reflections" "
“A Charter for Europe”: that’s the title of the last number of “Nuntium”, the four-monthly review of the Pontifical Lateran University. Like the previous number, it contains contributions by representatives of the European Churches, the European Commission and Parliament, European social and professional organizations, and the European Centre for Human Resources. We give some brief excerpts below. Constructors of the new Europe of the spirit. The future form of Europe cannot depend on the decision of a group which holds a monopoly of what it means to be European’… The witness of life inspired by evangelic radicalism is an essential element in the formation of the spiritual face of the Europe of the future… At the heart of a pluralistic culture, in which the model of the tower of Babel seems to predominate, we must present the model of the unity of the Last Supper… The foundation of European unity cannot be faith in the magic power of the institutions. That foundation needs to be sought in a spiritual community rooted in the values of the Gospel. Law and the economy, in spite of their undoubted merits, are unable to produce those same effects that depend on the blood of the martyrs and a life inspired by the Gospel. The stones of the Berlin Wall cannot be used to construct a modernized tower of Babel, shorn of the axiological foundations that are the essence of the European tradition. (Archbishop Jósef Miroslav Zycinski of Lublin, Poland) An unjust attempt. The attempt to marginalize the Churches and the religious confessions, historical bearers of the identity of Europe, reducing their significance in the institutional framework of the EU and confining them to the vague horizon of the private sphere, seems unjust to Europe’s past and present and self-destructive to its future. United Europe has a need of the cohesive force that derives from the community values, practices and experiences, from the cultural creativity, from the passion for charity and service to others, from the tension to the transcendent, that the Churches and the religious confessions proclaim, propose, inculcate and support… If we want to avoid enlargement being transformed, in covert forms, into a kind of annexation, with the consequent standardization of central and eastern Europe, its subjection to the models of the West, we need to ensure that the identities peculiar to the countries that join the Union be recognized and safeguarded… In this way peoples and cultures that regained their political freedom and pride in their own identity little more than a decade ago will be helped to recognize in united Europe the term of their vocation within and at the service of a ‘symphonic’ identity. (Bishop Attilio Nicora, forner bishop of Verona, forner vice-president of Comece, president of the administration of the patrimony the Apostolic See, Italy) The hopes of the European Commission. The Convention has the moral obligation to prove successful. It cannot permit itself to fail, for that would inflict a serious blow on the credibility of the European Union… The European Commission trusts that the Convention may draft an ambitious text as the foundation, or rather as the re-foundation, of the European Union, bearing in mind that the existing treaties already represent a valid point of reference, though they need to be simplified, improved and completed… The Commission trusts in an open and wide-ranging debate in which all the citizens and the political authorities of the member states may participate… The Commission hopes that the proposals will be translated into a text of constitutional nature that may affirm the Union’s essential principles and missions, define an institutional organization and recognize citizens’ rights of participation and freedom… Such a text ought to be able to combine the needs of efficiency with those of legitimacy, an inseparable duality in all our democracies… This will be one of the clearest measures of the success (or failure) of the Convention as a constitutional instrument for the future of the European Union. (António Vitorino, member of the European Commission, responsible for civil liberties and internal affairs, representative of the European Commission at the Convention, Portugal)
