Editorial from Conflict to Communion

ecclesiology 13 (2017) 3-10 ECCLESIOLOGY

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Editorial ∵

From Conflict to Communion

Theodor Dieter Institute for Ecumenical Research, Strasbourg, France [email protected]

On 31 October 2016, a Joint Roman Catholic – Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation was held through common prayer in the Lutheran Cathe- dral in Lund, Sweden, jointly led by Pope Francis together with Kurt Cardi- nal Koch and the President of the Lutheran World Federation (lwf), Bishop Munib Younan, together with lwf General Secretary the Revd Dr Martin Junge. The significance of this event is astonishing! In 1521 Pope Leo X excom- municated Martin Luther as notorious heretic; 495 years later, Leo’s successor travels to Lund – the city in which the lwf was founded in 1947 – in order to commemorate solemnly the Reformation together with Lutherans! Entering the cathedral, Pope Francis was accompanied left and right by Bishop You- nan and Dr Junge – at the same level. The three men were dressed in a similar fashion, with albs and red stoles. Red is the liturgical colour for October 31 in the Lutheran churches, but certainly not in the Roman Catholic church. So Pope Francis came into the Lund cathedral wearing the liturgical colour of Lutheran churches for Reformation Day. What a sign! From the other side, it cannot be taken for granted that the lwf would conduct its central service at the beginning of the Reformation year as a Lutheran/Roman Catholic common prayer, which representatives of the other Christian churches were invited to participate in. One could have imagined that lwf on this occasion would organise a purely Lutheran service in which other churches would have been welcome to take part on a secondary level. But this common prayer shows how seriously the claim is taken that the reformers did not intend to split the church, but to reform it.

4 Dieter

The common prayer was built on the work of the Lutheran/Roman Catho- lic Commission on Unity, established by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the lwf. Over several years, the Commission worked hard to answer the question of whether and how Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christians could commemorate the Reformation together. The outcome of its work is the document From Conflict to Communion.1 The previous centenaries of the Reformation were serious occasions for fierce debates and controver- sies between Roman Catholics and Lutherans. For Protestant Christians, the word ‘Reformation’ has been associated with the rediscovery of the gospel, freedom, and assurance of faith, while even nowadays Roman Catholics spon- taneously think of Reformation in connection with the split of the church, or more precisely of Western Christendom. Having these different, even opposed associations in mind, it is difficult to see how one could arrive at a common commemoration. For the Commission, the task even became more difficult because it also had to answer the question of whether Lutherans and Roman Catholics only could commemorate together or whether they were also able to celebrate together. Common commemoration or common celebration–that was the question. We can only celebrate if anything good happened to our community, but the split of the church is nothing good. Thus many Roman Catholic bishops have said, ‘In 2017 there is nothing to celebrate, at least not for Catholics’; while most Protestants have said, ‘We will celebrate the Reforma- tion.’ Many ecumenically engaged Roman Catholics have argued that joy and thankfulness can only be directed toward the ecumenical movement, since it is the attempt to overcome the division that Reformation brought with it. Thus, for them, in 2017 it is not the Reformation that is to be celebrated but the ecumenical movement, while the Reformation is an object of lamentation. But even though Protestants, at least ecumenically engaged Protestants, deplore the split of the Western church in the sixteenth century and suffer from it, it is clear that they cannot agree with such an emphasis. With this perspective, a joint commemoration would not be possible. Since for Protestants the first feelings when they think of the Reformation are gratitude and joy, they wish to express them during the commemorations in 2017. When theologians deal with such oppositions, they traditionally practice the art of differentiation. So, in fact, the word ‘Reformation’ can have very different meanings. Words like ‘Reformation’ do not simply denote a phenom- enon or an entity that is well defined in itself. Rather, ‘Reformation’ points to

1 From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. Report of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity (Leipzig/Paderborn: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt/Bonifatius, 2013).

ecclesiology 13 (2017) 3-10