Ecumenical ice age? Ecumenism of profiles? The Christian churches could not complain about a lack of topics in their dialogue during the past year. The debate about the understanding of the church played just as important a role as the Pauline Year or the preparations for the 500th anniversary of the founding of the church. Anniversary of the Reformation 2017. At the international level, ecumenism followed with concern the Anglican World Communion's dispute over homosexuality and female bishops.
An ecumenical stumbling block was the Pauline Year proclaimed by the Vatican for the 2nd Vatican Council.000. The Luther Decade was an irritant for Protestant Christians, since Martin Luther's Reformation was based on the abusive indulgence system of the 16th century. The twentieth-century fire. "German Lutherans complained that the Vatican's approach was "not helpful. While critics concede that today's indulgences are different from those of yesteryear, even Catholic bishops would prefer to eliminate the term from the church's vocabulary. Among Protestants, there are also concerns about the Catholic understanding of the liturgy, which seems to be marked by increasing skepticism about the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). One is particularly suspicious with regard to the revaluation of the old Tridentine rite of Mass, which has also brought the Catholic Church a tangible row with Judaism. In the controversial Good Friday intercessions, prayers are offered not only for the conversion of the Jews, but also for "false believers and apostates". But who is meant by this, asks Friedrich Weber, the regional bishop of Braunschweig: "We??"Conversely, the Luther Decade, with which the Evangelical Church (EKD) in September in Wittenberg started the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of the apostle of the peoples, the Lutheran Apostle of the Gentiles, in the German-speaking part of Germany, aroused interest. Announcing the 50th anniversary of the Reformation, the fear of anti-Catholic effects. Although this concern may have been alleviated by now, a sparkling ecumenical idea to accompany the 2017 celebrations is still missing. The only thing that seems clear is that the Reformation should neither be celebrated unilaterally as the "dawn of modernity" nor condemned as a disastrous prelude to the schism between the churches. In the meantime, theological science is facing important ecumenical projects. Here's how Catholic and Protestant theologians plan to jointly comment on Martin Luther's 95 theses on indulgences over the next few years. There is also movement in the evaluation of the question of apostolic succession, one of the most important ecumenical points of contention. Two important publications shed new light on the debate over the bishops' rightful succession to the apostles and, if properly received by the churches, could represent a quantum leap comparable to the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The research project "Ground and Object of Faith According to Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran Doctrine" caused a stir. Theologians from the Pontifical Lateran University and the Protestant faculties in Tubingen and Heidelberg are trying to understand the position of their respective counterparts from the inside out. This sounds good, but at the same time it is directed against the practiced method of searching for agreements between the denominations. The "ecumenical ice age," however, if it ever existed, seems to be over – and the much-cited "ecumenism of profiles" is also slowly losing its one-sided negative tone. The originator of the catchphrase, the Berlin bishop and EKD council president Wolfgang Huber, recently specified: It was never his intention to want to distinguish himself through demarcations. "Sensitivity instead of touchiness," Catholic Osnabruck Bishop Franz-Josef Bode advised the ecumenical movement. The emphatically harmonious preparations for the 2. Ecumenical Kirchentag 2010 in Munich are an example of this.