Cites Catholic ‘Passion for Unity’ : Vatican Envoy Praises Ecumenism

Amid recent questions about it, Roman Catholicism’s chief ambassador to other Christians is underscoring his church’s “passion for unity” and acceptance of other denominations as partner churches.

Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Christian Unity, visited several Eastern U.S. cities this month, emphasizing “substantial progress” toward the goal and Rome’s commitment to it.

“Where there is grace there is union in Christ,” he told more than 450 participants in the 24th annual National Workshop on Christian Unity in Atlanta. “All Christ’s disciples are included in the church in Christ’s own way. Whoever belongs to Christ belongs to the church.”

More Talks Urged

In Washington, Willebrands encouraged continued interchurch theological talks, saying they have produced “greater common insight,” clearing away past mutual distortions and misunderstandings.

He said all the churches “can learn from each other.”

Contrary to signs some have seen that Catholic concern for Christian unity is lagging, Willebrands emphasized positions taken by the Second Vatican Council, which recognized other denominations as churches alongside Roman Catholicism.

In Atlanta, his stand was termed particularly significant in the present atmosphere by Brother Jeffrey Gros, theology expert of the National Council of Churches, embracing most major Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations.

Gros said recent statements from other Vatican officials, including the doctrinal head, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, have led some ecumenical leaders to believe that Roman Catholicism was returning to views that it was the only true church.

View Has Widened

But Willebrands said the declaration by Vatican II that the Christian church “subsists in” Catholicism, instead of being confined to it, proves it has widened its view to include other churches “in the body of Christ.”

There are about 800 million Catholics worldwide, with about 52 million in the United States. There are about 600 million Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, about 100 million of them in the United States.

Willebrands, head of the unity secretariat since 1969, told a news conference that he was seeking to point up his church’s concern for ecumenism because some people seemed to be losing sight of Vatican II.

That historic council of 1962-65 brought many reforms in that church, including its full-fledged entry into ecumenical efforts.

Claims Perspective

Willebrands, who even before then has been involved quietly in such efforts, going back to 1946, said he felt he had a perspective that few others in Catholicism could offer.

He described the Christian church as being unified “mystically” in heaven and said with a “growth in the awareness of the church as a mystical unity, from there would grow an institutional unity.”

Willebrands said Vatican representatives are continuing to meet with Russian and Greek Orthodox leaders, and also holding dialogues with Anglicans, Lutherans and others, achieving various accords.

“We will continue to work for a growing unity,” he said. “How long that growth will take, I do not see. . . . The church of Christ will grow in unity day by day to the end of the ages.”

He said both Catholics and Protestants had moved away from prejudice toward each other.

‘A Great Evolution’

“There has been a great evolution, not only theologically, but in the mentality of the people,” he said, with attitudes changed from mutual ignorance and distrust to mutual love and caring.

“If there is suffering in another Christian body, we all suffer with it,” he said.

The conference in Atlanta drew 475 ministers and lay people concerned about Christian unity, both Roman Catholics and representatives of most other denominations, including Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

In New York, Willebrands was presented with a unity award, lunched with key church officials at the Interchurch Center and later lectured at the nation’s oldest interdenominational seminary, Union Theological Seminary.