Cardinal Kasper on the State of Ecumenism

2008 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Chair of Unity Octave, which has evolved into an annual pan-Christian week of prayer running from January 18-25. Prayer, it seems, is what is most required in the early 21st century quest for Christian unity, a quest that reached a peek of euphoria in the mid-1960s and that has suffered many disappointments ever since. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, briefed his brother cardinals on the current state of the ecumenical enterprise at the consistory this past November 23. Kasper made several important points in the course of his ecumenical overview:

1) The recovery of Christian fraternity is "the most significant, and most gratifying, result of ecumenism over the past few decades." Documents and agreements are important, but "the fact that we have rediscovered that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, that we have learned to appreciate one another," is the crucial accomplishment of the recent past. One important, and perhaps unanticipated, part of this rediscovery of Christian fraternity is that other Christian communities have seen in the See of Peter, the papacy, "an increasingly important point of reference" for everyone.

2) After fifteen hundred years of separation, contact has been reestablished between the universal Church and the Churches which separated from Rome because of the Councils of Ephesus (381) and Chalcedon (456).

3) The dialogue with Orthodoxy has begun to recognize that "1054" — the year of mutual excommunications between Constantinople and Rome — was not a discrete moment but the culmination of "a long process of estrangement and alienation," such that the necessary path today is "a reverse process of mutual reconciliation." This is going to take time. Still, important achievements have been realized, including the regular exchange of visits and messages between the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, a process of fraternal communication that had lain fallow for nine hundred years.

A breakthrough of potentially great consequence took place in October 2007 in Ravenna, when Catholicism's Orthodox dialogue partners "recognized a universal level of the Church" (that is, the "Church" is not simply a federation of patriarchates). Moreover, the Orthodox dialogue partners agreed that, at this universal level, there is a primate "who can only be the bishop of Rome, according to the hierarchy of the early Church." This important step will, of course, have to be developed in future theological conversation, but it is nonetheless a key move in the path toward full communion between Rome and the Christian East.

4) The real logjams ecumenically are in the dialogues with liberal Protestantism. Different understandings of Church, different understandings of the ministry, and different understandings of how apostolic authority binds (or doesn't bind) the community of Christ today have made agreement on key issues very difficult. Add to that "new divergences in the ethical field" (nature of marriage; sexual ethics; abortion; homosexuality) and the picture becomes even more complicated, and more difficult. In other words, it is very difficult to engage a fruitful theological conversation with dialogue partners who keep moving the goal posts.

5) At the same time as the dialogues with the Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed communities have hit the skids, a new dialogue has opened up with those evangelical Protestant communities that hold fast to classic Christian convictions about Christ, the Trinity, and the moral life. (Kasper didn't mention it, but the "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" initiative led by Father Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson is the most developed of these dialogues.) There are difficulties in the Catholic/evangelical dialogue because of aggressive proselytization by Pentecostals in Latin America. But as Kasper said, on this front, "we should begin by asking ourselves, not what is wrong with the Pentecostals, but what our [Catholic] pastoral shortcomings are."

Ecumenical progress, Kasper concluded, must rest on "rediscovering...the foundations of our faith." Everything becomes "unstable and empty of meaning" if we do not have a "firm faith in the living God, Triune and One, in the divinity of Christ, in the saving power of the cross and resurrection."

For those who missed it, Marcus Grodi's guest on The Journey Home, was Paul Williams, a former Buddhist. Buddhism does not recognize the existence of God. To gain some perspective on how this conversion was received by the Buddhist community, click here.

I’m amused by the pretense of rationalism among Buddhists. If they succeeded in their ideal of eliminating desire the entire human race would die out. A buddhist father or mother should be an oxymoron. It shows how seriously they take their faith that it is not.

After fifteen hundred years of separation, contact has been reestablished between the universal Church and the Churches which separated from Rome because of the Councils of Ephesus (381) and Chalcedon (456).

Ping to read up on later.

Did you catch the interview? If not, I believe the program repeats on Saturday at 11pm. Prof. Paul Williams was raised in the Anglican Church as a child but left in his early teens. He joined the Buddhist faith and was highly recognized as one of their best instructors. The interview was totally captivating. Having decided there is a God, his options for choosing a particular faith to follow were very broad. It was the 'Resurrection' that brought him to christianity and the fact that the Catholic Church can trace itself back to the Apostles that decided his final selection. He even asked his friends to pose questions on why he should not choose the Catholic Church. As you can imagine, every argument we have seen in this forum was thrown in his face. However, it was precisely all of those arguments that indicated to him that the Catholic Church was the one founded by Jesus Christ. Awesome program!

Most moving was his description of the Catholic Mass as 'heaven on earth'. He can't understand how any Catholic can call the Mass boring since God is present!

“Ping to read up on later.”

In the first instance, the anathemization of the Nestorians. There are very few true Nestorians left around these days, some in Iraq, I think, others in NW China and perhaps Eastern Syria. In the second instance, the non-Chalcedonians or Monophysites. There are plenty of them around. We usually refer to them as the Oriental Orthodox, like Armenians, Copts, Syrian Orthodox, etc. There is a de facto intercommunion between the Monopysites and the Orthodox but not with Rome. Its likely, but by no means certain, that the differences perceived at Chalcedon were far more about words than “substance”. :)

I dunno about defacto communion. I dunno if I’d commune in an Oriental Orthodox church (though I’d be happy to show up watch and pray)... Course the same thought occurs to me abut antiochian parishes... the Oriental Orthodox parishs are probably more Orthodox in practice...

“Course the same thought occurs to me abut antiochian parishes... the Oriental Orthodox parishs are probably more Orthodox in practice...”

Right instincts on both counts (though if you find a real Arab parish, you should be OK)! :)

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