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Church in the World

Koch appointment could signal fresh approach to ecumenism

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel as the new President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.

At the same time he promoted him to archbishop, the rank assigned to all heads of congregations and pontifical councils. The appointment of Archbishop Koch, 60, has been widely welcomed, but signals what could mark the beginning of a different approach to ecumenical dialogue from that associated with Archbishop Koch’s predecessor, Cardinal Walter Kasper, who retired at the age of 77 on 1 July.

Bishop Koch had to face a number of ecumenical conflicts during his time as Bishop of Basel and President of the Swiss bishops’ conference. He was able to smooth tensions with the Protestants when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued the declaration Dominus Iesus in 2000, which said the separated churches could not be referred to as “Churches”.

However, when the CDF released “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church” in 2007, which clarified the expression of “subsistit in” in the Vatican II dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium, Bishop Koch was not given an easy ride either by Swiss Protestants or Catholics.

Lumen Gentium says: “This one Church of Christ … subsists in the Catholic Church” , and the 2007 document clarified this, saying: “Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one Church.“ The other communities could not “be called ‘Churches’ in the proper sense” because they did not have apostolic succession – the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.

Bishop Koch, as head of the Swiss bishops’ conference, defended the clarification, saying it was looking at the idea of the Church in a “strictly theological” way, and explained that if the Catholic Church believes apostolic succession and valid sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, are essential aspects of the Church established by Christ it cannot recognise as “Church” those communities which do not have them. He also said the document and reactions to it underlined a clear difference in the Catholic and Orthodox ecumenical goal and the ecumenical goal of the Protestants. Many Swiss Catholics said they were disappointed by Bishop Koch’s defence of the document, and in an open letter, the governing body of Lucerne’s Catholics wrote that other Christian denominations were being discriminated against by the Church’s hierarchy. Bishop Koch has also expressed forthright views on the Second Vatican Council. In his July 2009 newsletter to priests he argued that much had been done in the name of the Council – for example downplaying the sacrificial understanding of the Mass – that was not actually stipulated by it.

In his farewell letter to his diocese before he left for Rome, Bishop Koch said that while he was sad to leave, he did not think he could have coped with 16 more years of the sorts of difficulties he had had to deal with in recent years. In the same letter he said the Pope had asked him in February if he would take over from Cardinal Kasper, stressing that he wanted someone who had both the theological knowledge and practical experience in living alongside Protestant communities. Switzerland has 41.8 per cent Catholics and 35.3 per cent Protestants according to the last census conducted in 2000.

As well as being a member of the Catholic-Lutheran commission, Archbishop Koch is a member of the international Catholic-Orthodox theological commission. His appointment has been welcomed by the Moscow Patriarchate. “I hope that new prospects for cooperation have been opened up for us for the benefit of both Churches,” the head of the Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk said in his message to Archbishop Koch. The Metropolitan noted that he had known Bishop Koch for many years “as a zealous pastor and serious theologian committed to the tradition of the early Church and the idea of Christian unity”. The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr Olav Fykse, praised Koch’s “openness and deep ecumenical commitment”. Archbishop Koch is also well known for his rejection of all forms of anti-Semitism.

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