A personal view by Bishop Paul

Domus Galilaeae

On Easter Monday about 170 bishops, from Europe and around the world, gathered at the Domus Galilaeae conference centre on the Mount of the Beatitudes at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. The members of the Neocatechumenal Way, who built and run the house, had invited us to spend a few days reflecting upon and discussing the situation of the Church in Europe, the opportunities and the challenges we face - and to consider how the Neocatechumenal Way can help us in this situation.
 

The Shore of the Lake

The setting was a beautiful one, looking down on the lake from a height of several hundred feet. From the terrace you can look right to see the lakeside town of Tiberias and to the left are the Golan Heights. The water looked very calm, but one of the priests said he had once been caught in a storm on the lake. There had been no sign of it - and then within five minutes the waves were so high that even their large modern boat struggled to get back to the shore safely. You can imagine how the apostles would have felt in their small fishing boat. On the last day of the conference there was the official opening of a new Blessed Sacrament chapel, built at the centre of a courtyard facing the lake. On the roof of the chapel is a sculpture based on Fra Angelico's painting of the Sermon on the Mount. On three sides of the courtyard there are eight simple but comfortable-looking cells, where clergy, religious or lay-people can spend some days in solitary prayer and reflection. This project fulfils a dream of Charles de Foucault, that there should be a place on the Mount of the Beatitudes, where Christ would be present in the Blessed Sacrament as a focus for prayer and adoration.
 

Blessed Sacrament Chapel

Along with the presentations and the sessions for discussion there were opportunities to visit some of the holy places. We celebrated Mass one morning at Tabgha, the site of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, and the place where Jesus gave St Peter the commission to shepherd Christ's people, with the words, 'Feed my lambs ... feed my sheep'.  One day we went by coach to Jerusalem, visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western ('Wailing') Wall. The highlight was a celebration of Mass in the Cenacle, scene of the Last Supper. Presumably for practical and political reasons, this is something which the local authorities very rarely allow, but they very graciously gave permission on this occasion.


Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Though we had these opportunities, most of the time was spent in dialogue with bishops from different parts of Europe, together with priests and people associated with the Neocatechumenal Way, reflecting on our experience of relations with the society in which we live. These experiences varied of course. For me, looking back over the past few years in Britain, it feels as if we have seen a sort of turning back of the clock, in terms of our relationship with the society around us.

For many years the picture was becoming steadily more positive. My parents could remember a time when Catholics were still looked upon with mistrust and suspicion. By the time I was growing up in London in the 1960's and 70's, to be a Catholic was no longer regarded as strange or unusual. We no longer felt as if we were in a sort of invisible ghetto, but felt ourselves to be part of the mainstream of English life. For our part, the Second Vatican Council had led to a more positive view of the world outside the Church and had made us more ready to see goodness and truth where we might not previously have expected to find it. In those days, most people were not church-going Christians, but they were still on the whole influenced, whether they realised it or not, by traditional Christian values.

Beginning in the 1950's and 60's, we saw a questioning of those attitudes, particularly by the younger generation. During the past forty years or so, that process continued to the point where people were insisting more and more openly that human beings should construct their own morality, their own values. As Christians we believe that we live in a world created by God and that we should live according to his will. For an increasing number of those around us, what is right and wrong is determined by public opinion (strongly influenced by the media), by pressure groups and by a culture that thinks more of rights than of responsibilities and duties.

In this climate, the fact that many of our laws and institutions are based on a Christian understanding of the world is seen as an obstacle to progress. As a result we have seen increasingly determined efforts to bring in laws that reflect the new secular outlook. We've seen actual or attempted changes in the law on issues such as abortion, care of the terminally ill, sex education and 'gay marriage'. We've seen attacks on the concept of 'faith schools', on the grounds that they're socially divisive - whereas Catholic schools (to speak only of what we know) have always had a remarkable ability to bring people together from all sorts of ethnic and social backgrounds. Accepting that we can't force others to live by our values, it still seems rather hard that we can't even argue in favour of Christian values without (for instance) being accused of homophobia.
 

The Conference

Many of the bishops present at the conference have had flourishing Neocatechumenal communities in their dioceses for many years. We were therefore already fairly familiar with the possibilities they can offer in terms of Christian formation and a culture that offers support for traditional family values. In some parts of Europe (and for many in Britain, we might add) there has been an almost complete loss of contact with our Christian roots, so that we could even say there is a need to re-evangelise Europe. The response of the Neocatechumenal Way has been to send out priests and lay catechists on mission to places where the Church had previously had almost no presence at all. During the conference we heard testimonies from some of the priests and catechists.

Two groups had been sent to a place in East Germany that had been called after Karl Marx. It was supposed to be a model communist town, but even at its best it had been a grim, soul-less sort of place. Now, after the collapse of the USSR, it had become a place where people really had nothing - few jobs, poor conditions and nothing much to live for. They were really starting from scratch in a place like this, as Christianity had been stamped out quite successfully. They bought a house (property prices were so depressed, this wasn't difficult) and used it both for accommodation and as a place for meeting and prayer. They have had a tremendous response from the local people, to whom all this comes as something quite new.

The children of the families who went out had to leave behind their friends and interrupt their university education in order to join in the mission, but they did this willingly. (It's a rule that if the children aren't happy to go, then the parents aren't allowed to volunteer). The experience has brought the family members closer together and they all feel very happy in what they're doing. A very similar tale was told by two other priests and accompanying families, who went to work in a newly-built suburb of Amsterdam, where there were really no practising Christians and no churches at all.

Mass at Tabgha

With this in mind, the bishops concluded with a statement: 'We recognise with gratitude that, among the many graces that the Holy Spirit has bestowed upon the Church in our times, the Neocatechumenal Way represents, with its itinerary of Christian initiation, a powerful charism to reinforce the missionary impulse that emerges from the baptismal regeneration and to give an answer to the dramatic situation of de-Christianization of Europe.'
 

Dedication of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel

The Dedication was attended by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah; the Caretaker of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa; the Nuncio in Israel, Monsignor Antonio Franco and Bishops from the various rites. Also present were 170 bishops who met last week (March 24-30) on the Mount of Beatitudes in order to reflect on the New Evangelization in light of the spread of secularization in the modern world. (ICN report)