Cardinal Canizares Lecture on Europe, Present and Future

At a summer course at the Catholic University of Valencia, Cardinal Antonio Canizares, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, gave a lecture entitled Europe, Present and Future.  Here are a few of the highlights from the news story at Religion en Libertad. I had to use a crude translation from Google but hopefully it makes enough sense until I can get better one.

In his speech, Cardinal Cañizares encouraged to overcome the "moral bankruptcy that suffer" and retrieve a "society based on ethical foundations unconditional belonging to the nature of man, the truth of man and make man free ".

In this sense, the cardinal has appealed to the "responsibility" of Christians to offer "a new evangelization," which in his opinion, is "the best service we can provide for our society to change and overcome this crisis."

The cardinal described the current situation as "a crisis not just structural and economic but a crisis of man, a failure of humanity, moral bankruptcy, spending beyond our means and search only the enjoyment at all costs, the enjoyment to myself, if I have to crush the other, a situation that must be overcome, "he said.

Similarly, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has defended the "identity" of Europe, whose bases "were Greek philosophy, Roman law and Christian faith."

Thus, European identity is "inseparable from the dignity of the human person as the basis of all order and all that is culture that distinguishes us." In this regard, he noted that "no human being there is no future for any society, without the dignity of the human person is no future for any order."

However, the Cardinal he was "hopeful" in the future and encouraged a "conversion, again, Jesus Christ," which, starting with the same members of the Church, "will bring a big future for Europe."