Enthusiasm to be revived” “

“Today, after the membership of ten new member states, the project of the European Union needs to be re-animated according to the spirit that lay at its origin, in 1950”. The great challenge for Europe today is to understand “how to revive the enthusiasm of our peoples for the European cause and for the idea of brotherhood between them all”. The document, with the title “The evolution of the European Union and the responsibility of Catholics”, was born from this dual “need”. To be presented by the Commission of the episcopates of the European Community (COMECE) in Brussels on 12 May, the 60-page document was drafted by a group of theologians and philosophers from various European countries, under the direction of Archbishop Hippolyte Simon of Clermont (France), vice-president of Comece. The premise for the document is the recognition of the widespread euro-scepticism with which the accession of the ten new member states to the EU was greeted in Europe. “Given the importance and magnitude of this event one might have expected an explosion of enthusiasm by the countries involved. We witnessed, instead, some degree of discretion in the events that celebrated these new accessions”. Evidently Europeans have not yet “fully realized” the magnitude of an event that took place in “a peaceful and non-violent way”. On the other hand, “peace is like health: it is a blessing whose need we feel only when it is lacking”. After analysis, the European episcopates represented in Comece invite Europeans to ask themselves “what it means for the European Union” to be the “privileged heir of the Christian tradition”. The bishops re-affirm that “the Christian tradition belongs not just to the past” but “continues to nourish the commitment of Christians who explicitly recognize themselves as believers in Christ”. The bishops then make a further point: “the primary mission of the Church” is not to give Europe “a particular political project”, but “to make an indirect but very significant contribution to the life of the countries” of the continent. The bishops further explain that “Catholics don’t have ‘turnkey’ solutions to propose to solve the challenges [of Europe]. But they know they are the heirs of an ancient tradition that has particularly marked the European continent”. But what type of “heritage” is the Christian tradition? It is – write the bishops – a “dynamic” and “open” heritage: dynamic, because it involves “in a thousand ways” laypeople, Churches and dioceses in a mission that takes place in schools, in hospitals, in libraries, in universities and among the young. And it is an “open” heritage according to the invitation that John Paul II made in his Apostolic Exhortation “Ecclesia in Europa”: “ Saying ‘Europe’ must be equivalent to saying ‘openness’” (no. 111). The ecumenical commitment derives from this, because “it is impossible to recall the heritage of Christianity in Europe without recognizing at the same time that this heritage has led to dramatic events: those relating to the division between the Christian Churches”. The document ends by looking further a-field “beyond the frontiers of Europe to the human family as a whole”. “The European Union – writes Comece – cannot alienate itself from the rest of the world. It is at the service of the peace and development of the peoples that compose it, but it is also a mediation at the service of the peace and development of all the peoples of the earth”.