His Eminence Walter Cardinal Kasper was recently awarded the Lambeth Cross, an award from the Anglican Church to honor a non-Anglican who has advanced the cause of ecumenism. In his address to the Nikean club on that occasion, His Eminence posed these “two fundamental problems” that stand in the way of ecumenical progress:
First: What does it mean to confess the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church and therefore what does it mean to realize this catholicity in its non confessional but all embracing original meaning. What does it mean to be the one Church of Christ in the many churches? How to realize unity, which is not at all identical with uniformity, a unity without fusion or absorption (John Paul II) so that we become more and more one Church and nevertheless many churches remain (J. Ratzinger)? We know that this touches the problem of primacy, which for both is not an easy one, because it – besides all the theological questions, which arise – is so deeply rooted in consciousness of this country and its history and in our Catholic convictions too.
The second question and challenge we are confronted with, is: How to approach with our message the present modern or postmodern mentality in our secularized and pluralistic Western society. Here difficult ethical and pastoral problems arise and our faithfulness to the Gospel message is challenged. But what means faithfulness beyond fundamentalism and liberalism? These are not easy common questions even the answers are sometimes different.
I humbly offer my own answers to these questions.
His Eminence asks “What does it mean to confess the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church and therefore what does it mean to realize this catholicity in its non confessional but all embracing original meaning.” I don’t know how to “confess” catholicity in a “non-confessional” manner, but I will instead point out that the “original meaning” of the word “Catholic” was quite confessional. As far as we know, the earliest use of the word was by St. Ignatius of Antioch, who employed it precisely to distinguish the true Christian Church from heretical sects that had arisen.
There is, of course, only one way to realize unity. It is the way the Holy Father himself has taught us:
The unity of Christians cannot be otherwise obtained than by securing the return of the separated to the one true Church of Christ from which they once unhappily withdrew. To the one true Church of Christ, We say, that stands forth before all, and that by the will of its Founder will remain forever the same as when He Himself established it for the salvation of all mankind.
To the second problem — “How to approach with our message the present modern or postmodern mentality in our secularized and pluralistic Western society” — I offer the observation that we and the Anglicans have a different “message,” since we Catholics don’t ordain women as priests or bishops, approve of contraception, promote the homosexual agenda by nominating openly homosexual bishops, etc. Those who do have the true Christian message — the confessional Catholic one — would do well to heed the advice St. Paul gave to St. Timothy:
I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober.” (2 Tim. 4:1-5).
St. Timothy was bishop of Ephesus, a degenerate pagan city excessively given to false religion, sexual deviancy, and other outrages against the natural and revealed law of God. In other words, St. Paul was advising a bishop who worked in a world that had much in common with our own.
St. Timothy, by the way, was stoned to death by disciples of Diana of the Ephesians, who apparently weren’t into inter-religious dialogue.
