They shall be a blessing” “

“You shall be a blessing” is the slogan of the Oecumenische Kirchentag, the Ecumenical Church Congress jointly organized by German Catholics and Protestants, with the collaboration of other Christian confessions, and to be held in Berlin from 28 May to 1st June 2003. The Congress can be regarded as one of the major ecumenical efforts at the grassroots level in the 485 years since the schism of the Reformation. Some 40,000 people have been involved in its preparation over the last six years. Over 100,000 visitors (not all “faithful”) are expected to participate in a programme comprising approximately 3.000 meetings with church leaders, representatives of civil society and exponents of the arts, both German and foreign. Ever since the mid-19th century, German Catholics and Protestants have assembled every two years or so, in alternation, in their respective “congresses”, Katholikentag and Evangelische Kirchentag (suspended only during the first war world and under the Nazi regime, which abolished them). After the second world war, with the end of the dictatorship and the regaining of civil liberties, a climate of dialogue has been established, favoured by ecumenical exchange and the search for religious unity. These meetings are now held in an atmosphere of great interfaith brotherhood. The challenge… German Christians are conscious of being faced by numerous challenges. The first is secularization and the progressive abandonment of the faith: exactly a third of the population, 33.2%, is “ religionslos“, without religion. Out of just over 82 million inhabitants, some 27 million declare themselves Catholics, and a similar number, or slightly less, Protestants. Believers in the one confession or the other know that the scandal of division is in large part responsible for the process of ‘atheization’. Each year a total of some 200,000 Germans decide to quit the churches, thus swelling the ranks of the indifferent; and even though the “trend” has slowed down in recent years, the fact remains that the level of participation in sacramental life is very low, even among the ranks of the declared ‘faithful’. The ecumenical Kirchentag, in spite of the mistrust of the “super-orthodox” movements, both on the one side and on the other, is an attempt to revive a religious culture at the popular level. Its aim, says the organizers, is to defend shared Christian values and convictions and to progress along the way towards unity. … and the responsibility. The central theme of the Kirchentag focuses on the responsibility of all Christians towards the State, political and economic life, a just social order, science, culture and communication. Christians are responsible for pursuing dialogue between each other, and with members of other religions, in the common search for peace, justice, the safeguard of the creation and a more effective protection of the most vulnerable. A ‘common eucharist’. “One problem that still remains open, and will prove difficult to resolve, is that of the celebration of a ‘common eucharist’ – says Angelo Paoluzi, journalist, expert of the German christian society. Protestants want to force the pace, but Catholics are more cautious, all the more so in the light of John Paul II’s recent encyclical on the Eucharist. The question, however, is not addressed in the official document welcoming the participants, signed by the presidents of the Evangelical and Catholic associations involved, Elisabeth Raiser of the Evangelical Council and Hans Joachim Meyer of the Central Committee of Catholics. Only in a separate document is regret expressed about the failure to reach this objective. For his part the President of the Federal Republic, the Protestant Johannes Rau, in an interview published by Catholic weeklies, said he did not think the issue was the dominant theme of the Congress. It may be considered an important sign that this ecumenical meeting is being held at a time when the constitutional principles on which the European Union is to rest are being drafted and from which attempts have been made to exclude any reference to the Christian roots of Europe. The Kirchentag, with the strength of popular participation, underlines how deep those roots are in the continent’s history. And Rau has declared it right to ‘acknowledge that our life is not something for which we ought to thank ourselves. That can be expressed in a Constitution with the word God. I think it’s right to do so'”.