wfn.org | Polish Churches Plan Major Agreement on Baptism for Year 2000

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

11-May-1999 
99184 
 
    Polish Churches Plan Major Agreement 
    on Baptism for Year 2000 
 
    by Jonathan Luxmoore 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
WARSAW-Minority churches in Poland plan to celebrate the new millennium by 
joining Roman Catholics in a mutual recognition of baptism. The churches 
are also considering a joint acknowledgment - with the Roman Catholic 
Church - of "guilt and forgiveness" for past wrongs. 
 
    "Many people have warmed to these proposals, recalling our common roots 
in the Holy Spirit," Lutheran Bishop Jan Szarek, head of Poland's 
Ecumenical Council, told ENI.  Poland's 95,000-member Lutheran church had 
already accepted the declaration on baptisms, which now awaited similar 
approval by other minority denominations, he said. 
 
    He added that Roman Catholic leaders were now "increasingly open" to 
other churches.  He believed they would also endorse the document on 
baptisms as confirming what was already established practice. 
 
    "As for guilt and forgiveness, we must allow time for this proposal to 
sink into the Catholic consciousness.  But the Pope has already apologized 
to us,"  Bishop Szarek said, referring to apologies by John Paul II to 
Protestants during visits to the region in the mid-1990s.  "What's needed 
now is for the local church to follow this up, with a concrete gesture of 
reconciliation which recognizes historical realities." 
 
    Bishop Szarek also said minority churches had proposed an ecumenical 
celebration with the Roman Catholic Church during a planned meeting of 
European heads of state at Gniezno, Poland's first Christian see, in March 
2000. 
 
    However, Bishop Szarek also warned that "Protestants see the millennium 
more skeptically than Catholics, since we believe every day is God's day, 
whether it falls in 1999 or 2000, and we see no sense in jubilee years in 
which all sins are exonerated." 
 
    The Roman Catholic Church - to which the vast majority of Poland's 39 
million inhabitants belong - has since 1974 maintained a joint commission 
with the Polish Ecumenical Council, grouping the country's seven main 
minority denominations, Protestant and Orthodox. 
 
    A text of the declaration on baptisms was finalized by the commission 
on April 12, and is expected to be officially signed by all churches in 
January 2000 during the Week of Prayer for 
Christian Unity. 
 
    The chairman of the Roman Catholic Church's Council on Ecumenism, 
Bishop Alfons Nossol, said he would "do everything" to ensure the document 
was approved by the Catholic Bishops' Conference during its plenary session 
in June.  However, he stressed that the statement on mutual guilt and 
forgiveness was "only an idea" and needed further work. 
 
    "The validity of baptisms has been under discussion for 20 years, and 
after this final theological effort our bishops are ready to accept it 
officially," Bishop Nossol told ENI.  "Meanwhile, the Pope has expressed 
regret and apologized for the church's sins and misdeeds, so I think this 
won't pose great difficulties either.  But the shape and quality of this 
gesture need to be made more precise." 
 
    "This time, we are determined that these initiatives should filter 
right down to parish level, through a joint ecumenical letter to all 
Christians in Poland," the bishop told ENI.  "This must be something 
authentic and universal, rather than just a decision by church leaders at 
the top." 
 
    Both inter-church initiatives were announced in Warsaw earlier this 
month at an ecumenical symposium on "One Lord, one faith, one baptism," 
attended by Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the president of the Pontifical 
Council for Promoting Christian Unity. 
 
    A representative of Poland's 570,000-strong Orthodox Church, Michal 
Klinger, told symposium participants that Orthodox leaders were also 
planning an ecumenical ceremony with Roman Catholics in Bialystok, in the 
east of Poland. 
 
    He added that they hoped to resurrect the spirit of Poland's 
15th-century "Republic of Nations," which had been a magnet of "tolerance 
and hospitality" for Eastern and Western Europe. 

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