Ecumenism a Sign of the Times, Says Cardinal Kasper
Feb 28, 2006
In an age characterized by globalization, ecumenism is also "a response to the signs of the times," says Cardinal Walter Kasper.
ROME, FEB. 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity made that point during a lecture Wednesday at the Regina Apostolorum university, as part of the school's master's program in Church, Ecumenism and Religions.
The cardinal said that, thanks to the new means of communications, peoples are now closer and "like it or not, in the same boat."
Separated Christians, noted Cardinal Kasper, "in general no longer consider themselves foreign" or "in competition."
Rather, they see themselves as "brothers and sisters"; they have realized that "what unites them is much greater than what divides them," he said.
Cardinal Kasper went on to mention, however, that after a "certain euphoria, as a consequence of the Second Vatican Council, in the last decade there have been signs of exhaustion, disillusion and stagnation" in the ecumenical movement.
Some observers even talk about "a new ecumenical winter," the cardinal said. The cause of this crisis must be sought above all in the "current questions about identity," because "no one wants to be absorbed by a faceless whole."
He noted that Vatican II's dogmatic constitution, "Lumen Gentium," and its decree on ecumenism, "Unitatis Redintegratio," declared that "the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church."
This does not, however, exclude that "beyond the visible structures of the Catholic Church, exist, not only Christians taken individually, but also ecclesial elements that push for unity," Cardinal Kasper said.
He cited Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Ut Unum Sint": "It is not that beyond the boundaries of the Catholic community there is an ecclesial vacuum."
"The Holy Spirit is hard at work in the other Churches and ecclesial communities," explained the cardinal.
"The Catholic Church has been wounded by the divisions of Christianity," he added. What is needed, he said, is an ecumenism that is not "a one-way street but a process of reciprocal learning."
"The issue is not only the conversion of others but the conversion of everyone to Jesus Christ. Conversion always begins with ourselves," the cardinal said.
It is not simply the turning of others to the sheepfold of the Catholic Church, but of a common growth, he added, because the "closer we come to Christ, the closer we come to one another."
Ecumenism a Sign of the Times, Says Cardinal Kasper