Pope: Movements a Help for 'Educational Emergency'

The Holy Father emphasized the need for a new evangelization and pointed to the New Movements as helping to meet the educational emergency.

VATICAN CITY (Zenit) - Benedict XVI is proposing five guidelines to address the educational emergency in Italy and many other nations.

The Pope addressed the issue of education when he met today with the participants at the 58th Plenary Assembly of the Italian episcopal conference. The meeting is under way in the Vatican through Friday.

Acceptance of new movements in the Church, evangelization at meetings of youth, personal relationship with young people, living of the faith in community, and recognition of the ecclesial role in education are the guidelines the Holy Father proposed.

Root cause

In his address to his brothers in the episcopate, the Bishop of Rome stressed the cause of the acutely self-evident "educational emergency": "a penetrating and not rarely aggressive relativism," which affects society and culture.

Relativism "places God between parentheses" and "discourages any option that spells true commitment and, in particular, definitive choices, in order to give way, instead, to self-assertion and immediate satisfactions in different realms of life," he summarized.

In the end, young people remain "alone in face of the profound questions that inevitably arise within them"; alone "in face of the expectations and challenges" of their own future, the Pope alerted the Italian prelates.

"For us, bishops, for our priests, for catechists and for the whole Christian community, the educational emergency implies a very specific task: the transmission of the faith to new generations," he stressed.

Charisms

To respond to the difficulties mentioned, "the Holy Spirit has inspired in the Church many charisms and evangelizing energies," and it is the bishops' task "to welcome these new forces with joy, to support them, foster their growth, and guide them" so that they will always remain in the ambit "of faith and of ecclesial communion."

The Pope also urged the Italian prelates to increasingly focus on evangelization in the many encounters that the ecclesial community holds with youth in parishes, oratories and schools, particularly in Catholic schools.

"Needless to say, above all, personal relationships are important, especially sacramental confession and spiritual direction," he underlined.

All are occasions of great importance, the Holy Father noted. Each opportunity "represents a possibility given to us to have our children and young people perceive the face of God who is the true friend of man."

Integral formation

Benedict XVI mentioned in particular "the important meetings" of youth, such as that of Loreto last September and of the World Youth Day in Sydney this coming July. "They are the communal, public and festive expression of that hope, that love and that trust in Christ and the Church that remain rooted in the youthful soul."

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Moreover, these hugely popular events help to understand fully "the universality of the Church and the fraternity that must unite all nations," he noted.

Aware of the impact of the educational emergency on the wider society, the Holy Father stressed the need to place at the center once again "the full and integral formation of the human person," noting that schools play a key role in this.

In that connection, Benedict XVI concluded, "In a democratic state, which boasts the promotion of free initiatives in every field, the exclusion of adequate support to the commitment of ecclesiastical institutions in the area of schooling does not seem justified."