After the Week of Prayer
Fr Cristiano Bettega, director of the Department for Ecumenism and Dialogue at the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) drew a balance of ecumenical commitment in Italian dioceses at the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated January 18-25. “There is growing sensitivity that extends throughout the year. Notwithstanding initiatives and projects, the style is changing.”
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is over; the ecumenical commitment of Catholic Italy is over. “No, it’s far from over”, promptly replied Fr Cristiano Bettega, Director of the Italian Bishops’ department for Ecumenism and Dialogue. “Also because it is widely acknowledged that numerous initiatives were held nationwide, along with many events, meetings, as well as concrete projects promoted at local level signalling an ecumenical presence. There is a growing sensitivity that extends throughout the year. Apart from the projects and the initiatives, we notice a different approach.”
In terms of approach, Fr Bettega, the Pope has invited us to overcome the temptation of being self-referential. How can this be done?
We must see the other person and someone we can learn from and not as someone to be appeased because he is Orthodox or Protestant or because he needs a hall to celebrate the liturgy or to practice worship. It’s not a question of feeling magnanimous, of gratifying ourselves with an act of generosity, but rather of acknowledging that history and the our present times demand an open gaze. Having an open gaze today means recognizing that
Each one of us is called to learn from the other person: the truth we yearn for is something that extends beyond my very self – whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant – and thus it ought to be sought together.
This reflection is the fruit of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity held annually for over 50 years and the prayer has enabled the faithful to see one another, gradually and ever more strongly, as brothers and sisters.
In Italy an increasing number of Catholic churches have been donated to the Orthodox faithful. Some has viewed this act as a gift, while others have seen it as signalling the downsizing of Catholicism in the light of an ever-increasing migrant population. What’s the answer to the reticence?
Allowing an Orthodox diocese to use a church, whether it belongs to the Ecumenical, Russian or Romanian Patriarchate, means recognizing that its community has grown very much in that city, and thus it needs a place to meet and celebrate its religious service. It should be remembered that Italians who immigrated to Germany immediately after the war, especially from southern Italy, experienced the same situation. Acknowledging that an Orthodox community has grown larger in my diocese, can become an opportunity to work and operate as Christians throughout the Country. It is a fact that Catholic communities in Italy and Europe no longer experience an exponential growth. However, we ought to view this phenomenon from a completely different angle.
In fact, rather than being the sign of a declining Catholic community it heralds the expansion of Christianity in Italy.
Only if we manage to step out of our precints will we be grateful and view this phenomenon as providential.
This year marks 500 years since Luther’s Reformation, yet a conflicting understanding coupled by hesitations on his figure drag on. What is your opinion?
Hesitations ought to be respected and understood. We stand before a 500-year-old history marked by separations, wars, and, in recent decades, by mutual diffidence. However, it’s not Pope Francis who says that Luther didn’t intend to cause divisions inside the Church, but history. The original sources and documents show that Luther intended to reform the Church. The fact that things took a different course causing a division in the Churches in spite of this original intention is a tragedy we ought to ask forgiveness for and repent. But as Pope Francis said in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls
While looking back can be helpful and necessary to purify our memory, being fixated on the past and the memory of wrongs done can paralyze us and prevent us from living in the present.
Indeed, by its very nature, the ecumenical movement drives us forward, and this fact raises concerns. Fear is understandable. After all, it’s man’s anthropological fear for what is new, because it questions the foundations on which he developed his certainties, habits, his daily life as a Christian believer. Similarly, Ecumenism drives us forward because it involves breaking out of established patterns. The exchange of ideas requires relinquishing something we consider comfortable and safe and opening up to something we don’t know. In other terms, we don’t know what being united means, nor what it implies. Although we know that we have undertaken the path of the full communion of all believers in Christ, we still don’t know how it will happen concretely. That’s why we pray to the Lord to give us unity and peace according to His will, not ours. This is a big challenge for us all, which might entail a certain degree of concern and resistance. But our faith is asking us to come out of isolation. If we truly believe in a God made flesh in Jesus Christ, in a God that was the first to come out of Himself, we cannot take a reverse course today.
