On the ways of authentic fidelity” “

“Christian faith is the richest heritage from which the European peoples can draw to achieve their spiritual, economic and social progress”. So said John Paul II , on receiving in audience the participants in the meeting on “Priests and catechesis in Europe” on 8 May. According to the Pope, “catechesis in the family, in the world of work, at school and at university, through the new languages, involves priests and laity, parishes and movements”; all are called to “cooperate in the new evangelization, to maintain and revitalize our common Christian roots”. But the “quality” of catechesis, underlined John Paul II, “depends, in very large part, on the presence and action of the priest”, who, “especially if he is a parish priest”, is called to be “the first believer and disciple of the Word of God”. No to a “thousand commitments”, yes to “missionary tension”. “Today – emphasized the Pope – the scope of the priest’s ministry is being increasingly widened to pastoral fields that enrich the Christian community, but that sometimes risk squandering his action in a thousand commitments and activities. His presence in catechesis feels the effects of this and may be reduced to intermittent moments which have little impact on the formation of catechists themselves”. Priests, on the contrary, according to John Paul II, must “feel a duty to the whole people of God, that of transmitting the Gospel with most careful theological and cultural preparation”. “Dedicate painstaking care to the discernment and encouragement of vocations to catechumenal service”: that is the other task assigned by the Pope to the priest, who must be the “catechist of catechists” and “help the community to live in a permanent missionary tension”. The “gift and primary task of bishops and priests” in Europe, concluded the Holy Father, is the “edification of the Church through the proclamation of the Word of God and catechetical teaching”: in this perspective, the Catechism of the Catholic Church can be “an indispensable handbook offered to priests, to catechists and to all the faithful, to guide catechesis along the ways of authentic fidelity to God and to the men and women of our time”. The “style” of Jesus. “A catechesis that invests in the real problems of life is the indispensable premise for making the faith of believers capable of being translated into strong and convinced witness”. So said Msgr. Cesare Nosiglia, vice-gerent of Rome and CCEE delegate for catechesis, in concluding the work of the meeting. “Today is the time for explicit proclamation of the Gospel to anyone and everyone, at all times and wherever they may be”, he added. “Authenticity and power of truth”, “coherence of witness with life”: these are the essential prerequisites for the catechesis of the priest, who is called to be “ever more missionary”, and to base himself on the “style” of Jesus himself, who “catechised with words and gestures, with his whole life”. Only thus, according to Nosiglia, can the ecclesial community become a “vital environment” where “anyone who enters or happens occasionally to pass through it may breathe an atmosphere not like that of a firm geared to production, but of a family in which what matters is the human person, the being able to devote time to and remain in the company of anyone without haste, without a specious, but substantially uninvolved or indifferent, or worse still coercive dialogue”. The role of the laity. From an “occasional, functional but unincisive” catechesis to a catechesis that starts out from the “passion for man” and “penetrates the culture and the personal experience of each individual”: that is the change in direction hoped by Nosiglia. The clergy must – he says – “learn” from the laity, if they are not to be transformed into “jacks of all trades” and “make everything revolve round themselves”.