proposals of the Presidium of the Convention, especially those on the status and role of the Churches contained in the present article 51, are say the CCEE secretaries positively accepted by the Episcopal Conferences. A reference in the preamble to religious and Christian roots or to Transcendence would be equally important for the future of Europe”. In the final debate the participants emphasized “the importance of these wide-ranging exchanges for the life of our continent”, in the context of the activities of the CCEE. This organization of the Catholic Church, born from Vatican Council II, is aimed in fact at providing “a forum for dialogue, exchange and collaboration, now more than ever necessary in the Europe of diversities, pluralism and unification”.
