The Vatican has reached agreement with the Lutheran World Federation
on a joint statement to be released for the 500th anniversary of Martin
Luther’s theses, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian
Unity has disclosed. The joint document will be released in June, Cardinal Kurt Koch told Austrian interviewers.
In a candid exchange, the cardinal also spoke of some of the main obstacles to ecumenical progress. He listed the continued fragmentation of Protestant groups and the failure of Orthodox leaders to reach their own mutual understanding on the question of primacy.
The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople is “the most optimistic among all the patriarchs” regarding the prospects for unity, Cardinal Koch said.
But the path to a real agreement appears blocked for now because Orthodox leaders have not agreed on any understanding of primacy beyond a “primacy of honor.”
The cardinal observed that such an understanding is workable “only in good weather.”
If the Catholic Church had accepted a papacy based solely on “primacy of honor,” Cardinal Koch said, the likely result would have been “the same fate as the Orthodox”—numerous national churches” rather than true and lasting unity.