Traditions And Encounters

Catholic leader sounds 'ecumenical keynote' during Geneva visit

Cardinal Kurt Koch, who since July 2010 has served as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), has completed his first official visit to the World Council of Churches (WCC) at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.

Koch came as the guest of the WCC General Secretary, the Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit. The visit was an opportunity for the cardinal and Tveit to discuss significant and ongoing cooperation between the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC.

During the 8-10 May 2011 visit, the cardinal met with staff members from WCC programmes and with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC).

The programme included a dinner with faculty and staff of the WCC sponsored Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Switzerland.

Formerly the Catholic bishop of Basel, Koch returned to his native land to familiarise himself with the WCC and to discuss plans for future stages in the quest for Christian unity.

During a series of conversations, he acknowledged the importance of “harvesting the fruits” of past dialogues among churches, confessional bodies and multilateral gatherings like those sponsored by the WCC. This “harvesting” was already an emphasis of his predecessor, Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Reviewing historic agreements was a first step, to be followed by a deliberate process of “reception” of agreements in which individual churches and Christians are introduced to accords and insights achieved through dialogues, he said.

Tveit said it is essential that such agreements “not be allowed to remain hidden treasures” but must instead be widely published and discussed in local settings.

In a discussion on the role of the WCC for the one ecumenical movement involving the General Secretaries of WCC, LWF and WCRC, the General Secretary of the LWF, the Rev Martin Junge, noted the “interdependence” of multilateral conversations and bilateral dialogues.

'Bilaterals' are one-on-one encounters between pairs of confessional traditions – as in Catholic-Anglican dialogue, Lutheran-Methodist dialogue or Orthodox-Reformed dialogue. 'Multilateral' processes toward Christian unity, as often practiced through the WCC and its Faith and Order Commission, involve a wide cross-section of theological traditions.

Junge described “multiple layers of engagement” among churches and confessional families, involving complexities of interpretation based on the specifics of regional and historical patterns of diversity. He called for “trans-contextual exchanges in which the polycentricity of Christian tradition may be better understood”.

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