Benedict XVI calls on Catholics and Lutherans to walk together
On the eve of the opening of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Benedict XVI (with Nikolaus Schneider on the picture, president of the german protestants, in Erfurt, Germany, the city of Luther, on September 23, 2010) expressed the hope, on January 17, 2013, that Catholics and Lutherans would walk together on “the narrow road” of fidelity to God. This path is to be taken while “facing whatever difficulties or obstacles we may eventually encounter”, the pope declared while welcoming a delegation of Finnish Lutherans.
“To advance in the ways of ecumenical communion thus demands that we become ever more united in prayer, ever more committed to the pursuit of holiness, and ever more engaged in the areas of theological research and cooperation in the service of a just and fraternal society,” Benedict XVI declared, while mentioning once again the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” signed by the Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation on October 31, 1999.
Concerning this cooperation “in the service of a just and fraternal society” that Benedict XVI calls one of his hopes, it is useful to recall the teaching of Pius XI in the Encyclical Mortalium animos (January 6, 1928): “We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions, belong to one and the same Federation of the faithful? For example, those who affirm, and those who deny that sacred Tradition is a true fount of divine Revelation; those who hold that an ecclesiastical hierarchy, made up of bishops, priests and ministers, has been divinely constituted, and those who assert that it has been brought in little by little in accordance with the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous conversion of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize the nature both of a sacrament and of a sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more than the memorial or commemoration of the Lord’s Supper; those who believe it to be good and useful to invoke by prayer the Saints reigning with Christ, especially Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and those who urge that such a veneration is not to be made use of, for it is contrary to the honor due to Jesus Christ, ‘the one mediator of God and men’ (1 Tim 2:5).”
This is why Pius XI declared in the same Encyclical that “the [re]union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.”
According to a report broadcast by Vatican Radio on January 24, Catholics and Lutherans will very soon publish a joint document entitled “From Conflict to Communion,” as the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (1517) approaches.
(Sources: Apic/IMedia/Actes du Magistère – DICI no. 269 dated February 1, 2013)
