The Meanings of Apostolic

The future of ecumenism understood as the quest for visible unity among Christians and their ecclesial communities depends above all on the commitment and directions of the Catholic Church. Which means it depends in significant part on the leadership of Walter Cardinal Kasper, who in 2001 succeeded Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Kasper was for years a distinguished professor of theology at the University of Tübingen before becoming bishop of the German diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Although he has published prolifically in German, his work is not well known in the English-speaking world. One welcomes therefore a collection of essays just published by Crossroad, Leadership in the Church , which carries the telling subtitle How Traditional Roles Can Serve the Christian Community Today . Kasper has a sympathetic appreciation of “liberal” discontents with church structures, joined to a conviction that a deeper understanding and living out of the apostolic meaning of those structures is the path to renewal, including the renewal of the ecumenical imperative. Thus, at its best, his writing advances the goal of the Second Vatican Council, aggiornamento through ressourcement—renewal through a reappropriation of the fullness of the tradition.

The Catholic Church and the pontifical council are at the epicenter of ecumenism for many reasons, not least because well over half the Christians in the world are Catholics. John Paul II has repeatedly asserted that the Church’s commitment to unity is “irrevocable.” Ecumenism is not simply another program or policy; it is inherent in the self-understanding of the Church. As Kasper notes, there are official dialogues with a long list of churches and ecclesial communities: the ancient Oriental churches (Armenians, Copts, Syrians, Ethiopians, Malankara Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East), the Byzantine Orthodox churches (the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Russian Orthodox, the Greek, Serbian, and Romanian Orthodox, et al.), the Anglican communion, the Lutheran and Reformed communions, along with Methodists, Baptists, Mennonites, Adventists, and a wide array of evangelical and Pentecostal communities around the world. The pontifical council has been strongly supportive of the ongoing project known as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” which began in this country and has inspired similar efforts in Latin America and elsewhere.

An Interesting Start

Kasper’s tenure at the council got off to an interesting—others say controversial—start with a very public argument with Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). In fact, the argument was joined before Kasper took up his official duties with the council, but it prompted some to wonder whether, under his leadership, the council would vie with CDF as a parallel or alternative voice of magisterial teaching. That prospect could result in considerable confusion over who speaks for Rome. A 1992 document of CDF stated that the universal Church “in its essential mystery is a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual particular Church.” Kasper published an article criticizing that claim and affirming the priority of the local Church, meaning the bishop and the communities under his leadership. This may seem like a very arcane dispute, but it is not without significant consequences.

In the present book, Kasper offers “a friendly rejoinder” to Ratzinger’s critical response to his article. He writes: “My remarks were not primarily dictated by a systematic theological interest. Rather, they were born of my pastoral concerns and experience: as the bishop of a large diocese, I have seen the steady widening of the gulf between the norms of the universal Church and local praxis . . . . Unfortunately, Cardinal Ratzinger has not chosen to engage in dialogue with these pastoral concerns and experiences.” Kasper would seem to be retreating from a “systematic theological” argument with Ratzinger, although the original CDF document and his article criticizing it were undoubtedly framed as an exercise in systematic theology. And, indeed, his “friendly rejoinder” is not devoid of theological argument.

For instance, the CDF document, following venerable tradition, sees in the account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles clear evidence of the presence and priority of the universal Church. It says: “The Church is manifested, temporally , on the day of Pentecost in the community . . . gathered around Mary and the twelve Apostles, the representatives of the one unique Church and the founders-to-be of the local churches, who have a mission directed to the world: from the first the Church speaks all languages .” That claim, writes Kasper, “cannot go unchallenged.” He says that many exegetes believe that the account in Acts is a “Lukan construction.” He cites Michael Theobald’s argument that the Pentecost depicted in Acts was but one of many local gatherings that in the course of time became “the Church formed out of all peoples.” “According to Theobald, normative character belongs to this process—not only to Luke’s story of how the Church began on the first Pentecost feast.” If one must choose between a “Lukan construction” and a “Theobaldian construction,” one may be forgiven for inclining to the former in view of its authority as inspired Scripture and its acceptance throughout two millennia of the Church’s tradition.

Kasper quickly moves on, however, recognizing that the great question at issue is not to be adjudicated by historical research. The more important issue is the ontological primacy of the local or universal Church. He writes, “Cardinal Ratzinger now makes a surprising move” by arguing from the preexistence of the Church. Kasper then offers what must be described as a somewhat garbled account of Ratzinger’s argument, ignoring its foundation in the reality of the one Christ who can have as his body only one (i.e., universal) Church. Kasper cites in support of his argument for the local Church no less an authority than Henri de Lubac, who wrote, “A universal Church that exists antecedently to all the individual churches, or that is conceived as existing in itself independently of the local churches, is merely an abstraction.” Antecedence, however, returns us to the historical question, which Kasper recognizes is not the decisive issue, and, as he undoubtedly knows, nobody contends that the universal Church exists “independently” of local churches.

The 1992 document “On Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion” is precisely about the “essential mystery” of the Church as communio in the life of the Triune God. Despite his disagreements with the document and with Ratzinger’s subsequent statements, Kasper wants it to be understood that he agrees with core affirmations of the document and the Second Vatican Council on which it draws. For instance, he agrees that, as the Council said, the Church of Jesus Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church, meaning that, as he puts it, “despite all the weakness of the Roman Catholic Church, God’s faithfulness preserves the one Church in it: this is the concrete location of the one Church.” As for the universal and local Church, he says that each “includes” the other, that they “inhere” in each other, that their relationship “is one of co-penetration or circumincession,” of “mutual indwelling and correlation,” and so forth. He ends up, however, by speaking of “a balanced relationship between the universal Church and the local Church.” One may wonder how the theological concepts of co-penetration and mutual indwelling fit with the language about a “balanced relationship.” To speak of a balanced relationship suggests a connection between two distinct institutions; in this case Rome (representing the universal Church) and the bishop (representing the local Church). Such language is less theological than practical and church-political. Perhaps it is fair to infer that, in Kasper’s view, Ratzinger’s seemingly theological argument is really an argument in the service of the jurisdictional primacy of Rome. That may help explain what he means when says he is writing out of his pastoral concerns about “the steady widening of the gulf between the norms of the universal Church and local praxis.”

Authority Proper and Necessary

Kasper writes, “The bishop is not a delegate of the pope, but one commissioned by Jesus Christ with a proper responsibility of his own . . . which is rooted in the sacramental order. He must have all the authority necessary for the governance of his diocese. All this is the unambiguous teaching of the last council.” That is no doubt the teaching, but it does not eliminate a measure of ambiguity and room for disagreement as to what authority is proper and necessary. The relationship between the Petrine ministry exercised by Rome and the authority of local, and also national, churches has for centuries been much disputed, with the practical authority of Rome waxing and waning according to political and cultural currents both ecclesiastical and secular. Cardinal Kasper leaves no doubt about his reading of the present moment: “In the aftermath of the council, centralist tendencies have regained their strength.” He adds that “it would be unjust to attribute this only to the curia’s greed for power.” The “only” is worthy of note, remembering that this “friendly rejoinder” was written after Kasper himself became a member of the papal curia.

Commenting on Leadership in the Church, Avery Cardinal Dulles says of Kasper, “Even theologians who might differ from some of his conclusions will be impressed by the strength of his arguments.” Dulles has written extensively on the increasing rather than decreasing importance of authoritative coordination by Peter in view of the fissiparous dynamics of cultural differences and communications technologies in a time of putative globalization. His would seem to be a very different reading of the “balancing” required between the universal, on the one hand, and the local or national, on the other. He and many others would no doubt agree with Kasper when the latter says, “In many cases, one could go so far as to speak of a mental and practical schism.” The difference is over what should be done about that schism. Kasper writes, “Many laypersons and priests can no longer understand universal church regulations and simply ignore them. This applies both to ethical issues and to questions of sacramental and ecumenical praxis such as the admission of divorced and remarried persons to communion or the offer of eucharistic hospitality to non-Catholics.” “A solution is possible,” he writes, “only if the bishop has a certain freedom of action in his application of universal church norms . . . . Obviously, no compromise is possible on questions of the faith . . . . But in addition to the immutable doctrines of faith and morals, there is a wide sphere of ecclesiastical discipline that does indeed have a more or less close connection with the truths of the faith, but is in principle open to change.”

Such generalities are, for the most part, unexceptionable. One may ask, however, whether it is the case that laity and priests do not understand universal “regulations” or whether, more commonly, they disagree with them and therefore ignore them. And generalities tend toward particularities. It is not easy to see how either truth or unity would be served if different bishops had the authority to teach and practice in contradiction to one another with respect to “ethical issues” or, for instance, the admission of non-Catholics to the Eucharist. One assumes that, in referring to ethical issues, Cardinal Kasper does not have in mind questions such as abortion or the blessing of same-sex unions, but he does not say. In recent years, Rome felt it necessary to challenge what it viewed as the German bishops’ dubious cooperation with the abortion regime by certifying that women seeking abortions had received spiritual counseling. In any event, Kasper’s observations about the connection between faith and morals would appear to be somewhat at variance with John Paul II’s repeated insistence that moral theology is theology and that social doctrine is doctrine, as well as Ratzinger’s writings on moral teaching as an integral part of “the structure of faith.”

The Bishop at the Center

Much of the present book is devoted to ministerial orders, with an essay on the diaconate and several extended discussions on the episcopal office and the meaning of apostolic succession. It has been observed frequently that Vatican II had relatively little to say about the priestly office, and that is true also of Kasper’s reflections. Prior to the council, the diaconate was generally a transitional office on the way to priestly ordination. Moreover, the bishop was typically viewed as a priest who has been promoted to the jurisdictional office of supervising other priests. In short, the presbyteral priesthood was at the center of the sacramental understanding of ministerial order. The council, says Kasper, viewed the permanent diaconate “as an autonomous grade of the sacrament of orders.” Deacons are not substitutes for priests or simply helpers of priests. Rather, “deacons are immediately subordinate to the bishop,” to which he adds, “naturally, this entails fraternal collaboration with the priests who likewise share in his ministry.” The bishop, rather than the priest, is now at the center.

The essential apostolic office is that of the bishop, an office intimately associated with the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. Kasper quotes Augustine: Christus est qui praedicat, qui baptizat, qui consecrat—in the actions of the bishop, it is Christ who preaches, baptizes, and consecrates. Jerome held that ordination to the episcopate is not a sacrament and, under the influence of Peter Lombard, most medieval theologians agreed. “This view,” writes Kasper, “was definitively superseded only by the Second Vatican Council, which taught that episcopal consecration must be understood as the plenitude of the sacrament of orders.” In fact, a bishop today is not consecrated but ordained. Kasper writes, “The bishop is wholly and definitively commissioned as pastor for his flock, whereas the priest is charged by the bishop with service in particular and limited pastoral tasks for one period of time.” In this sharply subordinated view of the priest, he does not address the problem posed by what might be called itinerant bishops on their way to being “promoted” to larger and “more important” sees, leaving the priest as the more permanent shepherd of a particular flock.

“A bishop must not polarize,” he writes, “since his task is to realize the peace of the Church. His is the ministry of unity and peace.” This generalization, too, is not without problems. Surely the faithful teaching of the truth will sometimes have the effect of “polarizing” those who oppose the truth. One thinks, for instance, of the frequently tumultuous ministry of St. Augustine. In addition, with respect to the universal Church, Kasper views the papal “ministry of unity and peace” as an instance of unwelcome centralization. Indeed, in discussing the “schism” between Rome and the local Church, he suggests that the bishop is obliged to represent the concerns of priests and laity over against centralized authority. In this connection, or so it would seem, the bishop may be, and perhaps must be, a polarizing figure. While, as he says, the local bishop is, sacramentally speaking, as much a bishop as is the bishop of Rome, it does not follow that the bishop is, jurisdictionally speaking, a pope in his own diocese.

“People of God”

The “traditional roles” referred to in Kasper’s subtitle are in the service of the sacramental integrity of the Church. There is scarcely an aspect of the council’s teaching, he says, that has been more misunderstood than the understanding of the Church as the “people of God.” The theological reality of the people of God (laos tou Theou) has been confused with the political idea of the demos, and “has led to demands for the democratization of the Church.” Greater participation is one thing, but the push for democratization “is often motivated by the ideological desire to reduce the irreducible distinction between the various charisms, offices, and ministries.” Such distinction was not a later accretion compromising the “equality” of the earliest Church. Kasper writes, “There was never any initial period without ministries: these are as old as the Church itself, and they have been conferred by the laying on of hands since the apostolic age.”

“Community leadership in the theological sense,” he writes, “is possible only for one who is ordained, since it cannot be divorced from the celebration of the Eucharist. Such a dichotomy would reduce community leadership to a purely functional service, thus reintroducing the fatal separation between ordo and iurisdictio and reversing one of the most important developments of Vatican II.” Kasper challenges a practice that is taking hold in some dioceses also in this country, that of appointing lay people as “pastoral assistants” who act as de facto pastors, doing everything but presiding at the Eucharist. The result is “an official unordained ministry in the Church,” and that “puts the basic sacramental structure of the Church at risk.”

The sacramental structure of the Church is required for fidelity to the apostolic order that has been from the beginning, and the bishop, who is successor to the apostles, is at the center of that order. The bishops “possess in plenitude this apostolic ministry in the full sense of the term; priests share in this mission of the bishops and are called their collaborators, helpers, and instruments, as well as their sons, brothers, and friends. They are to represent the bishop in the local community and make him present there.” That understanding, appealing to the teaching of the council, has in some cases led to a downgrading of the priesthood. During the recent scandals in this country, for instance, one bishop went so far as to claim that his priests were “independent contractors,” which would seem to come pretty close to saying they are hired hands. From Kasper’s discussion of the “plenitude” of ministry possessed by bishops, one might infer a distinct deficiency in the ministry of one who is “merely” a priest.

The Real Presence of the Bishop

Recently a priest who had served for years as an official in the chancery office was ordained an auxiliary bishop. “At last,” he declared, “I am fully a priest.” It might have been somewhat jarring if he had said, “At last, I am a bishop,” although it seems that that, in effect, is what he meant. There may be a shortage of priests, but there is no shortage of priests who would like to be bishops. That this auxiliary bishop at his chancery desk is more fully a priest than the parish pastor faithfully caring for the people of God seems counterintuitive. There is a sense in which it is no doubt right to say that priests “represent the bishop in the local community and make him present there.” Much more important, and not in contradiction, the priest represents Christ and makes him present there. The traditional language of the Church is that the priest acts in persona Christi , not in persona episcopi . Kasper is insistent that the bishop of the local Church is not a delegate of the pope. So also the priest of the community within the local Church is not adequately described as the delegate of the bishop.

Christus est qui praedicat, qui baptizat, qui consecrat . That is as true of the actions of a bishop as of a pope, and as true of a priest as of a bishop. In preaching and baptizing, it is as true of a deacon, and, in the case of emergency baptism, as true of any lay person. Kasper is rightly concerned for the integrity of the total Church in its apostolic structure, and to that end he contends for the dignity of the episcopal office in relation to the Petrine ministry, which is to strengthen and not undercut the brethren (Luke 22). However, the episcopal office, including the Petrine ministry, along with all the curial apparatus and thousands of chancery officialdoms is there for one purpose: to assure continuing obedience to the command of Jesus, “Do this in memory of me.” The Church exists for and from the preaching of the Word and the doing of the sacramental things, with the Eucharist as the very “source and summit” of her life. That is the truth so powerfully underscored by John Paul’s most recent encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia—the Church of the Eucharist. The priest at the altar may, as Kasper says, make the bishop present, but that is relatively uninteresting in comparison with the presence of Christ.

It may be that Catholic piety regarding the dignity and power of the priest has sometimes been exaggerated. Graham Greene’s whisky priest in The Power and the Glory who can, despite his many failings, “put God on the tongues of men” is dismissed by some as an outmoded “mystique of the priesthood.” Correctly understood, however, it is not a matter of mystique but of the deepest mystery of Christ keeping his promise, of what St. Paul calls the treasure in earthen vessels. A humble priest saying Mass with the poor in a slum of Mexico City effects the same mystery as does the cardinal archbishop in his cathedral or the pope in the basilica of St. Peter’s. It is finally Christ who both effects and is the mystery. Kasper knows this. He writes, “Just as Jesus Christ is the primary celebrant of the sacraments, so he is also the primary and the real teacher and shepherd in the Church. This is why the Tübingen school spoke of Jesus Christ’s ‘handing on of himself’ ( Selbstüberlieferung ) in the Holy Spirit.” Precisely. Yet, in correcting what he views as a distorted understanding of ministry derived from an exaggerated idea of the papal office, he appears to propose an exaggerated idea of the episcopal office. As a result, the central action of what Christ does when priest and people are gathered to do this in memory of him is, no doubt inadvertently, obscured. It is for the sake of that action and that mystery that the entire structure and apostolic order of the Church finds its necessary reason for being. (Kasper’s argument also neglects the ways in which the Petrine ministry serves as a court of appeal for priests and laity suffering under tyrannical bishops. It is not only popes who can abuse their authority. But that is a subject for another time.)

When Ministry is Apostolic

Of particular pertinence to his ecumenical task are Kasper’s reflections on the meaning of apostolic succession in ministry. “This link between the apostolic tradition and the succession is the consequence of understanding the Church and its ministries as a sacrament, i.e., a sign and instrument of salvation: succession in the ministry is understood as a sign and instrument of the res, namely, the transmission of the gospel. Apostolicity in the sense of historical continuity serves to ensure apostolicity in the sense of the substantial identity of the apostolic message.” The idea of apostolic succession changed in the late middle ages, he says, when “the Church was increasingly understood only as a legal structure, where ministerial authority was no longer a sacramental repraesentatio brought about by the Spirit, but a potestas bestowed on the individual office-holder as his personal possession.” He cites instances in which priests served as bishops without episcopal ordination, acting only with the potestas bestowed by the jurisdictional authority of Rome.

As valuable as it is to highlight the connection between apostolic succession and apostolic message, along with the primarily sacramental rather than juridical nature of the episcopal office, interesting questions are raised by other statements. Of the apostolic succession Kasper says, “This is not a succession in the linear sense, where one office-bearer follows another; rather, new members are co-opted and integrated into the apostolic college with its mission that is carried on from age to age.” Or again, “When a bishop enters the apostolic succession, he does not receive some private channel (or ‘pipeline’) connecting him to the apostles. Rather, he enters the fellowship of bishops. The individual bishop is a successor of the apostles, not thanks to an unbroken chain going back from his predecessors to one of the apostles, but because he is in communion with the entire ordo episcoporum , which as a whole is the successor of the apostolic college and of the apostles’ mission.”

The reference to a “pipeline” is, of course, pejorative hyperbole and is not to be pressed. It is worth asking, however, how Kasper’s construal of succession fits with that set forth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church : “The Church continues to be taught, sanctified, and guided by the apostles until Christ’s return through their successors in pastoral office: the college of bishops, assisted by priests, in union with the successor to Peter, the Church’s supreme pastor.” John Paul quotes that passage in Ecclesia de Eucharistia and adds this explanation: “Succession to the apostles in the pastoral mission necessarily entails the sacrament of holy orders, that is, the uninterrupted sequence from the very beginning of valid episcopal ordinations. This succession is essential for the Church to exist in a proper and full sense.” Kasper’s idea of succession may not be in conflict with that, but it is different. Not incidentally, typically downplayed or unmentioned in his discussion of the question is the necessity of communion with Peter. With respect to both the meaning of succession and the need for communion with Peter, Kasper no doubt has ecumenical considerations in mind.

Kasper is keenly alert to Protestant sensibilities, and indeed can sound very Protestant. For example: “The authority of the Church’s ministry reaches only as far as the gospel—hence, we may say that we do not believe in the Church, but in God; we believe in the Church only to the extent that it proclaims the word of God. We follow church leaders only to the extent that they themselves follow Christ . . . . Some situations oblige one to obey God and one’s conscience rather than the leaders of the Church. Indeed, one may even be obliged to accept excommunication rather than act against one’s own conscience.” Later on, however, Kasper speaks in what seems to be a different and more Catholic voice. “The Second Vatican Council does indeed affirm that the Magisterium is not above the Word, but is at the service of the Word; but it does not speak of a polarity between the gospel and the Church in such a way that Scripture would exercise a critical function vis-à-vis the Church and the tradition. On the contrary, the council declares that the Church does not derive its certainty about revelation only from Scripture, and it emphasizes the inherent unity and interrelation between tradition, Scripture, and Magisterium.” The reader may well experience a certain confusion at this point. If the Scripture or the gospel does not exercise a “critical function” in relation to Church and tradition, how could one know to what extent the Church is proclaiming the word of God? At several points in these essays one wishes for a more connected treatment of the “inherent unity and interrelation” of Scripture, tradition, Magisterium, and conscience.

It is evident, however, that Kasper does believe in the Church, and without the conventionally Protestant qualifications. In fact, it is precisely on this point that he sees the fundamental divergence between Protestant and Catholic. The Protestant Reformers, he says, dismantled the inherent connection between traditio and successio , between the gospel and the historic reality of the Church, and did so not only in this instance or that but as a matter of principle. “This decision by the Reformers concerns not one isolated partial problem, but the total sacramental view of the Church, i.e., the question whether the Church’s visible elements are sacraments and signs of its spiritual essence, which can be perceived only in faith.” Luther and Calvin did not propose a completely hidden, invisible, or platonic Church. “Unlike the enthusiastic groups, they clearly recognized in word and sacrament, and in ecclesial ministries, visible elements in the Church. But this does not amount to the affirmation that the salvation bestowed by God once and for all is mediated through the Church. Accordingly, the primary break was not caused by an interruption of the chain of succession, but by a new understanding of the relationship between the Church and the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher was the father of nineteenth century liberal Protestant theology, and Kasper cites his claim that Protestantism “makes the relationship of the individual to the Church dependent on his relationship to Christ,” whereas Catholicism “makes the relationship of the individual to Christ dependent on his relationship to the Church.” That formulation, says Kasper, may be somewhat exaggerated but it “points in the right direction.” He notes that Protestant thinkers today are not agreed on whether the denial of the sacramental nature of the Church arose out of an emergency situation in the sixteenth century and has lasted to the present day, or whether it is foundational and constitutive for the Protestant construal of the Christian reality. Kasper’s way of putting the matter brings to mind Ratzinger’s assertion that the crucial difference between Catholic and Protestant is that, for the Catholic, faith in Christ and faith in the Church is one act of faith, whereas, for the Protestant, faith in the Church is a second act of faith, if it is thought to be necessary or even legitimate. In a similar vein, I have written elsewhere about “ecclesial” and “non-ecclesial” faith in Christ.

Upping the Ante

In this context, Kasper notes that ecumenism necessarily engages disagreements on various doctrines and practices, and asks whether such disagreements do or should divide the churches. Before we can make decisions about differences and imperfect agreements, however, “We must first agree about what the Church is and what church unity requires.” The conclusion logically follows: “This is why a discussion of ecclesiology is the most important task on the agenda of future ecumenical dialogue.” Some interlocutors in dialogue may well complain that Kasper is upping the ecumenical ante. On some formulations of doctrine, Kasper appears to be more flexible (others might say liberal) than their presentation in statements of the Magisterium. That would appear to be the case with respect to, for instance, apostolic succession in ministry. But it avails little if we reach agreement on this doctrine or that but are in fundamental disagreement about the sacramental nature of the Church in inseparable unity with Christ and the salvation he bestows. That is why ecclesiology must be the great subject if ecumenism is to have a promising future.

Kasper writes, “What is the goal of the ecumenical pilgrimage, and what are the next steps? The Catholic answer is clear: unity in faith, in the sacraments, and in ecclesial ministries.” That is an answer, he notes, that is shared with the Orthodox, both believing that eucharistic and ecclesial fellowship belong together. Implicit in that answer is the understanding that eucharistic fellowship without unity in faith and ministry would be the end of ecumenism. That understanding is made more explicit in Ecclesia de Eucharistia (see “Getting Along at the Altar,” Public Square, October). Here again, one misses in Kasper’s formulations a clear reference to the Petrine ministry, a reference so consistently prominent in magisterial statements such as the great encyclical on Christian unity, Ut Unum Sint (That They May be One). What constitutes unity among Catholics and what constitutes the unity with other Christians for which we pray is being in communion with a bishop who is in communion with the bishop of Rome, the successor to Peter.

“Apostolicity in the sense of succession in the episcopal ministry,” Kasper writes, “can be communicated only by a church like the Catholic Church, which itself possesses this ministry: the ecclesia apostolica subsists in the Catholic Church.” He immediately adds that this “does not reduce ecumenism to a one-way street or a mere ‘return to the fold.’” Other communions have “many substantial apostolic elements” and, when Protestants “enter the apostolic succession,” the catholicity of that succession will be realized “in a fuller manner.” This prospect is not to be achieved by our programs and schedules but entails an eschatological hope. “The fullness of apostolicity and catholicity will be completely manifest only at the end of time.” Along the way, we encounter difficulties and resistance. “It takes more than a single day to fill in trenches that have divided people for centuries; nor can one simply hop over them, since no church can allow itself to deny the tradition and the faith of its fathers and mothers.” Perhaps “deny” is not the right word, but in the course of ecumenical development it would seem that others will have to overcome those elements of their tradition that precluded unity with the Catholic Church, just as the Catholic Church has overcome her earlier rejection of the authentically Christian and ecclesial elements in other communions.

Ecumenical Crisis

In August 2000, CDF issued the document Dominus Iesus, which occasioned considerable controversy and led some to speak of a “crisis” in ecumenism. Many non-Catholics, says Kasper, were “disappointed and hurt by this declaration”and this has hurt me too, since the sadness and pain of my friends makes me sad and pained.” He calls the document “unnecessarily sharp and harsh.” Kasper’s public criticism of Dominus Iesus was not well received by some curial colleagues who insist that he participated in the writing and signed off on the final statement. Protestants were offended by the document’s assertion that their communities are not “Church” in the full sense of the term. In the present book, Kasper responds in a manner almost identical to the response of Cardinal Ratzinger. Kasper writes: “Dominus Iesus does not in fact deny that these bodies are ‘churches.’ It says only that they are not churches in the sense in which the Catholic Church understands itself to be ‘Church,’ and this is surely undeniable! In terms of their own ecclesiology, they have no desire whatever to be a church like the Catholic Church. They are a different type of ‘church.’ They do not possess the episcopal ministry in the historic succession, nor the Petrine ministry; but for us Catholics, both these elements are essential.” It should also be noted that some Protestants, such as the distinguished Baptist theologian Timothy George, warmly welcomed Dominus Iesus as a powerfully orthodox statement of the gospel and a Christ-centered reflection on the unity that Our Lord wills for his disciples, while noting that the document also candidly addresses perduring obstacles to the realization of that unity.

Kasper cites a statement by the Protestant church in Germany, issued a year after Dominus Iesus and titled Church Fellowship in Protestant Understanding . The statement declared, “Protestants must oppose the Catholic position on the necessity and form of the ‘Petrine ministry’ and the primacy of the pope, the understanding of apostolic succession, the refusal to admit women to the ordained ministry, and not least the role of canon law in the Roman Catholic Church.” Kasper comments: “This formulation is so harsh, so devoid of nuances and uninterested in the outcome of ecumenical dialogues, that it makes Dominus Iesus appear a positive ecumenical text by comparison.”

All Christians, Kasper writes, now face a new circumstance in which many of the old questions, both those that united and those that divided Christians, are largely irrelevant. For instance, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by Lutherans and Catholics was a great ecumenical achievement but stirred little public interest. “The questions of the sixteenth century had ceased to interest them.” Unlike the time of Luther, “our experience today is no longer the crushing burden of sin, but the absence of any experience of sin . . . . Most people today have no idea what is meant by ‘sin,’ still less by original sin, redemption through the cross, or the mediation of salvation through the sacraments of the Church . . . . We have all become more or less Deists, no longer asking: ‘How can I do what God expects?’ but ‘How can I do justice to myself and to my own life?’” Kasper’s bleak depiction of a thoroughly secularized culture no doubt reflects his own experience of the situation in Germany and Western Europe more generally, which is hardly representative of the larger world. But nobody anywhere should dispute the conclusion he draws: “At the beginning of a new century and a new millennium, the churches face the ecumenical challenge of a new evangelization.”

His summary vision of the ecumenical future is compelling: “Dialogue in love is accompanied by dialogue in truth, for love without truth is empty, dishonest, and ultimately deceitful. Ecumenical progress does not mean that we abandon the convictions of our own faith, but rather (as with the doctrine of justification) that we penetrate these more deeply, until we reach the point at which they are compatible with the convictions of the faith of the other church.” Others might say that, as we penetrate more deeply, we may discover not compatibility but incompatibilities that cannot be overcome. This is the view of, for instance, those Protestant theologians who speak of a “fundamental difference” with Catholicism along the line of division suggested above by Schleiermacher. I believe, however, that we must agree with Kasper. Truth is one. Christians are locked together in ecumenical dialogue by Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. If the faith that we are penetrating more deeply is faith in the one Christ, there can, finally, be no incompatibilities requiring divisions in his body, the Church. It is true, “finally” may be a long time; it may be until the end of time. But the continuing ecumenical task is now. Kasper puts it nicely: “There is no ecumenical dialogue without personal conversion and institutional renewal, and we begin not by ‘converting’ our dialogue partner, but with our own conversion and renewal.”