ECUMENISM AND DIALOGUE
“Sibiu 2007 will significantly help the progress of ecumenism”, said the Romanian Orthodox theologian Viorel Ionita in an interview with the Austrian Catholic Kathpress agency. Some 2500 delegates from all the Christian Churches of Europe are expected to attend the Third European Ecumenical Assembly due to be held in Sibiu from 4 to 9 September 2007; the number of participants is almost triple that of the official delegates present at the previous meeting, held in Graz in 1997. According to Ionita, professor of Church history at the University of Bucharest and director of studies at the Conference of European Churches in Geneva, this will offer “greater chances to the Churches to be able to express their own needs”. Unity, according to Ionito, will have “central importance” for the conference in Sibiu; and yet the “problem of the various concepts of unity” is one of the “main obstacles to ecumenical dialogue”. “Considered realistically – admits the ecumenical expert – it will not be possible to solve all the questions at Sibiu. As regards the crucial question of the understanding of the Eucharist, there exist profound and far-reaching differences between the Churches”. Ionita identified, however, the question of the mutual recognition of the rite of Baptism at the European level as a possible step towards greater unity, though pointing out that, in ecumenical efforts, “the new points in common formulated and exemplified in dialogue between theologians, or even between the Church leaders, hardly ever trickle down to the grassroots”.
