editorial" "
The post-synodal exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, published almost four years after the Synod of 1999, forcefully reaffirms that the presence of Jesus Christ in his Church is the source of hope for our continent. The Pope speaks realistically of the dimming of hope that is circulating in our time. He grasps worrying signs in our old continent, such as the tendency to repudiate the memory of our Christian roots. A journalist, a few days ago, asked me for my comment on a survey conducted in Switzerland, from which it emerged that three quarters of the population don’t know what Pentecost is. Anyone who devotes himself to the education of children cannot but be conscious of their grave shortcomings in the religious field, for the most part present in their parents too. In fact, memory of the past and future are inseparably linked: if we forget our roots, our prospects for the future are also lost. That explains our fear to face the future, as demonstrated, for example, by the difficulty of committing ourselves for the whole of our life both in vocations to religious life and to the priesthood and in marriage. In the new Europe being built, more attention is being placed on our roots in the Enlightenment than on our Christian roots, almost as if people were on the defensive and seeking the least common denominator, without bearing in mind that as the Pope has repeatedly said the very values of the Enlightenment were born of Christian values. The triad “liberty, equality and fraternity”, battle cry of the French Revolution, does not derive from other cultures, but is directly rooted in the Gospel embraced in Europe for eighteenth centuries. The universal values, also propagated by the humanism of the Enlightenment, are not alien to the Church; but only if they are interpreted in the light of Christianity, do they reveal their fullness and depth; they are more demanding and comprise aspects that the Enlightenment cannot comprehend. For example, the absolute dignity of the human person and the absolute value of life have their deepest foundation and inalienable guarantee in the Christian view of the person created in the image and likeness of God. A system like that of the Enlightenment does not contemplate this responsibility of man towards his creator and therefore tends to minimum norms of human co-existence that may be tolerable for everyone. A diluted form of this Enlightenment view is also insinuating itself amongst us, as weakness in thinking, as forgetfulness of the question of truth, as disengagement from the great questions of humanity, as renunciation of the moral precepts necessary for achieving the perfection of the individual and society and realizing man’s deepest desires. If we consider the process of European reunification, the contribution that the Church may give to the globalization of solidarity also seems to me particularly important. In a few months time, ten new states will become members of the European Union. This requires a great enterprise of solidarity. Nor can we forget that the countries that are most in economic difficulty cannot yet enter the Union, since they are as yet unable to meet certain conditions for entry. It is indispensable, therefore, that real solidarity be shown also through concrete support to the economies that need to achieve further development. Nor can we simply wish for an economic fortress Europe, able to defend itself against the other continents. Depending to our individual and collective responsibilities and feasibilities, we must be, on the contrary, the champions of Europe’s opening to the world and to increased solidarity.
