The challenge of solidarity

A reflection on the concept and reality of solidarity in the EU, on the basis of the social teaching of the Church, will introduce the Catholic Social Days for Europe that the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) will promote at Gdansk, in Poland, on the theme of Solidarity from 8 to 11 October. The opening session, dedicated to “Solidarity. The Challenge for Europe”, will form the first of seven at the event (see further SIR Europe nos. 22 and 27/2009). The programme of the meeting was presented at a press conference at Brussels on 20 April, by the Most Rev. Piotr Jarecki, Auxiliary Bishop of Warsaw, Vice-President of COMECE and chairman of the preparatory committee for the Social Days, by COMECE General Secretary Father Piotr Mazurkiewicz and by Stefan Lunte, secretary of the Social Affairs Commission of the episcopal organization. Seven sessions of work. After the introductory session, explained Stefan Lunte describing the programme of the Social Days for Europe, “the delegates will focus on another six themes at each of the following sessions: namely, human person and his rights; families in Europe; European socio-economic model; need for solidarity as foundation of the EU; global common good; and future generations (solidarity with them and role of the EU in the protection of the environment)”. Each of the seven sessions will comprise a series of reports and informal debates in groups of 50-70 participants, aimed at proposing specific initiatives and drafting a final document that will be read out on 11 October, before the celebration of the final mass in the cathedral of Oliwa in Gdansk. According to Mgr. Piotr Jarecki, the objective of the event is to “measure the reality of Europe today, in its various dimensions, with the yardstick of the values and principles of the social teaching of the Church”. At the press conference the bishop also explained, in a briefing to SIR Europe, that “The present way of understanding the human person, the concept of the family, economic and cultural problems, and political issues in their international dimension – both European and global -, by examining them from the viewpoint of Christian anthropology, will permit Christians to take stock of where we stand and to distinguish what solutions, also institutional, and especially what moral choices or cultural trends (often promoted by EU institutions in Brussels) are consistent with the social teaching of the Church, and what are not”.Solidarity as style of action. “We would especially like to focus on the reality of solidarity in Europe and the solidarity of the EU with the rest of the world”, continued Mgr. Jarecki, recalling the theme of the Social Days: “Solidarity. The challenge for Europe”, and expressing his conviction of the importance “of a dialogue between the idea of social solidarity and the reality of normative solutions and the style of operating in the EU”. The aim of “Solidarity as challenge”, he explained, is to “ensure that those fine ideas proclaimed in so many declarations” are transformed “into concrete solutions at the institutional level and embodied in EU policies”. The chairman of the organizing committee (formed of 26 members from 19 European countries) that will bring to Gdansk, cradle of the Solidarnosc movement (the name itself means solidarity), some 500 representatives of Catholic associations and movements from all over Europe, maintains that the common reflection of Catholics may make a valuable “contribution to the building of a common European home, made in the measure of man”. “Although the members of a society are independent of each other – added Father Piotr Mazurkiewicz -, it is also true that they rely on each other. Due to the current economic and financial crisis, attempts to re-introduce protectionist measures can be observed in some member states”, but, he warned, “this is not the right solution”. Role of Catholics. On the role of Catholics in today’s world Mgr. Jarecki said that those who have acquired “a proper formation” ought to “transform into real projects the teachings of social homilies and encyclicals, without losing their own identity and without accepting intolerable compromises”. The idea of the Catholic Social Days for Europe, born about a year ago, is inspired by the Social Weeks which are being promoted in various countries in the continent, and to which – the bishop recalled – Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, has referred on several occasions. That explains the COMECE decision “to hold a forum for reflection at the European level in Poland”. The meeting in Gdansk, in preparation for which a Manifesto was published in recent weeks, “will have a symbolic value – said Mgr. Jarecki – for it was just in that Polish city that the Solidarnosc movement that led to the transformation of Europe was born in 1980”. The meeting “is being held thirty years after the first visit to Poland of John Paul II who inspired the political changes that resulted in a new settlement for Europe, and sixty years after Nazi Germany’s aggression on Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War”.