A progressive ecumenist at the Vatican

Christian Century, March 21, 2001

Walter Kasper, a relatively progressive German cardinal, has been appointed head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Vatican's ecumenical department. The March 3 announcement followed the expected retirement of Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, the 76-year-old Australian who has directed the council since 1989.

Kasper, 68, has served as the pontifical council's secretary for two years. In January Bishop Kasper was named to the College of Cardinals. His newest appointment was warmly welcomed by leading Protestant officials.

From 1961 to 1964, Walter Kasper was assistant to Hans Kung at the University of Tubingen, and from 1970 to 1989 he was professor of dogmatic theology. In 1979 he was chosen by the Vatican as one of a dozen Catholic theologians to sit on the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission. In 1989 he was appointed bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and five years later was named co-chairman of the Lutheran-Catholic Commission on Unity.

Cardinal Kasper is widely regarded as progressive in his views. On the day after the pope announced the new cardinals, including Kasper, a Catholic magazine in Austria published an interview in which Kasper expressed doubts about the presentation and interpretation last year of a controversial Vatican document, Dominus Iesus. Signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the document stated that the churches which grew out of the Reformation were not in fact "churches in the proper sense."

"That affirmation offended other people," Kasper told Die Furche, "and if my friends are offended, then so am I. It's an unfortunate affirmation --clumsy and ambiguous." He added that the section of Dominus Iesus on the Protestant churches was written in "abstract, doctrinaire language, which in some ways excludes [others]. The tone is not appropriate." --ENI