Yesterday at Notre Dame Cathedral, Eastern Synod Lutheran Bishop Michael Pryse and I took part in a service commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Catholics and Lutheran adherents and others from a variety of Christian denominations joined us.
The service included mixed choirs supported by the Basilica’s powerful organ, sincere prayers for Christian unity, and the tangible witness of being together in prayer. In our own way, we were living out ourselves the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, “that all might be one” (John 17.3).
It was a joyous occasion for many. But not for all. The gathering troubled some. Were we on the verge of canonizing Luther and his teachings, some wondered. How can we “celebrate” the Reformation when it meant tearing apart the fabric of …show more content…
The Second Vatican Council urged us to do precisely this in its 1964 degree Unitatis redintegratio, “On ecumenism.”
There are areas where Catholic and Lutheran theology is not congruent. However, the Catholic Church and Lutherans have been working for many years on the important task of understanding and, if possible overcoming, differences. And there has been progress.
The Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, for example, produced after many years of work, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1997 which was an important document clarifying our different theological positions and points of convergence. The common understanding of the meaning of “justification”—the key concern of Luther—was agreed to by both faith communities with the approval of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
The service included mixed choirs supported by the Basilica’s powerful organ, sincere prayers for Christian unity, and the tangible witness of being together in prayer. In our own way, we were living out ourselves the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, “that all might be one” (John 17.3).
It was a joyous occasion for many. But not for all. The gathering troubled some. Were we on the verge of canonizing Luther and his teachings, some wondered. How can we “celebrate” the Reformation when it meant tearing apart the fabric of …show more content…
The Second Vatican Council urged us to do precisely this in its 1964 degree Unitatis redintegratio, “On ecumenism.”
There are areas where Catholic and Lutheran theology is not congruent. However, the Catholic Church and Lutherans have been working for many years on the important task of understanding and, if possible overcoming, differences. And there has been progress.
The Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, for example, produced after many years of work, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1997 which was an important document clarifying our different theological positions and points of convergence. The common understanding of the meaning of “justification”—the key concern of Luther—was agreed to by both faith communities with the approval of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the