Church in the World

Kasper criticises Vatican Congregation

Cardinal Walter Kasper has joined his fellow German prelates in criticising the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) for the way in which it asserted the historic primacy of the Catholic Church and claimed that Protestants did not have proper Churches. Cardinal Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, also urged the Church to ask if faulty pastoral work was partly behind a surge in the membership of Pentecostal groups.

Cardinal Kasper told his fellow cardinals meeting at the Vatican the day before the 24 November consistory that the CDF had "aroused perplexity and created discontent" last July (The Tablet, 14 July) by issuing a restatement of the "One True Church" position expressed in the 2000 declaration "Dominus Iesus". Although the text repeated known church policy, he said, "It would be desirable to revise the form, the language and the presentation to the public of such declarations."

The CDF document prompted sharp criticism from Protestants in Germany and unease among Catholic bishops. Cardinal Karl Lehmann criticised it in October in a speech to the German bishops' conference, of which he is the president. Representing the Catholic Church at a Lutheran Synod in early November, Dresden-Meissen Bishop Joachim Reinelt said Germany's Lutherans had been right to question the document (The Tablet, 10 November).

Noting that Pentecostals and charismatics now numbered about 400 million around the world and were thus the second-largest group of Christians, Cardinal Kasper said the Catholic Church had to "make a pastoral examination of conscience and ask critically - why are so many Christians leaving our Church? We shouldn't begin by asking ourselves what is wrong with the Pentecostals, but what our own pastoral shortcomings are. How can we react to this new challenge with a liturgical, catechetic, pastoral and spiritual renewal?"

The Anglican Communion was in "a very difficult situation", Cardinal Kasper told journalists after his address. The Communion has still not resolved a crisis precipitated in 2003 by the ordination of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire. "We hope they make a decision very soon. They cannot postpone this crisis [for ever]," Cardinal Kasper said, adding that relations with Protestant Churches were becoming more difficult because of "an inner fragmentation" among them and "new ethical problems dividing them".

Cardinal Kasper reported progress with Orthodox Churches, which recognised the Pope's primacy among the world's bishops in dialogue at Ravenna, Italy in October. While those meetings confirmed the role of the Bishop of Rome, the cardinal said that the position of the Russian Orthodox Church - which contests the right of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to speak for all Orthodox Churches - would have to be taken into account.