Doubts about Benedict XVI’s Ecumenism

Edelberto Behs, PORTO ALEGRE, Brasil, April 29, 2005

In the homily at the April 24 Mass, which marked the beginning of Benedict XVI’s Taxi Heathrow Airport pontificate, and in the meeting he held the next day with representatives from Christian Churches in Rome, the new Pope emphasized ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue as the most important objectives of his pontificate.

However, Protestant and Anglican theologians told ALC that they prefer to submit these affirmations to a Saint Thomas test: see to believe.

“It is time to wait, because the spaces are dominated by discourses and promises. There is a need for prudence, to see what he will be like in practice,” recommends Methodist pastor Norberto Garin of Porto Alegre.

Garin recalled Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger’s trajectory in the Doctrine of the Faith Congregation, a period in which the current Pope defended the Orthodox Catholic and called on theologians to converse.”

“Ratzinger was the in house theologian during John Paul II’s Pontificate,” said Rudolf Von Sinner, professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Inter-religious dialogue from the Theology School (EST) in Sao Leopoldo.

The director of the Rev. Antonio de Godoy Sobrinho Theological Seminary, of the Independent Presbyterian Church (IPI) of Londrina, Parana, Silas de Oliveria, said that in his opinion, ecumenism will regress under Benedict XVI. “It will be walking backwards, a conservative and even fundamentalist discourse in many aspects represents a regression,” he affirmed.

The dean of the Egmont Machado Krischke Theological seminary, Bishop Luiz Osorio Prado, age 62, noted that Benedict XVI “is aggravating and not helping the ecumenical panorama.” The dean of the Anglican Episcopal Seminary also referred to Cardinal Ratzinger,

Benedict XVI’s call for understanding among Christians, is a call to unity under the authority of the Catholic Church, according to the ecclesiology of the II Vatican Council, said Von Sinner. The reference is the Church of Christ, which in the Catholic concept, resides in the Catholic Church.

“The center is Christ himself and that which is closest to Christ is the Catholic Church,” explained the EST professor. In this concept, not even Orthodox Churches will be Churches in the full sense and Protestant denominations are considered Church communities.

Von Sinner does not expect changes in the theological line of Benedict XVI. However, he does not close the door to hope. “We cannot prohibit the Holy Spirit that blows where and when it wants, from doing something surprising, even with Ratzinger,” he said.