Weekly THIS AND THAT for April 20, 2008: The Pope As a Force for Religious Unity

This and That:
The Pope As a Force for Religious Unity


At this writing, Pope Benedict XVI had not yet arrived in the U.S., so I thought I would share some thoughts of interest to us as Catholics and as members of Our Lady of Grace regarding religious unity.

The Holy Father is convinced that there will be no peace in the world until there is peace among the religions. That is why he came to the table of dialogue here and in Rome with hope and abiding conviction. The Pontiff’s schedule during his five-day trip included four stops dedicated to building these relationships. On April 17th, the Pope met with 200 interfaith leaders at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. At the conclusion of that meeting, he met with religious representatives of the Jewish community and presented to them his greetings for the feast of Passover, which begins on April 19th. The next day, in New York, Benedict XVI led an ecumenical prayer service at St. Joseph’s Church in the Yorkville area of Manhattan. On his way to that service, he made a brief and informal visit to the Park East Synagogue – a visit that was not part of his official program, but which again gave him a chance to express his Passover best wishes. The meeting at St. Joseph’s Church was for the sake of encouraging the work of promoting Christian Unity. On the evening before, April 17th, the Holy Father met with 150 inter-religious representatives from the Jewish, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, and the Jainist communities.

Whereas on Friday evening the theme was “Christ, Our Hope of Unity,” on Thursday evening it was “Peace Our Hope.” With our dear friends from the other religions, the Holy Father spoke about how the great religions must offer a common witness to peace at a time when religiously motivated violence has claimed, as on 9/11, too many lives around the world.

Ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue seem to be a priority for Benedict XVI, not just since being elected Pope, but ever since his days as an advisor at the Second Vatican Council. At the time of Vatican II, he was a theological advisor to the German bishops who were proposing new doctrinal formulations that took account of developments in Orthodox and Protestant theology. Later on, he was a contributor to the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. As Cardinal Prefect in Rome, he nearly single-handedly saved the historic Joint Declaration on Justification in 1999, between the Lutheran World Federation and the Holy See, through a last minute intervention in a meeting at his brother's house in Germany.

Citing a February study from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Father James Massa, Executive Director of the U.S Episcopal Conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, noted that the Holy Father came to America as a nation being reshaped in the realm of religion. He noted that, “The configuration of American Christianity has been changing quite dramatically over the past four decades. The so-called mainline Protestant churches have been shrinking while the Evangelical and Pentecostal communities have seen remarkable growth. Catholics cannot but wonder, and admire, all that explains the vitality of the ‘new churches.’ That must certainly have be on the mind of the Holy Father and other Catholic leaders both in this country and around the world.”

Father Massa contends that the concept of the papacy has changed as well: “Only among a few Evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. is the Pope viewed any longer as the ‘anti-Christ.’ Many see him as a defender of conscience, as well as a guardian of historic Christianity, in a morally relativistic age.”

We began last week before “Shepherd One” touched down at Andrews Air Force Base with high hopes for what Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, and the priority he’s giving to ecumenism and inter-religious relations, may bring about. Hopefully, our Holy Father re-energized ecumenical commitments at a time when so many churches seem to be experiencing new fractures in membership and deepening polarization over moral issues.

Fondly,
Father Nicholas