c. 2004 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ On Nov. 21, 1965, bishops attending the Second Vatican Council voted 2,137 to 11 to commit the Catholic Church to dialogue aimed at restoring the unity of Christendom.
Sunday (Nov. 21) marks the 40th anniversary of that historic agreement. Looking back, the Vatican’s ecumenical commitment is evident. But progress has been limited and the future of delicate relationships with other Christian denominations is anything but certain.
Summing up four decades of effort, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, admitted to “problems and disappointments” and said, “we are in an intermediate stage.”
But Kasper said there has been a major change in attitude. Today, he said, “we consider other Christians no longer as enemies or strangers but see in them brothers and sisters.”
Celebrating that spiritual kinship, Kasper’s council began a three-day conference Thursday (Nov. 11) in the hill town of Rocca di Papa south of Rome to mark the anniversary of the Vatican II “Decree on Ecumenism: Unitatis Redintegratio (Unity Restored).”
The 260 participants included representatives of 104 Catholic bishops conferences throughout the world and 27 “fraternal delegates” from Orthodox and other Christian churches and communities. Pope John Paul II was scheduled to preside over the closing Vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Kasper told a Vatican news conference he was surprised at the high attendance at a time when the general attitude toward ecumenism seems lukewarm at best. He complained of the persistence of “ancient prejudices,” of “laziness and narrowness” and of a “superficial activism.”
The prelate, however, rejected the view that “ecumenism is going through a period of glacification or is in an ecumenical winter.” He said it is “better to speak of a stage of maturation and of necessary clarifications.”
Delegates to the conference will see a film prepared by the Vatican Television Center recording high points of ecumenism. These start with the historic meeting of Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Atenagora I in Jerusalem in 1964, which opened the way to dialogue aimed at ending the Great Schism that has separated Catholics and Orthodox since 1054.
Another important moment of Christian convergence came in 1999 when Roman Catholics and Lutherans met at Augsburg, Germany, home of the Protestant Reformation, to sign a joint statement declaring that the doctrine of justification is no longer a cause for separation of the churches.
For centuries, Catholics and Lutherans had argued whether salvation came through faith in Christ, which Lutherans emphasize, or good works, which Catholics contend is essential. The statement asserted that Lutherans and Catholics explain justification in different ways but share the same basic understanding.
Pope John Paul II broke 700 years of tradition in Holy Year 2000 by inviting a representative of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople and the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion to join him in the ceremonial opening of the Holy Door of Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul’s-Without-the Walls.
In a striking foretaste of unity, Metropolitan Athanasios of Helioupolis and Theira and then-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey knelt on either side of the pope at the 11th century bronze and silver Holy Door, forged in Constantinople in 1070.
John Paul has made ecumenical dialogue a hallmark of his papacy.
When the collapse of communism permitted travel to Eastern Europe, the Polish-born pope visited the predominantly Orthodox countries of Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria. In Romania, he was greeted with cries of, “Unity, unity.”
In 2001, he became the first pope to travel to Athens and to pray with the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church.
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But Catholic-Orthodox relations remain uneasy.
The Russian Orthodox Church accuses Catholics of proselytzing, is at odds with the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Catholic Church and has rejected a papal visit to Moscow.
John Paul has attempted to placate the Moscow Patriarchate by agreeing at least for the present not to give the Ukrainian Catholic Church its own patriarch, and in August, he returned to Moscow a revered copy of the icon of the Madonna of Kazan. His actions won him kinder words but no invitation.
Athens presented the Vatican with a rebuff in October when the conservative Greek Orthodox Synod voted 45-15 to force Archbishop Christodoulos, the Greek primate, to delay an historic visit to Rome late this year. The pope was to have presented the archbishop with a venerated relic, a link from the chain St. Paul was said to have worn in prison.
John Paul is on better terms with Bartholomew I and has promised to restore to him relics of the Orthodox Patriarchs and Sts. John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus, brought to Rome by the crusaders after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and placed in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Because the 84-year-old pope is too frail to travel to Istanbul, Bartholomew will come to Rome to receive the relics on Nov. 27.
Dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans has also suffered setbacks.
A joint commission has come to terms on such basic issues as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist, but neither church has ratified the agreements.
The Vatican saw the Anglicans’ ordination of women as priests and later as bishops as an impediment to dialogue. The consecration last year of an openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire was even more upsetting to the Vatican, as well as to a number of Anglicans.
Meeting at the Vatican with the new Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams after Robinson’s consecration, the pope warned of “new and serious difficulties” threatening to block dialogue.
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