Jeg har den siste tiden lest mye interessant om kardinal Kasper, lederen for den katolske kirkes økumeniske arbeid. En artikkelen på nettstedet www.chiesa snakker en del om hvor viktig har er i Vatikanet og hvordan han arbeider sammen med pave Benedikt. Les gjerne hele artikkelen her:
Denne artikkelen nevner også noe Kasper sa uken før han ‘advarte’ anglikanerne om hva de er i ferd med å gjøre for økumenikken – se min melding om det. 31. mai snakket han en hel del om økumeniske spørsmål i Roma, og sa bl.a. at noen former for «ideologisk økumenikk, ønsker å overse forskjellene, og ønsker enhet for enhver pris, basert på en svært liten grad av oppnådd enighet. Sann økumenikk finner man i sannhet og kjærlighet, og i dag ser vi her fem viktige forskjeller i forhold til tidligere tiår:»
The first change, which Kasper describes as “very positive,” concerns the Churches of the East. Theological dialogue has been resumed over what unites East and West – the sacraments and the episcopal and priestly ministry – and over what divides them – the role of the pope – “but in the meantime we can cooperate in Europe, the most secularized continent, in order to rediscover Christian roots and strengthen Christian values, and in this way we can participate in a truly historic task.”
The second change concerns the historical Protestant Churches: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican. Kasper is much more pessimistic on this point. In the area of theology, “they have developed a concept of unity that constantly draws farther away from Catholic ecclesiology.” But the most serious distancing concerns “the internal fragmentation of some ecclesial communities, in particular the Anglican communion, and their loss of substance above all in the field of ethics, especially on questions of life and the family.”
But there is an opposite current within Protestantism, and this is the third change mentioned by Kasper. “There are groups, fraternities, evangelical movements that want to live the Gospel and are grateful for the Catholic Church’s firm attitude toward ethical questions. They often form a spiritual network and are linked with groups, spiritual movements, and congregations of a traditional character in the Catholic Church.”
The fourth change is that “we have begun a fairly substantial dialogue with the Pentecostals, who with more than 500 million adherents are now the second-largest Christian confession after the Catholic Church, and are especially present in the southern hemisphere, in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. They are showing enormous growth, and some are even speaking of the Christianity of the future.”
Finally there is a fifth change, which Kasper maintains is “the most important and demanding, above all in Europe.” It concerns “post-denominational and post-secular men and women going through an interior spiritual quest, who desire a form of Christian unity that transcends the individual confessions.”
These men and women are not interested in the ecumenism associated with the specialists and the theological controversies that go along with it. “Many of them are nevertheless open to a message or, better, to a fundamental and central Christian witness, expressed in accessible words that they can understand. In this sense many people, and not just Catholics, have understood well the encyclical ‘Deus Caritas Est.’ Here we find ourselves at the beginning of a new ecumenism that is intimately linked to a new evangelization.”