A study of the Institute of Demographic Development in Berlin on the situation in East Germany has shown that, among the younger generations, only unemployed young adult males, for the most part unskilled, remain in the countries of the former DDR. Girls, on the other hand, as soon as they have obtained their secondary school-leaving certificate, move to the old Länder in the West. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall some 1.5 million people have left the former DDR, especially skilled youth and professionals. “Weißwasser Square in Eastern Saxony at midday. Market Square in Wittstock an der Dosse. On the steps of the Reichenturm in Bautzen. Everywhere the same scene: young people with bottles of beer. They don’t know what to do, they waste their time”, writes Bernhard Honnigfort in the FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU (31/05). “Women leave East Germany not because they are discriminated against or because they have less chance on the labour market”, explains the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG . “They go because they have better educational qualifications than their male contemporaries. Better educated, girls more easily strike it lucky elsewhere. Not even the kindergartens that are particularly widespread in East Germany keep them, because in their choice of partners they tend to seek men who have at least the same level of education – and they find them more easily ‘in the west’… The consequences are fatal: without education, without work and without partners to start a family, a growing percentage of young males isolate themselves from society. This tendency cannot be reversed by pumping in more billions for infrastructures and the creation of new businesses. To improve the situation, the new Länder must do more for education and especially for the young”. Monsignor Piotr Libera, hitherto secretary of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, is the new Bishop of Plock since 31 May. In an interview with the weekly NIEDZIELA (21/2007) Msgr. Libera says that the Polish Church is often characterized by a lack of community spirit. “We priests, in the way we work, are often great individualists. In pastoral care, in the parishes, in the religious orders, as in formation for the priesthood, a spirituality of communio is lacking. Just as truth is a symphony, so the life of the Church ought to be played as an ensemble”. The new Bishop of Plock warns: “when experiences of communio are lacking in training for the priesthood, the result is that we have pastors who don’t know how to cooperate with other priests, still less with the laity. Sometimes, fearful of the laity, they treat them as if they were rivals”. “Tomorrow evening [i.e. 1st June] Dutch television viewers, by sending a text from their cell phones, will decide on the life or death of others” announces Lucia Bellaspiga in an editorial in the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (31/05). The gruesome reality show “The Big Donor” will in fact go on the air on the BNN channel: Lisa, 37 years old, terminally ill of cancer, will have to chose to which of three competitors – who have been on the waiting list for a kidney transplant for three years – she should leave her organs. “The viewers will listen attentively, they will form an idea of the profile of the participants, they will begin to back the one or the other, just as if what was at stake were a prize in cash or a digital camera…. And they, the competitors, will do their utmost” to “win over that powerful and somewhat cruel public like a pagan god: mors tua vita mea”. “Basically – comments Bellaspiga – that’s how it works in all reality shows, only that life and death are not won as if in a game of dice”. “The Big Donor marks a decisive shift, there’s no point denying it: we thought the lowest point had already been reached, instead there’s something worse still that in future will be difficult to cap” and it is “the thumbs up with which from tomorrow the viewer will decide who should live and who should die”. “By concentrating all its offices in a single building”, says an editorial in the French Catholic daily LA CROIX ( 30/05) the Bishops’ Conference of France has announced, through its President, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, “that the challenge is to reinforce the visibility, communication and synergy of its collegial bodies”. The “Common Home” of the French bishops was inaugurated in Paris on 29 May and Dominique Quinio observes that “collegiality” is its “keyword”. “It’s a somewhat abstract word to express a very concrete commitment: responsibility towards the Church as a whole, exercised by all the bishops in a collegial way”. However, observes Quinio, “before thinking collegially, each bishop concerns himself with the portion of the Church entrusted to him, from which he derives the greatest pastoral joys but also grave anxieties”. “This inherent tension in the ministry between its personal and collegial dimensions is reinforced whenever it’s a question of ecclesial options. Even if the college of bishops today is no longer characterized by bitter antagonisms, genuine divisions can be distinguished in its ranks in terms of conception of the Church and her mission”. From this point of view, concludes Quinio, the proposal enunciated by Cardinal Ricard “is more eloquent than it might seem”.
