18 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION movement, acknowledging the efforts already made by many Protestant and Orthodox churches.32 Overall, the Council – encouraged by Pope John XXIII, the ecumenical observers, and the SPCU – dealt with various topics relevant to ecumenism, for example, by addressing questions that the First Vatican Council (1970), prematurely concluded, had left unanswered. As then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger analyzed the merits of Vatican II: [T]he Council reinserted into the Church as a whole a doctrine of primacy that was dangerously isolated; it integrated into the one mysterium of the Body of Christ a too-isolated conception of the hierarchy; it restored to the ordered unity of the faith an isolated Mariology; it gave the biblical word its full due; it made the liturgy once more accessible; and, in addition, it made a courageous step forward toward the unity of all Christians.33 And Pope John Paul II confirmed in his 1995 encyclical on ecumenism Ut Unum Sint: “[a]t the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church committed herself irrevocably to following the path of the ecumenical venture;” 34 a statement often repeated. This commitment was carried out primarily by the SPCU, which, during John Paul II’s reforms, was remodeled into the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity (PCPCU). It has initiated many bilateral dialogues, which have achieved considerable results. Some dialogues have produced significant convergence texts, while others are still in an early stage of getting acquainted and clarifying past misunderstandings. Cardinal Walter Kasper presents the achievements and the questions that remain open of the most prominent dialogues in his Harvesting the Fruits.35 The cooperation with the WCC, too, has resulted in important progress, which is best seen in the convergence texts Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM, also known as the Lima Text, 1982) and The Church: Towards a Common Vision (2013). Both texts 32 Significant in this regard is the change that took place in the title of the first chapter of the schema on ecumenism. Instead of calling it De oecumenismi catholici principiis, the title De catholicis oecumenismi principiis was adopted. It makes clear that no independent Catholic type of ecumenism was intended, but that the Council expressed Catholic principles for engagement in the broader ecumenical movement. 33 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology; Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Mary Francis McCarthy (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987), 370. 34 John Paul II, UUS, sec. 3 (italics in original). 35 Walter Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits: Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue (London/New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw