ROME, APRIL 30, 2002 (Zenit.org).- The Church in Europe has decided to attempt a “quality leap” in the pastoral care of youth.
At the conclusion of the Symposium of European Bishops held April 24-28, the bishops said they are aware their decision implies “a real and proper pastoral conversion,” where Christian youth “are not just considered as a specific sector or object of pastoral care,” but are recognized and received “as a gift of Christ to his Church in all its mission.”
The bishops who participated in the meeting said in their final statement that the decision implies working with youth and studying “situations and problems, and carrying out programs and initiatives with them.”
“This calls for a quality leap, a real and proper pastoral conversion,” the bishops added in their final statement. “To help them, then, in their formation, and to establish with them ways of hearing, of dialogue, of meeting, of projection and fulfillment of the will of God.”
The Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE) organized the symposium. CCEE president is Bishop Amédée Grab of Chur, Switzerland.
For the first time, the meeting was attended by young people representing various countries. In a final statement, they committed themselves to make their own contribution “to the construction of a more human and Christian ´common´ European ´home.´”
The young delegates hope to find in each bishop “a spiritual guide, who is not just a professor, but a witness who supports us in the personal meeting with Christ.”
In this connection, the youth ask their bishops to “teach us to pray, to pray with us and for us,” and to “help us to rediscover and live the real meaning of the liturgy,” as well as to have opportunities to meet, “to be able to continue on the road begun in this symposium.”
“Unfortunately,” the bishops acknowledged in their final statement, “it so happens that many young people see the Church, the natural place to meet with Christ, as distant, foreign, not very credible, and incapable of speaking to the man of our times.”
Given this situation, the bishops believe that on one hand what is needed are “Christian communities (parishes, religious institutions, movements and other ecclesial realities) in which deep and genuine human relations are lived, which are rich in communion and friendship.”
On the other hand, the bishops continued, these realities must be able “to make a faith proposal that is higher in its goals, more exacting in quality, more profound in spirituality, maintaining the message very closely united to people´s lives and to the most radical expectations of the human heart.”
“Youths are not only receivers of the proclamation, but they feel the vocation to be, themselves, protagonists of the mission to youths and any other person,” the bishops continued. “Their contribution must be seen today as a necessary and irreplaceable good for Europe´s evangelization.”
European bishops have made three commitments to achieve the above objective.
First, they recognized that the “new frontier of evangelization in Europe entails a new missionary awareness with the courage and creativity of concrete initiatives.”
“Only a fully missionary community will be able to make the witness of the Gospel in society credible and meaningful; this is why missionary formation becomes a criterion of the Christian´s very identity,” the bishops added.
Second, the bishops committed themselves to “evangelize youth and to allow themselves to be evangelized by them.”
Third, the prelates will make every effort to hear young people, who are asking their bishops “to find the specific time for meeting and dialogue with them, also appreciating [written communication], and together sharing problems, quests, experiences, with the heart and the intelligence, proposing the Gospel with clarity as well as helping to live it.”
