A prophetic gamble

In the presence of the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, and the Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Luigi Ventura, the presentation of “The Bishops and the New Europe. Official texts of the CCEE (1992-2006)” took place at the Institut Catholique in Paris on the evening of Thursday 21 January. The book is published by the French publisher “du Cerf”.An outcome of Vatican Council II. A previous volume, “The Bishops of Europe and the New Evangelization”, had been published in October 1991, with a preface by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, then President of the CCEE. It presented and reviewed the first twenty years in the history of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE), ever since its very first steps taken during and immediately after Vatican Council II, on the initiative of Cardinal Etchegaray. It was almost a book of testimony, wrote Cardinal Martini: it would “permit many Christians to gain an awareness of the considerable efforts made by the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, despite the difficulties encountered for so long on account of the separation between East and West”. Two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cardinal spoke of “new responsibilities” and a “genuine challenge posed to everyone to reconstruct Europe. Christians and the Churches must make their contribution to this process, without ever forgetting their specific mission to speak of Jesus Christ to our contemporaries”. Beyond the walls, in a Europe that poses ever new challenges. Almost two decades after that book, a second part of the history of the CCEE, that of its most recent history, presented through documents and statements for the years 1992-2006, has now been published. “Flipping through the pages of the volume – said Monsignor Aldo Giordano (secretary of the CCEE during the years covered by the volume), in Paris – we gain an insight into the history of fifteen years of Europe: the tragedy of the Balkans, the question of the relation between Eastern and Western Europe after the fall of the Wall, the difficult but inexorable process of unification, the journey with hope towards the new millennium, and the new challenges of our time: from terrorism to the emergence of colossi like China on the world geopolitical scene”. In these years, added Mgr. Giordano, who is now Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the Council of Europe, “we have witnessed the acceleration of time. Changes are taking place ever more rapidly. Especially the sciences and technology create new situations and raise new problems with incredible rapidity”. And he recalled: “When I began my service in Europe in 1995, very few Bishops’ Conferences had a committee of experts on bioethics to discuss such problems as embryos, stem cells and cloning. Now this has become a priority for every Conference, given that the issues at stake here impinge on the very vision we have of the human person and his future. The artificial speed of changes has led to the loss of the rhythms that once punctuated time, inherited from tradition and linked to the passage of time in nature: the year, the seasons, the weeks”. At a yet deeper level, time has been reduced because the very dimensions of time have disintegrated: “We tend to forget the past because the past shows us that everything, even what is most sacred, passes and inexorably falls into nothingness. The future has been thrown into crisis by the environmental problem, the financial crisis, the loss of meaning. But forgetfulness of the future is also linked to the consciousness that the only certain future is death. It seems that the heavens have closed on European man today. We are forced to live within terrestrial limits, and with ‘short-term’ hopes. It is the question of time and Eternity”. In “this context”, concluded Mgr. Giordano, “we can understand why the real connecting thread of the volume is the constant effort of the bishops to bear witness to the “good news” that still exists for Europeans, a ‘gospel’ that responds to the desire for meaning, truth, love and beauty that dwells in their hearts”. A different logic. The CCEE exists in Europe precisely to testify that there still exists in Europe a meaning that can make us see that the heavens are indeed opened to European man. Born in a divided Europe, it was a “prophetic gamble” of the Church in our continent to overcome the walls of division even before their effective collapse. As the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, said at the book launch: “The Church chose a logic different from that of politics: the CCEE went beyond the political mission. John Paul II was convinced that the wall would collapse and knew that there was in any case an organization that permitted relations between East and West”. And the cardinal added: “this organization must continue to promote collaboration also between states, thanks to the fact that it has an influence free of any kind of economic power”, and also thanks to the fact that “there’s equality of ecclesial identity between the Bishops’ Conferences, whose life is based on an ecclesiology of communion and not of administration”.What future? Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Professor of the History of Relations between State and Religious Confessions in the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Florence and chairman of the legal committee of UNESCO, also recalled the key significance “of the role of John Paul II, who grasped the importance of this institution and promoted its institutional reform” which ensured that the Presidents themselves of the Bishops’ Conferences would become members of the Council, thus attributing a far greater role, clout and authoritativeness to this organization. And he added: “the CCEE has remained faithful to its original vocation, that of being a source of communion, in spite of the fact that it now has greater complexity to adapt itself to the historic situation”. Apart from the issues recalled by Mgr. Giordano, “the bishops now tackle also political questions, previously reserved for the Secretariat of State”. Echoing the question posed by Mgr. Giordano on the need one day for relations between CCEE and COMECE to be seriously considered, the professor asked: “Will a single European Bishops’ Conference exist one day?”.