wfn.org | Reformed-Catholic dialogue provides glimmer of hope after ‘Dominus

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Note #6220 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Iesus'
17-October-2000
00359

Reformed-Catholic dialogue provides glimmer of hope after ‘Dominus Iesus'

by Stephen Brown
Ecumenical News International

GENEVA -- As protests continue about a Vatican document published this month
asserting Roman Catholic superiority over all other churches, Pope John Paul
II has insisted that the commitment of the Roman Catholic Church to
ecumenical dialogue is "irrevocable."

	Pope John Paul made his statement to participants at a meeting of the joint
commission on dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the World
Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), which represents 75 million Christians
in 215 Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed and United churches
world-wide.

	The meeting of the commission -- which took place near Rome in
mid-September -- was the first official encounter between the Vatican and
Protestant officials since the publication earlier in the month of a
controversial Vatican declaration, Dominus Iesus, which casts doubt on the
status of Protestant churches.

	The declaration -- which focuses on dialogue with other religions --
angered many Protestants around the world because it restates the Vatican's
belief that the Catholic Church fully represents the "one holy Catholic and
apostolic church" while Protestant
denominations are not churches but "ecclesial communities."

	Because of the publication of Dominus Iesus, WARC considered canceling the
meeting at the Vatican, but decided to go ahead "because of the commitment
of the Reformed family to ecumenical co-operation and a healthy co-operation
with the Roman Catholic Church."

	The issue of Dominus Iesus was not officially on the agenda for the
meeting. But according to a joint communique issued after the gathering,
"recent tensions experienced between Reformed and Catholics  were discussed
frankly by the dialogue partners in an ecumenical spirit."

	The communique went on to say that although Dominus Iesus "was not
addressed specifically to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the
alliance reacted strongly to some of its contents."

	Roman Catholic representatives had also raised the issue of "negative
reactions of the alliance even to significant ecumenical initiatives on the
part of the Catholic Church" -- an apparent reference to WARC's absence from
a key ceremony in January marking the Catholic Jubilee year. Several church
leaders, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and the
president of the Lutheran World Federation, Bishop Christian Krause, were
present.

	WARC's failure to attend was largely due to Vatican pronouncements on
indulgences for the jubilee year. The belief that the church can grant
indulgences for good works or special piety by individuals to allow
remission of time spent in Purgatory has been a point at issue between
Catholics and Protestants since the Reformation, when Martin Luther
protested against the sale of indulgences by the church.

	Speaking to ENI after his return to Geneva, WARC's theology secretary,
Odair Mateus, who is also co-secretary of the commission, said that
"theologically speaking, there is nothing new in Dominus Iesus." However,
publication of the document had affected "the spiritual environment of the
dialogue."

	"We had expected that after almost 40 years of dialogue, the Roman Catholic
Church would be more sensitive to how it refers to other world communions.
In my view it was not necessary that a declaration on inter-religious
dialogue should include a couple of paragraphs [on ecumenical relations]
phrased in a very insensitive way," he said.

	Mateus said that it had been encouraging that the Pope had stated the
church's commitment to ecumenical dialogue, and that Roman Catholic members
of the commission had also stressed the church's "firm commitment to
bilateral dialogue."

	In his address on Sept. 18 to participants at the commission meeting, Pope
John Paul said that "within the ecumenical movement, theological dialogue is
the proper setting for us to face together the issues over which Christians
have been divided, and to build together the unity to which Christ calls his
disciples.

	"In this dialogue we 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," Pope John Paul said, adding that "the commitment of the Catholic
Church to ecumenical dialogue is irrevocable."

	However, Mateus told ENI that WARC believed a new approach to bilateral
dialogue between Christian World Communions was needed, taking into account
the ecumenical practices of its members in the southern hemisphere, which
account for more than two-thirds of WARC's member churches.

	For these Christians, dialogue between churches should take as its starting
point the experiences of churches struggling together against injustice,
rather than the present point of departure for dialogue -- the "classic
theological dividing issues of the past."

	"Either we relate traditional ecumenism to the common witness to the
Kingdom of God in situations of human survival and ecological survival, or
we won't be able any longer to say that we are promoting ecumenism on behalf
of 70 per cent of our constituency," said Mateus, a theologian from Brazil
who took  up his WARC post earlier this year.

	"I do not believe the classic dividing issues will be solved in a short
time. Issues such as the ordained ministry, the historic episcopate and the
papacy will not be able to be resolved in the short run. It will take much
longer than we had been expecting."

	However, Mateus said he hoped that by looking at situations where Christian
traditions were engaged in "common witness" against injustice, it would be
"possible to learn from these experiences of unity." This experience of
"ecumenical spirituality" could shed new light on long-standing theological
divisions.

	He welcomed the fact that the Vatican had agreed that the commission's next
meeting should examine case studies of common witness of churches
"struggling for the values of the Kingdom of God." The theme of the current
round of talks between WARC and the Roman Catholic Church -- "Church as
Community of Common Witness to the Kingdom of God" -- was well suited to
this approach, he added. "We hope that through our ecumenical theology being
more strongly challenged by this ecumenical spirituality, we will be able to
overcome the long-standing theological divisions without being kept hostage
to their institutional power."

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