Pope Praises Christian Unity Efforts, Downplays Disputes

Pope John Paul II praised Christian unity efforts in a speech to U.S. Protestant and Orthodox leaders Friday but avoided mentioning issues such as women’s ordination that still deeply divide Christianity.

The speech came at the end of a five-day meeting between Vatican officials and a 14-member delegation from the National Council of Churches. The meeting was the first of its kind since 1969, when a similar U.S. delegation visited the Vatican during the reign of the late Pope Paul VI.

The council, the major mainstream ecumenical agency in the United States, is made up of 32 Protestant and Orthodox denominations with a combined membership of about 40 million people.

Church officials said much of the meeting concentrated on the situation of the church in the Soviet Union and South Africa as well as the Christian unity movement. The council has led efforts to improve people-to-people relations with the Soviet Union and has been a leader in the anti-apartheid movement seeking to change South Africa’s policies of racial separation.

In his address to the delegation, the Pope said he had “very happy memories” of his meeting with non-Catholic Christian leaders in Columbia, S.C., during his visit in September, 1987.

“Your presence today continues, in a sense, the conversation that took place in Columbia,” he said. “You have expressed the hope that your meeting this week will help to deepen ecumenical relations between your council and the Catholic Church as we approach the third millennium of Christianity.

“I share this hope in the firm conviction that we must walk the path of reconciliation together in obedience to Christ’s will for us.”

The ecumenical movement in the United States is among the most advanced in the world, and U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have sponsored a series of theological dialogues with many council members, notably the Lutherans, Episcopalians and Methodists.

The Pope made no reference to issues obstructing Christian unity, such as the ordination of women to the priesthood by some Protestant denominations.

For their part, the American church leaders thanked John Paul “for this opportunity to confess together what we share of the common apostolic faith . . . and pray that the day may be hastened when full communion among our separate ecclesiastical communities may be recognized.”