Catholic Studies

Interreligious events    Ecumenism in Catholic thinking

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

25 November  2011

           Ecumenism is a subject dear to the heart of Catholicism after Vatican II. All popes since then tried to make this phenomenon an event by supporting networks and institutions helping to create this phenomenon.

           Obama and the Lutheran church have visited regularly with the pope. The ordination of Anglicans in the Catholic Church was a theme on the 15th of January 2011. On the 19th of March 2010 there was an ecumenical visit of the pope to the Lutheran church in Rome.

           Not to be out of line with catholic journalists on this topic, see what Cindy Wooden said in Catholic News Service around the 7th of July 2011:

"Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church and other Christian communities have been seeking the right balance between a truly respectful dialogue with other religions and an obligation to share their conviction that the fullness of salvation is found in Christ."

           I have to rephrase this more properly:

[Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church succeeded in convincing other Christian communities to have the right balance between a truly respectful dialogue, that focuses on the commonalities that binds them instead of the differences that separates them, in order to seek dialogue with other religions, including non-Christian religions, and an obligation to share their conviction, that the Catholic Church is the mother of all churches, the original, the only true church, and thus in primacy, and that salvation is found in the eucharist or mystical superstitious transformation of bread into the body of Christ, administered and distributed only by those priesthood, including the papacy, fulfilling the function of the vicar of Christ or vicar of the Son of God, vicarius filii dei, as found only through their hands been handed out].

           As one catholic said on a catholic website after the USA papal visit in 2008, at interreligious meetings, Catholics are not to leave their catholic faith at the door just to enjoy interreligious meetings. That been said, they are quickly to counsel participants in interreligious meetings or conferences to please focus on commonalities and not on differences and to avoid confrontation or clash of ideas at the meeting.

(see http://theratzingerforum.yuku.com/topic/509/Apostolic-Journeys--Pope- Benedict-XVI-Currently-Germany-22-2?page=26).

           Catholic names that are involved at present in the promotion of ecumenism are William J. Levada, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Cardinal Kurt Koch. They do this as heads of the Pontificial councils for interreligious dialogue and for ecumenism.

           Cardinal Ratzinger, who was in the prefect for doctrinal congregation, was concerned when Pope John Paul II invited religious leaders to Assisi in 1986 and 2002 to pray for peace. Ratzinger asked whether there would not be a danger for people to misread the gatherings as some kind of Vatican statement that all religions are equal (see the exact wording by Cindy Wooden, "Balancing act: Juggling demands of dialogue, proclaiming Catholic faith" Catholic News Service 7 July 2011, http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1102704.htm).

           Catholics are not willing to say all faiths are equal at these ecumenical meetings. It is my hunch that they wish to use or utilize these dialogue chances as vehicles or instruments or tools for enhancing their own image, wishing and hoping that all will eventually convert back to the Catholic doctrines and church, a church where many of them have broke away in historically. They tolerate other religions, but do not recognize them as equal partners. There is a fine-line here. One should not misunderstand here. By taking promotional leadership in this tolerance game, with strong velocity, much financing, many meetings and efforts, they actually hide their "intolerance" for the equality of all religions.

Levada, Tauran and Koch all speculated why Ratzinger would be eager in his term as pope to repeat the Assisi meeting that he beforehand criticized. Their explanations are inconsistent with what Cardinal Ratzinger originally said.

           After the 2008 ecumenical meeting of Ratzinger with 150 different religions and faiths in the USA, a blogger complained that she went to Florence but as an Anglican was denied mass participation, since she is not a Catholic. She was upset about that. She blamed them of bigotry.

           On the 6th of August 2011, pope Ratzinger wished to explain his own view of reaching out to many religions to Cardinal Kurt Koch. Notice how he canceled doctrine as a way to greater friendship:

"I would like here to remember the words of my Venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, when, with regard to evangelization, he said: “As evangelizers, we must offer Christ's faithful not the image of people divided and separated by unedifying quarrels, but the image of people who are mature in faith and capable of finding a meeting-point beyond the real tensions, thanks to a shared, sincere and disinterested search for truth. Yes, the destiny of evangelization is certainly bound up with the witness of unity given by the Church. This is a source of responsibility and also of comfort” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 77)."

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2011/documents/hf_ben -xvi_let_20110806_card-koch_en.html

           We repeat the punch line: thanks to a shared, sincere and disinterested search for truth. Disinterested of what?

           On the 18th of November 2010, in a speech to the participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontificial council for promoting Christian unity, pope Ratzinger explained the history of Catholic involvement in ecumenism:

5th June 1960 John XXIII created the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

1988 Name of Secretariat changes to Pontificial Council.

"In the course of 50 years, great headway has been made" Ratzinger said.

           He continued to count the blessings of this ecumenical fever of the Catholic Church by saying:

"In recent years, then, the Pontifical Council has been involved, among other things in an extensive project, called the Harvest Project, in order to draw up a first estimate of the goals achieved in the theological dialogues with the principal Ecclesial Communities since the Second Vatican Council."

           The Harvest Project aims at counting the sheep gained through this endeavor of ecumenism, it seems. Tactics, ploy, plot?

Pope Ratzinger things that John 17:21 means that all believers, whether Catholic, Buddhists, Hindus, Judaistic, Islam, Protestants, others should be united and not be fragmented on the ecumenical scene. "That they may all be one". The one-ness that Christ prayed for, is based upon the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments and not upon any other source. The pope is trying to enlarge Jesus' words into areas not intended or designed by God.

(for the full speech, see http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/november/docume nts/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20101118_chrstuni_en.html).

           This brings us then to Pope Ratzinger's words 18th of November 2011. At the presidential palace in Cotonou in Benin in Africa during his visit 18-20 November 2011 meeting with government members, state institutions, diplomatic corps and major religions, Pope Ratzinger said about interreligious events:

"Having hope does not mean being ingenuous but making an act of faith in God, the Lord of history, and the Lord of our future. Thus the Catholic Church puts into action one of the intuitions of the Second Vatican Council, that of promoting friendly relations between herself and the members of non -Christian religions. For decades now, the Pontifical Council dedicated to this task has been creating links, holding meetings and publishing documents regularly in order to foster such a dialogue. In this way the Church strives to overcome the confusion of languages and the dispersal of hearts born of the sin of Babel (cf. Gen 11). I greet all religious leaders who have kindly come here to meet me. I would like to assure them, as well as those from other African countries, that the dialogue offered by the Catholic Church comes from the heart. I encourage them to promote, above all among the young people, a pedagogy of dialogue, so that they may discover that our conscience is a sanctuary to be respected and that our spiritual dimension builds fraternity. True faith leads invariably to love. It is in this spirit that I invite all of you to hope."

What is the pope saying here?

           An event that in the Bible is said to have been created by miracles by God Himself in order to bring diversity over nations in order to prevent unity is turned into a concept of sin with the intention to do the opposite, namely to bring all together as one. Why did God divide?

           That is what Pope Ratzinger misses here in his analysis. The Rebellion in Heaven event of Lucifer becoming Satan was real and Adam and Eve's Fall was real and the entry of sin to this domain was real and thus, division is a tool for God to prevent sin from conquering the world. Until He comes in the eschaton to move the relationship keepers elsewhere, the setting on this earth is troubles of division by races, nations, colors, nations, cultures and many other aspects. It was God-ordained, not sin. Pope Ratzinger's concept of hamartology in the Scriptures [doctrine of sin] is not in line with the Word of God.

           Unless we understand the role of Satan stealing this world and its immediate universe from the Great expanse out there through sin, of course punished to be in this domain or zone, and we together living here, with upholding Grace putting roses on the thorns, we are like the friends of Job who had the same problem that they wanted to give advice to him with a presentistic or preteristic approach lacking the Rebellion in Heaven event of Job 1 and lacking a proper eschatology. That is what the pope desperately need but his tradition, which is not biblical, does not allow him to change, even if he sees the logic and appeal of the truth.

Genesis 1-11 is not just pre-historical legends and myths that one can shelve as old folk tales but is reality of the past and necessary for our present understanding