Posted on 01/06/2017 8:06:18 AM PST by ebb tide
A newly released document from the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Christian Unity promotes the upcoming January 18-25 ‘Week of Prayer for Christian Unity’ with the theme ‘Reconciliation: The love of Christ compels us.’ Encouraging commemorations in all dioceses of the world, the Pontifical Council notes the theme is drawn from the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In 2017, it says, “Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.” The text also states that “Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognizing him as a ‘witness to the gospel.’”
The announcement follows on the heels of Pope Francis’ controversial trip to Lund, Sweden, where he joined in the launch of the 500th year anniversary of the most devastating split in Christianity in its history. The Lutheran Church of Sweden to which Pope Francis went for the celebration accepts contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and female clergy, all of which are strictly and unalterably forbidden in the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless, the Vatican is pushing the joint celebration of the Reformation focusing on the common element of “Jesus Christ and his work of reconciliation as the center of Christian faith.”
The theme of the week of Christian unity has Vatican watchers wondering if the Pope may announce that in certain limited cases intercommunion for Protestants might be possible. The Pope suggested such previously in an informal talk at a Lutheran parish in Rome where in November 2015 he told a Lutheran woman asking about receiving Communion with her Catholic husband to “go forward” guided by individual conscience.
That suspicion was given momentum last month when Cardinal Walter Kasper, one of the Pope’s closest advisors, said he hoped that the Pope’s “next declaration opens the way for shared Eucharistic communion in special cases.”
Eucharistic intercommunion is the main desire for Lutheran and Catholic leaders involved in the Papal participation in the Lutheran commemoration. Swedish Professor Dr. Clemens Cavallin in an essay on “Sweden and the 500-year reformation anamnesis” notes that the Church of Sweden webpage states explicitly about the pope’s visit: “What we foremost wish is that the common celebration of the Eucharist will be officially possible. This is especially important for families where members belong to different denominations.”
The severity of the change, if implemented, was stressed by Monsignor Nicola Bux, a former consulter to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. If the Church were to change its rules on shared Eucharistic Communion, it would “go against Revelation and the Magisterium,” leading Christians to “commit blasphemy and sacrilege,” Bux told Ed Pentin of the National Catholic Register.
Regarding the Eucharist, Lutherans have a fundamentally different faith from Catholics, who believe that during the consecration at Mass the bread used becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ while still looking like bread. Lutherans believe in a fleeting presence – that while Christ is present in the bread during the service, it is just normal bread again outside the service.
The approach of Pope Francis to a joint commemoration of the Reformation is partially based on a “naïve” understanding of the theological dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics, according to former Anglican, now Catholic priest Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Fr. Longenecker points to this statement of Pope Francis about Martin Luther as problematic: “Today, Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err.”
Pope Francis draws his enthusiasm for this agreement on a Joint Declaration between Catholics and Lutherans on the Doctrine of Justification. However, Fr. Longenecker points out that the Vatican issued a detailed official clarification document wherein Pope Benedict (while still serving as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith) pointed out that there was not a consensus between Catholics and Lutherans on the understanding of justification. “The level of agreement is high, but it does not yet allow us to affirm that all the differences separating Catholics and Lutherans in the doctrine concerning justification are simply a question of emphasis or language,” said the document. “Some of these differences concern aspects of substance and are therefore not all mutually compatible.”
AMEN!
I am guessing you are not Catholic, since you have just spoken historical truth about the Church.
Martin Luther was a deeply flawed individual. But he performed a necessary service. At the time he tacked up his 95 theses the Church was selling indulgences....frankly a financial racket, and something they had absolutely NO Biblical authority to do. Since the Vatican was extremely arrogant and refused to listen to dissent from within (dissenters had a nasty habit of ending up dead) he really had no other options.
His contemporaries who sat in judgment of him were equally disdainful of the Jews.
ALL churches are flawed and fallible. Because they are run by flawed and fallible human beings. Many of my fellow Catholics live in a state of denial about this.
Not this Catholic!
He’s a drooling South-American Marxist.
P4L
I don’t have any problems with individual Catholics, I know and have befriended quite a few whom I accept as brothers and sisters in Christ. The Church, however, I do have some problems there. Not insurmountable for the most part, outside of a few theological sticking points that are not salvific matters when you boil it down, on the individual level. On the Church level, though, there is what I perceive to be deceit driven by pride and there has been for a very, very long time.
Our Church’s biggest problem IMO is the leadership’s utter inability to look in the mirror and admit that they have been wrong about ANYTHING.
For example, they claim they don’t allow divorce. Which is a sound and admirable position if they were consistent.
But they allowed Henry VIII to get up to wife #8 before raising objections. And you will find all sorts of other Catholics who divorced and remarried.
Because they have created this legal fiction of an annulment where you can go before a tribunal of clergy (who themselves have never been married) and make the argument that your twenty-five year marriage NEVER EXISTED. Because when you took your vows your spouse was immature. Or something.
But it achieves the Vatican’s desired objective of letting them off the hook from admitting that they’ve ever been wrong or inconsistent about anything.
Away in a Manger....a hymn written by Luther....is now played in Catholic Churches at Christmastime. A tacit admission that he may have had a point or two with his 95 thesis. Something they will never admit openly.
Our second biggest problem IMO is a handful of extremely motivated nutjobs who are willing to die on the hill of EVERY insignificant issue. Some of them actually want to take the Liturgy back to Latin.....a dead language spoken by 0.005% of the global population.
Those folks will be distressed to know that I have it on VERY good authority that the Catholic Church is deeply engaged in serious talks with the Lutherans about reunification.
Careful about which Lutherans you’re talking about reunifying with. I doubt the devout Lutherans are engaging in such talks. You’re fixing to get a pig in a poke.
The Catholic Church is a State Church to it’s very core. It’s *been* the government throughout much of western European history. Love of pomp, love of power. It leads to repeated attempts to gold-plate the priesthood and to hoodwink the faithful in order to retain that power.
Just my opinion, of course, but shared by many.
This is terrible bordering on heresy.
I think it has already crossed the border.
DeCatholizing the Church. We are all Heretics and Protestants now!
Huh? Henry had six wives, total. And he NEVER got an annulment of his first marriage. He had to go into schism in order to marry #2, Anne Boleyn.
Rome "invented" and "perfected" something that you need a Russian word to describe? I don't think so.
However, on this "Pope is the antiChrist" stuff ... hmmm ... have to think about that some more, specifically in reference to the current incumbent.
I think you need to read up on your history. Henry VIII only had six wives and broke with the Catholic Church when he could not get an annulment for his first wife.
One word: NO!
Roman Emperor Claudius, Pontifex Maximus, expelled Jews in the 1st century AD. This behavior did not improve under future Pontiffs. Quibble over linguistic source for the word “pogrom” all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Catholic Church embraced the practice, and vigorously. Martin Luther was no better, but he was the product of his time and upbringing. Apparently that’s tough to admit, for some.
Yes; I know about the ELCA document; I was not certain that Lutherans accepted the ECLA as their authorized dealer, so to speak.
Let me help you out. Anti-Semitism has been a problem in Europe for 2000 years. This is true whether we're talking pagans, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and worse by far under the neo-pagan Nazis.
By the standards of his time in *Catholic* Europe, Luther's animus against the Jews was way beyond the mark. That was his doing, not the Pope's. Most of his biographers admit that.
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