NEWS STORY: Lutherans agree to lift anti-Catholic condemnations

c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ The Lutheran World Federation, in an historic vote aimed at healing a 450-year-old rift with the Roman Catholic Church, has voted to lift the Reformation-era condemnations and anathemas Martin Luther and other Reformers hurled at the pope and Catholicism. Meeting in Geneva, the LWF Council _ the governing […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The Lutheran World Federation, in an historic vote aimed at healing a 450-year-old rift with the Roman Catholic Church, has voted to lift the Reformation-era condemnations and anathemas Martin Luther and other Reformers hurled at the pope and Catholicism.

Meeting in Geneva, the LWF Council _ the governing body of the international organization of 124 Lutheran churches around the world _ voted unamimously to approve the”Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,”a 45-paragraph statement to be issued jointly with the Vatican on the schism-producing issue on the role faith and works play in salvation.”This is what we have been praying for and hoping for after 30 years of dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church,”the Rev. Ishmael Noko, LWF general secretary, told a news conference after the June 16 vote.”It should be celebrated as a historic moment for our two churches and also as an important moment for unity within Lutheranism,”he added.


But while the joint declaration goes a long way to ending one of the nagging scars of the Reformation, Lutheran-Catholic unity remains far off as the two churches continue to have sharp differences over authority in the church, especially the role of the pope, and on the nature of the ministry, especially the issue of women’s ordination. Nor does it pave the way for Catholics and Lutherans to take Holy Communion together.

The joint declaration was drawn up by an officially appointed team of theologians and church leaders named by the Vatican and the LWF.

By the time the LWF Council acted, of the 124 member churches, which account for 57 million of the world’s 61 million Lutherans, 89 churches had weighed in with their opinion on the proposed joint statement. Of those, 80 churches, representing 54.7 million Lutherans, said yes to the declaration. Five churches said no, and four had mixed responses.

In the United States, where there are some 60 million Catholics, the 5.2 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has endorsed the joint declaration. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which is not a member of the LWF, has not.

LWF President Christian Krause said he hopes the Vatican”will give results in the same spirit as we have seen during these days”of the council’s discussion of the statement.

Although the Vatican has not formally endorsed the statement, a senior Vatican official attending the LWF meeting welcomed the Lutheran action.”This is a great moment in our relationship,”the Rev. John Radano of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity told the council after the vote.

In Rome, the Rev. Jean-Claude Perisset, secretary of the unity council, told the Swiss Catholic news agency APIC that a date for a joint public signing of the document had not yet been set but would be done”in the near future,”reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.


The issue of justification was the church-dividing cornerstone of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation that left Western Europe divided between Catholic and Lutheran countries and enclaves, leading to decades of bloody religious warfare.

In the heated and often extremist polemics of the time, both sides hurled condemnations and placed anathemas on the other.

Those condemnations no longer apply, the joint declaration says, basing its argument on the contention that each side’s contemporary formulations of how people are saved are accurate expressions of the Christian faith.

The 450-year-old dispute arose at a time when often corrupt church officials were attempting to raise funds by selling”indulgences,”essentially permission to sin without heavenly penalties, which suggested to Luther and his followers that one’s merits, or works, could buy one’s way into heaven.

Luther, an Augustinian monk whose deeply pessimistic religious experience convinced him that he was utterly dependent on God’s grace, argued that salvation could only be the gift of a gracious God.

The new statement is the product of 30 years of official bilateral theological dialogue at both the national and international level.


Its key passage says:”Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.”

MJP END ANDERSON

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