The language of Christians” “

What kind of Christianity in response to the challenges posed by the development of religious pluralism? The question was discussed in recent days at a round table promoted in Rome, as part of the second “Meeting on religious publishing in France”, by the Saint-Louis de France Cultural Centre, the Augustinianum Patristic Institute and “Présence du livre français” (French publishing promotional agency). “The language of Christians is on the point of becoming a ‘dead language’ that many no longer understand”, declared the philosopher Arnaud Corbic. He is convinced that what we need today is “a language renewed yet still faithful to the spirit of the Gospel”. Above all, however, we need to “learn to speak of God in terms of desire, rediscovering him in the vulnerability of the Incarnation, which, paradoxically, constitutes his strength”. The courage of risking. “The vulnerability of God chosen by the Son for the love of man – continued Corbic – is the strength of infinite love capable of forgiving and tirelessly lifting man from his falls. A God who is not above us, but together with us in our journey through history”. This proposal, if it is to be credible in our own day, requires “decision, courage, clarity and, above all, a profound conversion on the part of Christians and the Church”. This change of heart is obligatory, because “if the faith does not have the spirit to ‘risk’, Christianity will die”. The “weakness” of God. New Age in the 1960s; the spell of the Orient, and in particular India, in the 1970s; the spread of Buddhism in the 1980s: Monique Hébrard, a journalist on “La Croix”, sums up in this way the spiritual trends in the Western world in recent decades. “From 1958 to 1974 – she explained – those who call themselves practising Catholics dropped in France from 35% to 14% of the population; today they are 8%”. “There has been a rejection of religions – she added – but a divine energy is everywhere to be felt”. How can we explain the fact that “for several years now, over two thousand young adults have asked to be baptized?”. From the survey (published in 2003) that Hébrard herself conducted among these “new converts” it emerges that “Christianity responds to the need to feel loved. It is the religion of freedom. It helps to shape our own identity and develop our life on a solid foundation. It gives meaning to the present and hope to the future”. Echoing what Corbic had said, Hébrard stressed that “the winning card of Christianity is the Incarnation; it is the ‘human’ and vulnerable God affirmed by Bonhoeffer, Chenu, Clément; the God who suffers, experiences betrayal and death”; for whom “the yearning for happiness, essential to human nature and the driving force of life, is wholly legitimate”. This “is the God whom the Church must enable people to experience and proclaim today”. Talitha Koum! In the view of Father Patrice Gourrier, parish vicar at Poitiers, university chaplain and co-founder of the spiritual movement “Talitha Koum”, “Christianity needs not to be re-invented, but re-founded”. In response to the “‘French malaise’ as a result of which, according to a research project of the Academy of Medicine, the French between the ages of 25 and 35 are the leading consumers in Europe of antidepressants, alcohol and drugs”, Gourrier founded “Talitha Koum” at Poitiers in 2000. It is a spiritual movement that takes its name from the words with which Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus, “Child, arise!”, and proposes “a spiritual journey towards inner peace, based on the wisdom of the desert Fathers”. “Nothing new – he is quick to point out -; all we have done is revitalize and re-propose a tradition that had been ‘forgotten'”. Ever-new tradition. A “‘new Christianity’ that risks losing its memory” must be rejected, because “Christianity is rooted in tradition” and tradition “does not mean a retreat into the past, but fidelity to it in a dimension of life continually renewed by the Spirit”, said Cardinal Georges Cottier, theologian of the Pontifical Household, and warned of the “fetishism of language linked to fashions that, by their very nature, are transient”. What matters – he said – is “ensuring that theological thought is able to ‘reach’ common thought: theology must not be elitist, but encouraged to transmit its contents with clarity and simplicity, in such a way as to render them accessible to everyone”. The Word of God – Cardinal Cottier continued – “also needs to be turned to account through attractive liturgies that are able to communicate with people and revalue the classical texts of Christian spirituality and mysticism”. A central role must also be accorded to dialogue with those who have lost their faith and the followers of other faiths. This presupposes a full and firm consciousness of our own identity, combined with strong empathy; it entails friendship with and openness to the other person, though without ignoring his limits and shadow zones”.