SECOND GENERAL CONGREGATION

VATICAN CITY, OCT 2, 1999 (VIS) - The Second General Congregation began this morning in the Synod Hall in the presence of the Holy Father at 9 a.m., and adjourned at 12:35 p.m. There were 164 synod fathers present.

Following are excerpts from several of the speeches given this morning:

CARDINAL PAUL POUPARD, PRESIDENT OF THE PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR CULTURE. "In the encounter with non-believers and with cultures, the mission of the Church does not stop at dialogue and at the exchange of human words. Her goal is to proclaim explicitly the Word of God, the invitation to believe in Christ, the Good News for other cultures which are also in crisis of identity: intellectual agnosticism, cultural amnesia, ethic anomoea, religious aphasia, spiritual anemia. With the grace of God, we will overcome these through a double response, intellectual and spiritual - with faith in intelligence and intelligence of faith - as the first apologists and Fathers of the Church knew how to do. They adopted His resources to bring the creative newness of the Gospel to mankind. ... The men and women of culture in Europe are numerous and determined to help us in this, as witnessed by the Acts of the pre-synodal Symposium, 'Christ, source of a new culture for Europe (The New Areopagus)', which had four main goals:
1. To re-establish the foundations: philosophy and theology, anthropology and sciences.
2. To return to the fundamental values of the family and education, the school and university.
3. To renew the humanities, the arts and communication.
4. To re-think the life of men and women in society: nations and cultures, ethics, economy and politics."

BISHOP ANDRE FORT OF PERPIGNAN-ELNE, FRANCE. "The wish for immortality lies in the hearts of men in our times, it inspires their scientific research and orients their technical prowess. Our too great discretion in the assertion of our hope for eternal life and of our desire for the 'Christ's arrival, the only destruction for death' has serious consequences. In a human condition divorced of its eschatological dimension, defeats, suffering and death become insupportable."

ARCHBISHOP FRANCISCO ALVAREZ MARTINEZ OF TOLEDO, SPAIN. "This Synod is a privileged moment when, faithful to the Spirit, we can discern how the renewed presence and mission of the Church must be. We are experiencing difficulties and challenges typical of the diffusion of a vague religiosity, including practical atheism. This de-Christianization weakens the liveliness and evangelising capacity of the Church, with the accompanying, worrisome decrease in priestly vocations, in the consecrated life and in lay commitment. Given this, our diocese must basically offer spirituality to offset materialist consumerism and individualism, and in support of family life, missionary and ecumenical vocation. We must re-establish an ecclesiology of communion between the episcopate, the consecrated life and lay people, charism and ministries. The spirituality and holiness of bishops must respond to the grace received from ordination, (and they must) live in close communion with priests, for the expression of hierarchical communion."

CARDINAL MILOSLAV VLK, ARCHBISHOP OF PRAGUE, THE CZECH REPUBLIC.
"The strong impact of ecclesial movements in places often quite far from the ecclesial life has been amazing. Even before transmitting the Christian truth, these movements are dedicated to living it, and before proclaiming in words the presence of the Resurrection, they make it perceptible by facts. It is also for this that the charisms recognized by the Church 'deserve ... attention from every member of the ecclesial community, beginning with priests.' One cannot deny that immaturity, intemperance, and sometimes deviations may be noted. But what the Holy Father pointed out to the entire Church during Pentecost of 1998 is the new stage of 'ecclesial maturity' of these forces. Through these forces, the Holy Spirit is giving the people of God a new face, new dynamism, and new vitality."

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