wfn.org | Pope meets with, reassures Reformed leaders on ecumenism

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Note #6195 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

21-September-2000
00333

Pope meets with, reassures Reformed leaders on ecumenism

by John Norton
Catholic News Service
	
VATICAN CITY -- After an alliance of Protestant churches criticized a
Vatican document as "ecumenically insensitive," Pope John Paul met with
alliance representatives Sept. 18 and underscored the Catholic Church's
commitment to improving ecumenical relations.

	"The commitment of the Catholic Church to ecumenical dialogue is
irrevocable," he told members of a formal dialogue commission of Catholics
and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches meeting Sept. 13-19 outside
Rome.

	The World Alliance of Reformed Churches said it had considered canceling
that meeting after the Vatican released a document Sept. 5 reiterating
church teaching that the "church of Christ ... continues to exist fully only
in the Catholic Church."

	The declaration, titled "Dominus Iesus: On the Unicity and Salvific
Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church," said some Christian
denominations -- those without a Catholic-recognized Eucharist and ordained
ministry -- are "not, properly speaking, churches."

	Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the Geneva-based World Alliance of
Reformed Churches, expressed "dismay and disappointment" with the
declaration and said it "seems to go against the spirit of Vatican II, as we
understand it."

	In a Sept. 8 letter to Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, president of the
Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, Nyomi said the alliance interpreted
the document "as part of a sustained effort by Catholic conservatives to
deny the growing relationship and respect between and among the different
ecclesial communities."

	He said the alliance had considered canceling further dialogue with the
Catholic Church "until we are sure of where we stand in our relationship,"
but instead decided to bring these concerns to the September meeting.

	Pope John Paul greeted the commission members Sept. 18 as "dear friends"
and said the commission's dialogue "has already led to significant results."

	He said a significant part of theological dialogue was to clarify "our
respective positions and explore the reasons for our differences."

	"Our dialogue then becomes an examination of conscience, a call to
conversion, in which both sides examine before God their responsibility to
do all they can to put behind them the conflicts of the past," he said.

	"At that point, the Spirit fills us with a yearning to confess together
that ‘there is one body and one spirit, ... one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of us all,'" the pope said.

	"We feel this as a duty, as something that must be done so that ‘the world
may believe,'" he said.

	The World Alliance of Reformed Churches is a fellowship of 215
Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Reformed and United churches, which claim a
total membership of 75 million Christians in 106 countries.

	The alliance formed a dialogue commission with the Catholic Church in 1970.
The current phase of dialogue has as its theme "the church and the kingdom
of God."

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