The ministry of a Catholic bishop must
reflect the Catholic Church’s commitment to Christian unity and must give ecumenical engagement the same kind of attention
as work for justice and peace, said a new Vatican document.
“The
bishop cannot consider the promotion of the ecumenical cause as one more task in his varied ministry, one that could and should
be deferred in view of other, apparently more important priorities,” said the document, The Bishop and Christian Unity: An Ecumenical Vademecum.
Prepared by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the 52-page document was released December
4th after its publication was approved by Pope Francis.
The text
reminds each Catholic bishop of his personal responsibility as a minister of unity, not only among the Catholics of his diocese,
but also with other Christians.
As a “vademecum,”
or guidebook, it provides lists of practical steps the bishop can and should take to fulfill that responsibility in every
aspect of his ministry, from inviting other Christian leaders to important diocesan celebrations to highlighting ecumenical
activities on the diocesan website.
And, as the
chief teacher in his diocese, he must ensure that the content of conferences, religious education programs and homilies at
the diocesan and parish level promote Christian unity and accurately reflect the teachings of the church’s partners
in dialogue.
Demonstrating the importance of
the document, the online news conference to present it featured not one, but four top Vatican officials:
Cardinals Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; Mark Ouellet, prefect of the
Congregation for Bishops; Luis Antonio Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples; and Leonardo
Sandri, prefect of the Congregation of Eastern Churches.
With its
explanations and its concrete suggestions, Cardinal Ouellet said, the booklet provides the tools for realizing “the
ecumenical conversion of bishops and every disciple of Christ who wishes to better incarnate the joy of the Gospel in our
time.”
Cardinal Tagle said the vademecum
reminds bishops in missionary lands that they must not import Christian divisions to new parts of the world and asks Catholics
to understand just how much the divisions within Christianity turn off people who “are looking for the meaning in life,
for salvation.” “The non-Christians are scandalized, really scandalized, when we Christians claim to be followers
of Christ and then they see how we are fighting one another,” he said.
But ecumenism is not seeking a truce or “compromise as if unity should
be achieved at the expense of truth,” the document explained. Catholic doctrine insists that there is a “hierarchy
of truths,” a prioritizing of essential beliefs based “on their relation to the saving mysteries of the Trinity
and salvation in Christ, the source of all Christian doctrines.”
In conversations with other Christians, the document said, “by weighing truths rather than simply
enumerating them, Catholics gain a more accurate understanding of the unity that exists among Christians.”
That unity, based first on baptism into Christ and his church,
is the foundation on which Christian unity is built step by step, the document said.
The steps include: common prayer; joint action to alleviate suffering
and promote justice; theological dialogue to clarity commonalities and differences; and a willingness to recognize the way
God has worked in another community and to learn from it.
The document
also treated the question of sharing the Eucharist, an issue that has long been a thorny one in ecumenical dialogue as well
as within the Catholic Church itself, as demonstrated by recent Vatican efforts to caution the bishops of Germany about issuing
broad invitations for Lutherans married to Catholics to receive Communion.
Catholics cannot share the Eucharist with other Christians just to be “polite,” but there
are pastoral situations in which individual bishops may decide when “exceptional sacramental sharing is appropriate,”
the document said.
When discerning
possibilities for sharing the sacraments, it said, bishops must keep two principles in mind at all times, even when those
principles create tension: a sacrament, especially the Eucharist, is a “witness
to the unity of the church,” and a sacrament is a “sharing of the means of grace.”
So, it said, “in general, participation in the sacraments of the Eucharist,
reconciliation and anointing is limited to those in full communion.”
However, the document noted, the Vatican’s 1993 “Directory for the Application of Principles
and Norms of Ecumenism” also stated that “by way of exception, and under certain conditions, access to these sacraments
may be permitted, or even commended, for Christians of other churches and ecclesiastical communities.”
“’Communicatio in sacris’ (sharing in sacramental
life) is therefore permitted for the care of souls within certain circumstances,” the text said,
“and when this is the case it is to be recognized as both desirable and commendable.”
Cardinal Koch, responding to a question, said the relationship between the sacraments
and the full unity of the churches is the “basic” principle, meaning that in most cases Eucharistic sharing will
not be possible until the churches are fully united.
The Catholic
Church, he said, does not see the sharing of the sacraments as “a step on the way,” as some Christian communities
do. However, “for one person, a single person, there can be an opportunity
for sharing this grace in different cases” as long as the person meets the requirement of canon law, which says a non-Catholic
must request the Eucharist of his or her own accord, “manifest Catholic faith” in the sacrament and be “properly
disposed.”
The Catholic
Church recognizes the full validity of the Eucharist celebrated by the Orthodox Churches and, with many fewer restrictions,
allows Orthodox Christians to request and receive the sacraments from a Catholic minister.
Cardinal Sandri, speaking at the news conference, said the document “is
a further affirmation that it is no longer legitimate for us to be ignorant of the Christian East, nor can we pretend to have
forgotten the brothers and sisters of those venerable churches that, together with us, constitute the family of believers
in the God of Jesus Christ.”
