Kasper advocates sharing Communion for mixed-marriage couples

The 2017 Reformation Jubilee must not confine itself to a series of “nice words and gestures” but must end with a “binding step on the future path of ecumenism”, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said in his lecture at Wittenberg’s “week of ecumenism” in the first week of June, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

One “practical consequence” of the ecumenical consensus reached up to now would be to allow mixed-marriage couples to share the Eucharist, he suggested.

 The aim of ecumenism was to find a “form of church community that is acceptable to all”, Cardinal Kasper recalled. Pope Francis was pushing ahead with dialogue with the Pentecostal Churches which were now showing an increased interest in ecumenism, he said.

Francis’ emphasis on freedom of conscience in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, could act as an “ecumenical bridge”, Cardinal Kasper suggested. Last December, he told the Italian daily Avvenire that he hoped Lutherans would soon be admitted to Catholic Communion “especially in mixed marriages in countries like Germany”. Margot Kässmann, the German Protestant Churches’ special envoy for the Reformation Jubilee, said she hoped that by the 500th Anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 2030, Catholics and Lutherans would be able to share the Eucharist.