POPE BENEDICT XVI has said that the key to closer relations between the Christian churches lies in facing the challenge of growing secularisation, not “watering down the faith”.
On the third day of his official visit to Germany, with the focus on ecumenism, the Pope said he “never ceases to be impressed” by Reformation leader Martin Luther’s life and faith and praised the continued relevance of his teachings.
The German Pontiff was speaking at a meeting with Lutheran church leaders in the former monastery in Erfurt where, 500 years ago, Martin Luther studied theology and was ordained a priest.
“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,” said the Pope. “Are we to yield to the pressure of secularisation, and become modern by watering down the faith?”
He acknowledged the need for fresh, contemporary thinking.
“Yet it is not by watering the faith down, but by living it today in its fullness that we achieve this,” he said.
He urged members of both churches to concentrate on what unites rather than divides them to tackle the “frightening” spread of fundamentalist Christianity.
Before the meeting he drew attention to continued differences between the churches, defending “the inviolable dignity of human beings from conception to death” from procedures such as prenatal diagnosis of embryos.
As he spoke, Germany’s upper house in Berlin passed legislation permitting such treatment – something backed by many in Germany’s Lutheran Church.
Expectations had grown ahead of the meeting of progress in healing a division, ahead of the 500th centenary of the Reformation in 2017.
German politicians in particular had called for agreement on how to deal with mixed marriages and joint eucharistic services.
The Pope said he was aware of these expectations but said they represented a “misreading of faith and of ecumenism”.
After the meeting Bishop Nikolaus Schneider, head of Germany’s Lutheran Church (EKD) said hearts in his church “burned for more” progress, particularly on the issue of inter-faith marriages.
“Eucharistic community should be possible in the foreseeable future, that is something I put out to him in those terms,” he said.
“This is a topic we have been dealing with for quite some time and I have to admit that sometimes it is a bit of a nuisance as well and given that it is such a pressing issue I had to raise it.”
There was neither surprise nor disappointment after the meeting among people in Erfurt, where just 8 per cent of the population is baptised – a legacy of the East German communist regime.
“The Pope needs to know, though, that we are living real ecumenism,” said Anna Rademacher, a local Catholic woman. “We Christians are a minority here, we’ve always had to stand together to survive.”
The church leaders headed an ecumenical service yesterday afternoon in Erfurt attended by, among others, Chancellor Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor.
“The fact that this service happened is in itself a recognition of ecumenism,” she said.
In the evening the Pope celebrated vespers with some 90,000 people in Eichsfeld, a former Catholic enclave in East Germany.
Earlier, he met Muslim leaders and called for “mutual respect on the basis inalienable values . . . in particular the inviolable dignity of every single person”.
Mr Aiman Mazyek, the chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, welcomed the meeting.
“My impression was that the Pope wants to launch a new era of dialogue with Muslims,” he said.