The article is an attempt to delineate some basic features of the current European context and the role of a missionary presence in this context. What I call ‘the missionary presence’ is rooted in the very self of the Church event, however it does not coincide with ecclesial life at large; it is a mistake to conceive of pastoral care or the introverted celebration of liturgical life as missionary activities. Witnessing and practising mission are inextricably linked with crossing boundaries, and meeting and inviting otherness.
The current religious map of Europe must be studied and understood. This has to be done using the tools of several disciplines (statistics, social anthropology, etc.), yet it is an necessary theological task: it is a movement towards the real world, which is invited to become (new) flesh of Christ. The present situation is marked by the decline of Christianity, by immigration, and by the dynamic emergence of the Global South. The primary responsibility is to respond to the need for Christian presence in the public sphere in a mode of dialogue: neither to conquer the public sphere, nor to declare that God is the property of Christian communities alone.
Apart from many practical questions which the opening-up of a missionary presence may entail, there are three key issues, relating to the justification of the Christian presence, which can be singled out. These are the elaboration and advocacy of:
a) the notion of mission (in a Europe where the ‘feeling of guilt’ for past colonial sins paralyses and negates the very idea of witnessing),
b) the importance of the assertion of truth (against the dominance of relativism as well as the fundamentalist use of the assertion of truth as a path to violence and bigotry),
c) the intensification of solidarity and social justice within the current context of dominant neo-liberalism and their sacramental interpretation (beyond the decline of the diakonia into little more than the activities of an NGO).

Download article