(Sir Europe – Brussels) - “The Contribution of Spirituality and Ethics Towards a Sustainable Economic Order”: this was the theme of the meeting held yesterday evening, 23 May, in Brussels, in the premises of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE), which organised the event in cooperation with the Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches (CEC). Keynote speakers at the meeting included Mgr. André-Joseph Léonard, Archbishop of the diocese of Brussels-Malines, and Edy Korthals Altes, Ambassador Emeritus of the Netherlands. The debate was moderated by Secretary General of COMECE Mgr. Piotr Mazurkiewicz. Reflections focused on the question, posed by COMECE Secretary, of “whether the lack of spirituality may be considered as one of the underlying causes of the crisis (economic, social, political, demographic…) affecting Europe today”. “We are witnessing the failure of the neoliberal system”, Ambassador Korthals Altes pointed out, “but the crisis is more profound, it is rooted in a disoriented society, in which we experience distorted relations between man, nature and resources, due to the loss of the sense of transcendence”. This points to “evident ethical factors: absence of morality and integrity also and above all in the political and economic elite” but also “the need to reconsider our spiritual foundations so as to rediscover the creative relation with the origins of our existence”. (continued)

24/05/2012 -