"The reason for this seems to me to lie in the fact that the fathers of
the Basic Law at that important moment were fully conscious of the need to
find particularly solid ground with which all citizens would be able to
identify. In seeking this, they did not prescind from their own religious
beliefs. ... But they knew they had to engage with the followers of other
religions and none: common ground was found in the recognition of some
inalienable rights that are proper to human nature and precede every
positive formulation. In this way, an essentially homogeneous society laid
Subject: VISnews 110923
Organization: VIS - Ufficio Stampa della Santa Sede
From: Vatican Information Service - Eng - txt
the foundations that we today consider valid for a markedly pluralistic
world, foundations that actually point out the evident limits of pluralism:
it is inconceivable, in fact, that a society could survive in the long term
without consensus on fundamental ethical values".
At the end of his address, Benedict XVI underlined the importance of
fruitful collaboration between Christians and Muslims as part of the process
of building "a society that differs in many respects from what we brought
with us from the past. As believers, setting out from our respective
convictions, we can offer an important witness in many key areas of life in
society", such as "the protection of the family based on marriage, respect
for life in every phase of its natural course or the promotion of greater
social justice".
At the end of the meeting the Pope travelled to Berlin airport where, at
10 a.m., he boarded a plane to travel to Erfurt".
PV-GERMANY/ VIS 20110923
(580)
FAITH THOUGHT OUT AND LIVED AFRESH WILL SAVE CHRISTIANITY
VATICAN CITY, 23 SEP 2011 (VIS) - Following a brief visit to the cathedral
in Erfurt, the Holy Father travelled by car to the city's ancient
Augustinian convent where he met with the German Evangelical Church Council.
The German Evangelical Church, a union of twenty-two Lutheran Churches, has
more than 24 million faithful, around 30 percent of the population.
Benedict XVI was greeted on arrival by Pastor Nikolaus Schneider,
president of the German Evangelical Church, and by Bishop Ilse Junkermann of
the Evangelical Church of Thuringia. They accompanied him to the main hall,
the only building in the convent to have remained unchanged since the time
Martin Luther was a monk there.
The Pope spoke of the emotion he felt, as Bishop of Rome, on finding
himself in the place where Martin Luther had studied theology and been
ordained a priest in 1507. "The question of God", he said, was Luther's
"deep passion", the "driving force of his whole life's journey. 'How do I
receive the grace of God?': this question struck him in the heart and lay at
the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle".
"'How do I receive the grace of God?' The fact that this question was the
driving force of his whole life never ceases to make an impression on me",
the Holy Father went on. "For who is actually concerned about this today,
even among Christians? ... Most people today, even Christians, set out from
the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and
virtues. ... Nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is
bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately He mercifully overlooks our
small failings. But are they really so small, our failings? Is not the world
laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small? ...
Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, ... the growing readiness
to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious
motivation?"
"If love for God and godly love of neighbour - of His creatures, of men
and women - were more alive in us", hunger and poverty would not so
devastate the world, said the Pope. Thus, "evil is no small matter. Were we
truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful.
The question: what is God's position towards me, where do I stand before
God? - this burning question of Martin Luther - must once more, doubtless in
a new form, become our question too. ... This God has a face, and He has
spoken to us. He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ".
Faith: the strongest force for ecumenism
Faith in Christ must be the starting point for ecumenism. "The first and
most important thing for ecumenism is that we keep in view just how much we
have in common, not losing sight of it amid the pressure towards
secularisation - everything that makes us Christian in the first place and
continues to be our gift and our task. It was the error of the Reformation
period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we
failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great
deposit of Sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. The great
ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of
all this common ground and that we acknowledge it as ... our undying
foundation".
However two phenomena endanger this communion. Firstly, "a new form of
Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism,
sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often
seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional
depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little
stability. This worldwide phenomenon poses a question to us all: ... the
question about what has enduring validity and what can or must be changed -
the question of our fundamental faith choice".
The second phenomenon is "the secularised context of the world in which we
Christians today have to live and bear witness to our faith. God is
increasingly being driven out of our society, and the history of revelation
that Scripture recounts to us seems locked into an ever more remote past".
For this reason "faith today has to be thought out afresh, and above all
lived afresh, so that it is suited to the present day. Yet it is not by
watering the faith down, but by living it today in its fullness that we
achieve this. This is a key ecumenical task. Moreover, we should help one
another to develop a deeper and more lively faith. It is not strategy that
saves us and saves Christianity, but faith - thought out and lived afresh;
through such faith, Christ enters this world of ours, and with Him, the
living God. ... Faith that is lived from deep within amid a secularised
world is the most powerful ecumenical force that brings us together, guiding
us towards unity in the one Lord".
At the end of his address, Benedict XVI moved on to the church of the
convent where he participated in an ecumenical celebration with 300 people,
including representatives from other German Protestant Churches.
PV-GERMANY/ VIS 20110923
(900)
SHARED ECUMENICAL TASK: BEARING WITNESS TO THE LIVING GOD
VATICAN CITY, 23 SEP 2011 (VIS) - At midday today Benedict XVI participated
in an ecumenical celebration held at the church of the ancient Augustinian
convent in Erfurt. During the ceremony, which was attended by some 300
people, Katrin G. Eickhardt, president of the Synod of the German
Evangelical Church, pronounced a greeting, and Evangelical Bishop Friedrich
Weber read out Martin Luther's German translation of Psalm 146. The Pope
prayed for Christian unity and Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the
Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, read the High Priestly Prayer of
Jesus from the Gospel of St. John. The Holy Father then pronounced a homily,
extracts of which are given below.
"'I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will
believe in me through them'. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke
these words to the Father in the Upper Room. ... In the prayer of Jesus we
find the very heart of our unity. We will become one if we allow ourselves
to be drawn into this prayer".
"Did Jesus' prayer go unheard? The history of Christianity is in some
sense the visible element of this drama in which Christ strives and suffers
with us human beings. Ever anew He must endure the rejection of unity, yet
ever anew unity takes place with Him and thus with the Triune God. ... For
this reason, in an ecumenical gathering, we ought not only to regret our
divisions and separations, but we should also give thanks to God for all the
elements of unity which He has preserved for us and bestows on us ever anew.
And this gratitude must be at the same time a resolve not to lose, at a time
of temptations and perils, the unity thus bestowed.
"Our fundamental unity comes from the fact that we believe in God. ... And
that we confess that He is the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The
highest unity is not the solitude of a monad, but rather a unity born of
love. We believe in God - the real God. We believe that God spoke to us and
became one of us. To bear witness to this living God is our common task at
the present time.
"A thirst for the infinite is indelibly present in human beings. Man was
created to have a relationship with God; we need Him. Our primary ecumenical
service at this hour must be to bear common witness to the presence of the
living God and in this way to give the world the answer which it needs.
Naturally, an absolutely central part of this fundamental witness to God is
a witness to Jesus Christ, true man and true God, Who lived in our midst,
suffered and died for us and, in His resurrection, flung open the gates of
death. Dear friends, let us strengthen one another in this faith! This is a
great ecumenical task which leads us into the heart of Jesus' prayer.
"The seriousness of our faith in God is shown by the way we live His word.
In our own day, it is shown in a very practical way by our commitment ... to
man. We live at a time of uncertainty about what it means to be human.
Ethics are being replaced by a calculation of consequences. In the face of
this, we as Christians must defend the inviolable dignity of human beings
from conception to death - from issues of prenatal diagnosis to the question
of euthanasia. ... Faith in God must take concrete form in a common defence
of man. To this defence of man belong not only these fundamental criteria of
what it means to be human, but above all and very specifically, love, as
Jesus taught us in the account of the Final Judgement: God will judge us on
how we respond to our neighbour, to the least of his brethren. Readiness to
help, amid the needs of the present time and beyond our immediate circle, is
an essential task of the Christian.
"This is true first and foremost in our personal lives as individuals. It
also holds true in our community, as a people and a State in which we must
all be responsible for one another. It holds true for our continent, in
which we are called to European solidarity. Finally, it is true beyond all
frontiers: today Christian love of neighbour also calls for commitment to
justice throughout the world".
"Prior to the Pope's visit there was some talk of an 'ecumenical gift'
which was expected from this visit. There is no need for me to specify the
gifts mentioned in this context. Here I would only say that this reflects a
political misreading of faith and of ecumenism. In general, when a head of
State visits a friendly country, contacts between the various parties take
place beforehand to arrange one or more agreements between the two States:
by weighing respective benefits and drawbacks a compromise is reached which
in the end appears beneficial for both parties, so that a treaty can then be
signed. But the faith of Christians does not rest on such a weighing of
benefits and drawbacks. A self-made faith is worthless. Faith is not
something we work out intellectually or negotiate between us. It is the
foundation for our lives. Unity grows not by the weighing of benefits and
drawbacks but only by entering ever more deeply into the faith in our
thoughts and in our lives.
"In the past fifty years, and especially after the visit of John Paul II
some thirty years ago, we have drawn much closer together. ... To all those
engaged in that process ... I wish to express my deep gratitude. ...
Together we can only thank the Lord for the paths of unity on which He has
led us, and unite ourselves in humble trust to this prayer: Grant that we
may all be one, as you are one with the Father, so that the world may
believe that He has sent you".
The meeting closed with all those present praying the Our Father together,
after which Pastor Nikolaus Schneider pronounced a blessing after the manner
of Aaron and the Pope gave his blessing in the Trinitarian form.
PV-GERMANY/ VIS 20110923
(1060)
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