Harvesting Fruit

Walter Kasper’s Harvesting the Fruits reports on various bi-lateral ecumenical dialogues between Catholics and other traditions—Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed and Methodist. Kasper doesn’t pretend that consensus has been achieved, but his little book summarizes the remarkable results of the past several decades. 

The fruits are healthy in the main. Catholics and Anglicans “agree that the primary authority for all Christians is Jesus Christ himself. . . . To follow Christ is to be set under the authority of Christ. The authority of the church is derived from and wholly dependent upon the authority of Christ” (79). Innocuous and obvious in itself, this gets at one of the great contested issues of the Reformation and post-Reformation. 

As does this from a Lutheran-Catholic statement: while “Scripture and tradition are connected, Scripture should not be absorbed into the tradition process, but should remain permanently superior as a critical norm, coming from apostolic origins, which is superior to the traditions of the church” (89). This is not quite as strong as it seems. Kasper notes that a distinction has been made of late between Tradition and more or less useful traditions; Scripture is said here to be superior to the latter. And, this statement doesn’t deal in detail with how the Word of God actually operates as that “critical norm” within the church. Still, a remarkable common statement.

Lutheran-Catholic dialogues about the Papacy came to a common view that “the office of the papacy as a visible sign of the unity of the church was . . . not excluded insofar as it is subordinated to the primacy of the gospel by theological reinterpretation and practical restructuring.” The more remarkable claim is the next: “It was  . . . agreed that the question of altar fellowship and of mutual recognition of ministerial offices should not be unconditionally dependent on a consensus on the question of primary” (135).

Reformed and Catholics were able to agree that “The promise made by God to the Church is this: God remains faithful to his covenant and, despite the weakness and errors of Christians, he makes his Word heard in the Church” (145). Protestants generally objected to calling this “infallibility,” since it easily leads to misunderstanding. The Catholics in the dialogue observed that the term is “recent” and “seems hardly a happy term because of the maximizing interpretations to which it often gives rise” (144).

There’s much more along these lines. Imperfect as the consensus is, imperfect as the various formulations may be at certain points, it is an impressive harvest.