The three paths

To respond to the challenges of secularisation, Christians in Europe are called to pursue some paths together with greater conviction. That’s the main indication that emerged from the ecumenical meeting held in recent days at Wittemberg, city of Martin Luther, in preparation for the Third European Ecumenical Assembly due to be held in Sibiu from 4 to 9 September.The first of these paths is that of knowing, studying and enacting Christianity in our lives. The interesting debate of recent times on the Christian roots of our continent, and the failure to mention them in the preamble to the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union, has sadly indicated how little known Christianity is in its real essence in Europe. Many spurious forms of Christianity are circulating. Why was no consensus reached on citing God or Christianity in the Constitution? Some have thought it was a question of privileges, almost as if it were a plot to divide us; some thought that citing Christianity would be discriminatory to the other religions, especially to Islam; others, that it would jeopardise the principle of secularism… others again defended the thesis that religion is an exclusively private matter. But what was lacking was a reflection on what Christianity really is.A second path is that of taking seriously the reconciliation between Christians. It is undeniable, in fact, that the division between Christians is one of the roots of secularisation. The fact that wars of religion have even broken out in the past, in the name of the gospel, has almost forced culture to abandon any direct Christian inspiration in order to explore others paths. Even key Christian thinkers, who are at the origin of modernity, such as Descartes, Grotius and Kant, have had to look elsewhere than in the Gospel to find an autonomous reason, a common and accepted point of reference, as the basis on which to found philosophy, law and lasting peace. How can Europe rediscover God if Christians themselves testify to discord and division? The process of Christian unity is the responsibility of responding to Christ’s prayer: “That they may all be one”. Rediscovering on earth the Christian unity that already exists in God is the real response to secularisation. And lastly the third path: tackling together the issue of secularisation. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Churches of Eastern Europe find themselves confronted in a new way with modern Western culture and the reality of secularisation. In general they are critical of this culture and fear the encounter with it. At times this criticism also concerns the Christian communities of the West, which have allegedly adjusted to or surrendered to the advance of secularism and relativism. The hope is that the “pilgrimage” of reconciliation of the Third European Ecumenical Assembly will make a significant contribution to tackling, together, the reality of secularisation today. There is something we can learn from each other. In the West we have our failures with regard to secularisation, but we also have successful experiences of how it is possible to live the Gospel in this cultural context. The sense of tradition, of values and of spirituality, typical of the East, is on the other hand a precious gift for the West. If the Churches succeed together to show how the Gospel is able to dialogue with every culture, also with Western culture, and has the strength to “convert” it, many fears will vanish.