Benedict XVI to visit
Lutheran Church in Rome
by Salvatore Izzo
VATICAN CITY, Oct. 15 (Translated from AGI) - Benedict XVI will soon visit the Lutheran Church in Rome, according to Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
"The Pope intends to visit the Lutheran Church in Rome, but the date still has to be set," Kasper told newsmen at a news conference to present a book that puts together the formal documents pertaining to the work of the Council he heads.
It appeared to be a prelude to the impending retirement of the 77-year-old German cardinal after 20 years of serving in the Roman Curia.
"The Pope will decide when I should leave - I am at the disposition of the Church, but for me to retire would not be a disaster," he commented.
Referring to the book entitled
Harvesting the Fruits. Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue, Kasper said: "In putting together these 'fruits', we ourselves were positively surprised by what has been achieved in these years. It is a truly rich harvest, which goes beyond all the controversies and great historical problems since the Reformation".
According to Kasper, "this can represent a clear answer to the views which tend to spread, even within the Roman Curia - the unjustified accusation that ecumenism with the Protestant community has so far failed to bear fruit, leaving us with empty hands".
"Whoever reads this book will soon be convinced of the contrary," he added.
Follow-through from the other Italian agencies:
Lutheran pastor in Rome
surprised but happy
Jens-Martin Kruse, who has been pastor of the Lutheran Church in Rome for just a year, says he is surprised but happy at the announcement made by Cardinal Kasper that Pope Benedict XVI intends to visit his church soon.
The invitation came from the Lutheran community of Rome - about 350, mostly German-speaking - when they marked the 25th anniversary of John Paul II's visit to their Church on December 11, 1983 - which was the fifth centenary of Martin Luther's death.
Pastor Kruse, talking to ASCA, also underscored another anniversary: the tenth of the joint Catholic-Lutheran declaration on justification dated October 31, 1999.
[in which Cardinal Ratzinger played a key role by convening the two sides together in Regensburg to work out the final declaration.]
He was surprise4d by today's announcement because there had been no previous answer from teh Vatican and in fact, an appointment last summer to discuss the proposed visit was cancelled.
He said he will be meeting with the appropriate officials in the Vatican next week to discuss details. He also expressed the wish that the Pope would celebrate Vespers with the Lutheran community as John Paul II did.
Pastor Kruse spoke afterwards to Apcom:
Pastor Kruse thinks the visit
may take place early in 2010
[
The first few sentences repeat what is in the ASCA report.]
The visit could take place early next year, it appears.
"It is a good sign of good relations with the Vatican," Kruse said, adding the Pope's visit can only help ecumenism.
Asked about outstanding difficulties between Catholics and Protestants, Kruse said, "What we do together is more important".
Can't find any specific material online about the Lutheran Church in Rome other than its address, but there is a site for the Lutheran Church in Italy:
www.chiesaluterana.it/it/index.php?mod=news&id=539
Prominent on that home page is a little device (that I have attached to the banner above) that says 'Firma il tuo 8 PER MILLE' (Sign up your 'eight-per-1000').
Just a reminder that the 0.008 percent share of Italy's annual tax revenue goes to all the registered religions in Italy, the amount pro-rated according to which religion the taxpayer designates to be his beneficiary - even if the 0.008 percent scheme was originally designed to pay back the Church for all the properties conficscated by the Italian state during the reunification of Italy in the 1860s. Easy to see why the Italian government had to extend the same privilege to other religions, and a good thing for the other churches.
But that the Church in Italy gets a hefty sum every year from this 'otto per mille' indicates how basically loyal to the Church most Italian Catholics are in this respect.
P.S.
Lella's blog
carries some related news from Germany reminiscent of Jewish pique and faultfinding with Benedict XVI! But apparently, all's well now. There is no dateline on the item.
Catholic-Protestant flap
followed by a clarification
There has been a dispute in Germany between Catholics and Protestants over Benedict XVI.
But at a peacemaking meeting in Karlsruhe yesterday, Mons. Robert
Zollitsch, president of the German bishops conference, and Wolfgang Huber, Council president of the Evangelische Kirsche in Deutschland (EKD), agreed that "damaged trust can and should be re-established".
The dispute arose from an internal document by an EKD official, Thiese Gundlach, who criticized Pope Benedict XVIU harshly saying that in his Pontificate, the Church has regressed, and that at the very least, he has shown "incompetence in leading the Vatican".
Among the reasons he cites for this are the Regensburg lecture, recalling the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops, and the liberalization of the traditional Mass
[EXCUSE ME, MR. GUNDLACH, but none of these matters have anything to do with you or the Protestant Church!]
The document, prepared for a meeting of the EKD last July, ended up in the German newspapers, although it was rejected by the EKD assembly.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity expressed satisfaction at the outcoem of the peacemaking meeting, saying that the Gundlach document had been 'arrogant and ignorant'.
[And worse, even without having seen the document, spiteful!]
SIR reported this on the meeting:
Catholics and Evangelicals agree:
'Damaged trust can be regained'
"An open and constructive dialog" is how the Catholic and evangelical churches if Germany described the clarificatory meeting in Karlsruhe on October 14, after tensions arose over an internal evangelical document that contained harsh allegations about the Catholic Church.
The text was presented to the annual conference of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutshland (EKD) on July 2 which rejected the text, but the document was nonetheless made public anonymously.
[Anonymously? Any chance the author had something to do with it?]
The two delegations who met in Karlsruhe were led by Mons. Robert Zollitsch. president of the Geman bishops conference, and Wolfgang Huber, president of the EKD Council.
"Both sides agreed that the damaged trust can be regained," Huber said after the three-hour meeting.
Apologizing for the episode, Huber said the meeting took place in "an open, constructive way and in thr spirit of Christian brotherhood".
For his part, Mons. Zollitsch said "Wounds which were made visible were discussed and attended to". he said he accepted the apology and said, "We have recovered the basis for ecumenism in Germany".
P.P.S. The following report sickens me - it gives more details about the anti-Pope document - but this is how the above story was reported by DeutscheWelle, the state broadcasting arm of the Federal Republic of Germany. DW has never been sympathetic to Benedict XVI and from what I have seen of its reporting, goes out of its way, in fact, to put him down.
Row continues over Protestant memo
attacking Catholic Church and Pope
by Uwe Hessler
Oct. 15, 2009
A memorandum by a senior German Protestant clergyman heavily criticizing the Pope and the Catholic Church in Germany has thrown interfaith relations between the two denominations in the country into turmoil.
The paper describes Catholic Pope Benedict XVI as incompetent and unwilling to promote interfaith dialog between Protestants and Catholics. It also finds fault with the Catholic leadership in Germany for failing to take a consistent approach to the interpretation of Church dogma.
On Wednesday, a crisis meeting of the leaders of the two denominations resulted in apologies but also in the growing realization that the cracks between the two have only been papered over.
The meeting lasted more than two hours, and, according to the head of the German Protestant Church, Wolfgang Huber, succeeded in re-establishing a level of trust.
"The Protestant Church considers this paper a mistake," Huber said. "We extend our apologies to all Catholics who rightly feel personally insulted by what was written there."
Huber said the paper had not been authorized and had been compiled by a senior policy consultant in the Protestant Church leadership and leaked to the media.
The paper speaks of major tensions between the denominations since Pope Benedict came to power in 2005. It says this friction could be the result of either the Vatican's inability to conduct interfaith dialog or as an indication of a change in papal policy.
The paper also compares the leader of the German Catholic Church, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, to a boxer reeling in the ring from the blows of his opponent.
Zollitsch, it says, staggers between openness and the hard-line policy insisted upon by the Vatican. Zollitsch himself dismissed the accusations but admitted that problems exist.
"This paper is full of cliches that don't reflect the real situation," Zollitsch said after the meeting with Huber. "Of course there are theological differences with the Protestant Church, but our meeting wasn't about these problems. It was about a worsening of the atmosphere between us which we hopefully will be able to improve."
Rudolf Lill, an expert in Vatican policy, said the rift is the result of policy pursued by Pope Benedict, who has shaped as a hard-line enforcer of Church dogma rather than a religious reformer.
"In some aspects the author of the paper is quite right," Lill said. "Papal policy under Benedict has been marked by a drive for absolute power, which in turn will limit the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in contemporary society. This year would appear to be a landmark year in this respect."
As evidence of this, Lill points to the Pope's recent decision to lift the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, the head of the ultra-traditionalist St Pius Brotherhood and a known Holocaust denier.
You would think DW might have talked to someone to answer what Huber says on behalf of the Pope rather than consulting a so-called 'Vatican expert' to reinforce Gundlach's arguments (significantly, the DW report does not even moention his name). Where is 'fair and balanced'????
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/10/2009 19:23]