Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, asks dialogue partners if an ecumenical catechism might work:

A Vatican official has floated the idea of a shared “ecumenical catechism” as one of the potential fruits of 40 years of dialogue among Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and members of the Reformed churches.

“We have affirmed our common foundation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity as expressed in our common creed and in the doctrine of the first ecumenical councils,” Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told representatives of the churches.

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He said the members of his council “proposed an ecumenical catechism that would be written in consultation with our partners,” but “we do not yet have any idea how such a catechism could be structured and written.”

One thing for sure, he said, is that there is a need for “an ecumenism of basics that identifies, reinforces and deepens the common foundation” of faith in Christ and belief in the tenets of the creed. The churches may hold those positions officially, but if their members do not hold firmly to the basics of Christian faith, the dialogue cannot move forward, the cardinal said.

Cardinal Kasper, a theologian who will be 77 in March and has led the council for nine years, also said that ecumenical dialogue “is perhaps in danger of becoming a matter for specialists and thus of moving away from the grassroots.”

He called for “a people-centered ecumenism” that would support and give new energy to the theological dialogues.

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