Pope Meets World Council of Churches Chief

Pope Benedict XVI met Thursday with the leader of the World Council of Churches in another indication of his attempts to improve relations with other Christians and heal the 1,000-year-old rift with the Orthodox Church.

The Rev. Samuel Kobia, a Methodist pastor and the general secretary of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, was in Rome for a four-day visit that included talks with Benedict's top ecumenical official, Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Benedict has made reaching out to other Christians, in particular the Orthodox Churches, a "fundamental commitment" of his papacy.

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of more than 300 churches from nearly all Christian traditions, including Protestants and the Orthodox. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member, but it participates in the fellowship on several levels.

In an interview ahead of his audience, Kobia told The Associated Press he was encouraged by Benedict's commitment to ecumenism, particularly his comments that "concrete steps" and not just words were needed to unify Christians and help heal the rift with the Orthodox.

He said he was hoping for progress in one area in particular that has vexed some Protestant members of the World Council stemming from a 2000 document from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was headed by the pope when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The document, "Dominus Iesus," which Ratzinger signed, framed the role of the Catholic Church in human salvation in an exclusive manner. It suggested that non-Catholic "ecclesiastical communities" were "not churches in the proper sense."

"There are many Protestant churches that are members of the WCC and are concerned that they are defined as 'ecclesiastic communities' and not full churches," Kobia said.

He said he wasn't looking for Benedict to renounce the 2000 document, but said he hoped the two sides could "move beyond it."

"I would seek understanding that in order to progress on unity, it would be important to speak another language, moving beyond what has been said," he said.

Kobia referred indirectly to the issue in his prepared remarks to Benedict, who was a member of a joint Catholic-World Council commission on faith from 1968-1975.

Kobia said Orthodox members of the World Council of Churches are asked to reflect on whether there was "space" for other churches in Orthodox doctrine.

"Responses to these fundamental ecclesiological questions will certainly affect whether or not our member churches recognize each other's baptism, as well as their ability or inability to recognize one another as churches," Kobia's remarks said.

He said he encouraged discussion on the topic within the World Council "but also in our relationships with all our ecumenical partners."

He concluded by saying faith "is more effective and vibrant when it is lived out together with our brothers and sisters in Christ."

Kobia's delegation included Bishop Eberhardt Renz from the Evangelical Church in Germany and Archbishop Makarios of Kenya and Irinoupolis, from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and all Africa.

Benedict has emphasized his pledge to ecumenism on several occasions in his nearly two-month-old papacy. In his first homily as pope, on April 20, he said his "primary" task would be to work with all his energy to unify all followers of Christ.

Tensions between the Catholic and Orthodox churches have focused on charges by some Orthodox that the Catholic Church is encroaching on its territory. The rift prevented the late Pope John Paul II from fulfilling a long-held wish to visit Russia, the world's most populous Orthodox nation.

I glanced at the referenced document and speaking as a Protestant I don't see what the objection is to it

Here is the conclusion

CONCLUSION 23. The intention of the present Declaration, in reiterating and clarifying certain truths of the faith, has been to follow the example of the Apostle Paul, who wrote to the faithful of Corinth: "I handed on to you as of first importance what I myself received" (1 Cor 15:3). Faced with certain problematic and even erroneous propositions, theological reflection is called to reconfirm the Church's faith and to give reasons for her hope in a way that is convincing and effective. In treating the question of the true religion, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught: "We believe that this one true religion continues to exist in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus entrusted the task of spreading it among all people. Thus, he said to the Apostles: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you' (Mt 28: 19-20). Especially in those things that concern God and his Church, all persons are required to seek the truth, and when they come to know it, to embrace it and hold fast to it".99
The revelation of Christ will continue to be "the true lodestar" 100 in history for all humanity: "The truth, which is Christ, imposes itself as an all-embracing authority". 101 The Christian mystery, in fact, overcomes all barriers of time and space, and accomplishes the unity of the human family: "From their different locations and traditions all are called in Christ to share in the unity of the family of God's children... Jesus destroys the walls of division and creates unity in a new and unsurpassed way through our sharing in his mystery. This unity is so deep that the Church can say with Saint Paul: ‘You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are saints and members of the household of God' (Eph 2:19)". 102
http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFUNICI.HTM

In fact the introduction seems to "move beyond" quite nicely

2. In the course of the centuries, the Church has proclaimed and witnessed with fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus. At the close of the second millennium, however, this mission is still far from complete.2 For that reason, Saint Paul's words are now more relevant than ever: "Preaching the Gospel is not a reason for me to boast; it is a necessity laid on me: woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!" (1 Cor 9:16). This explains the Magisterium's particular attention to giving reasons for and supporting the evangelizing mission of the Church, above all in connection with the religious traditions of the world.3
In considering the values which these religions witness to and offer humanity, with an open and positive approach, the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions states: "The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and teachings, which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men".4 Continuing in this line of thought, the Church's proclamation of Jesus Christ, "the way, the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6), today also makes use of the practice of inter-religious dialogue. Such dialogue certainly does not replace, but rather accompanies the missio ad gentes, directed toward that "mystery of unity", from which "it follows that all men and women who are saved share, though differently, in the same mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ through his Spirit".5 Inter-religious dialogue, which is part of the Church's evangelizing mission,6 requires an attitude of understanding and a relationship of mutual knowledge and reciprocal enrichment, in obedience to the truth and with respect for freedom.7

The possible true objection that these liberals have is contained within the document. The following declares the truth of the error made by many of these churches

4. The Church's constant missionary proclamation is endangered today by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de iure (or in principle). As a consequence, it is held that certain truths have been superseded; for example, the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the nature of Christian faith as compared with that of belief in other religions, the inspired nature of the books of Sacred Scripture, the personal unity between the Eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, the unity of the economy of the Incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit, the unicity and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the universal salvific mediation of the Church, the inseparability — while recognizing the distinction — of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Church, and the subsistence of the one Church of Christ in the Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict XVI met Thursday with the leader of the World Council of Churches in another indication of his attempts to improve relations with other Christians

Better move fast if he wants this to involve "relations with other Christians." The United Church of Christ is a member church. Posted today:

A venerable Protestant denomination - at the behest of some of its conservative members - is preparing to vote next month on a measure declaring that Jesus Christ is the Lord, and making it mandatory for clergy to accept his divinity.
It may seem like a slam dunk, but delegates for the 1.3 million-member United Church of Christ may reject the resolution. Several Bergen County pastors, who aren't delegates to the convention, said they expect the measure to fail.
"Religiously speaking, it sounds like apple pie," said the Rev. Raymond Kostulias of the First Congregational Church of Park Ridge. "But there is a judgmental quality to it that implies very strongly that those who do not agree with us are condemned or damned or hopeless - and that's exactly the thing that UCC is against."

From: United Church of Christ to vote on divinity of Christ

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