A space of truth and sense

“The role of the Church and Christians in the future of Europe”: this is the subject addressed by mgr. Aldo Giordano, secretary general of Ccee (Council of European Bishops Conferences), on August 31st at the course for theology students which this year was focussed on “Saint Benedict, monasticism and the Christian roots of Europe”, held from August 28th to 31st in Subiaco on the initiative of the Italian Bishops Conference. A WORLD’S QUEST? According to mgr. Giordano, nowadays “we are driven by many signs to start searching again. Just think of the questions raised by the latest epoch-making tragedies” (September 11th 2001 in New York, tsunami in south-east Asia, death of John Paul II, the Middle East scenario). Then, there are basic questions that concern “the ethical issues of life; the world’s new geopolitical situation, with China and India appearing on the scene of trade and knowledge, the great pressure of migrants at the borders of our countries”. Before such a complex reality, the secretary general of Ccee, thinks “one of the first tasks of Christians is to listen, to bring up, to support this new quest”. According to mgr. Giordano, the most recurring basic questions concern the search for truth, for the beautiful and for the good. “The issue of truth – he stated – intertwines with that of sense”. As to the relationship between the search for truth and the religious scenario in Europe, according to mgr. Giordano, the omission of the word Christianity in the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union is due to the fact that, in this respect, “they tried to find agreement on a lowest common denominator instead of on a highest one. One can indistinctly admit that Europe does have religious roots, but that’s all. The debate has not adequately considered the seriousness of the issue of truth and sense”, but “can we build a Europe that is not a space of truth and sense?”. As to the search for the beautiful, added the secretary of Ccee, “we urgently need to find the way of harmony and the way of the beautiful to urgently rethink the vision of man”. AN AWESOME FEAT. “The search for truth and for the beautiful – added mgr. Giordano – coincides with the search for the good, for love”. The problem is that, while we formally agree on the list of values to be defended (“first place has been given to human dignity”), in fact “we risk an empty rhetoric of values, that is, we agree on the words, on the names of the values, but not on their content, on their foundation and on their interpretation”, to the point of holding, “in the name of the very same value”, perfectly opposite positions: “For instance, human dignity is mentioned against abortion and euthanasia as well as in favour of abortion and euthanasia”. This also applies to the word family, which “in Europe has become such a big container that it contains one thing and what to many people looks like its opposite”. An awesome feat, therefore, that “awaits us, as far as values ate concerned, is that of giving words back a content”. In fact, “we need a good that can make it possible for peoples, cultures, ethnic groups, religions to live together. It is a matter of finding the roots of a common life and hand them down to the next generations”. According to mgr. Giordano, from the Easter of the Christ, “we can start all over again to ‘live’ in our European culture and give content back to the concepts of true, beautiful and good”, because “in the wake of Christ, we find we can live in any culture, including the one marked by the death of God and its consequences”. We must “have the courage to follow Jesus out there, outside the walls, as far as His cry for desertion. We cannot just sit on the fence and look at the problems, the wounds, the non-reconciliations, from outside, as if we were spectators or judges, we have to get into the rifts, the failures, to really ‘understand’ them”. A CHAPTER THAT MUST COME TO AN END. “The first contribution the Churches can give to Europe and its culture is this truth: i.e. Christianity itself, the Gospel. Christians are called to bring God back into the world and to bring back to God the little piece of the world in which they live”. As he put forward a few comments on the boundaries of Europe, mgr. Giordano highlighted that “the Churches have always looked at Europe ‘as a whole’. They do not like it to so much to talk of extension of the EU, but rather of ‘re-unification’ of Europe or ‘Europeanisation’ of Europe: Europe is already that of all the nations, of the peoples, of the cultures, the Churches, not that of one single group of countries. The new development of the European Union must put an end to the dramatic chapter of a continent that is ideologically divided by a wall and open a new chapter: a two-lunged Europe, as in the metaphor that had been used in the last two decades by John Paul II”. In addition, “the European Churches are not interested in a fortress-like Europe”.