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Cardinal Kasper Proposes a Synod With Orthodox
And an Alliance With Protestants to Defend Europe's Christian Roots

BARI, Italy, MAY 26, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican representative for ecumenism proposed a
synod of reconciliation to the Orthodox and an alliance with the offspring of the Protestant
Reformation to rediscover the Christian roots of Europe.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, made
the proposals Wednesday when addressing the Italian National Eucharistic Congress.

The cardinal was joined in the ceremony by Orthodox Archbishop Kirill of Yaroslavl and Rostov of
the Moscow Patriarchate, and Lutheran Bishop Eero Huovinen of Helsinki, Finland.

Cardinal Kasper began his address by recalling that in Bari a synod of Greek and Latin bishops
took place in 1098.

"Why not hope that here, in Bari, 1,000 years after the synod of 1098, in 2098 -- and why not
before? We might again celebrate a synod of Greek and Latin bishops, a synod of reconciliation,"
he said.

"I am profoundly convinced that, after the great efforts and important steps taken by John Paul II,
the new Pope Benedict XVI will smooth and open the way for such a prospect," the cardinal
added.

Threatened by secularism

Cardinal Kasper acknowledged that Orthodox and Catholics are "heirs of a common European
culture and we have the same ethical values, which are essentially for the good of our societies
and their people."

"But those values are seriously threatened, both by the secularism in Western Europe as well as
the profound lacerations caused in Eastern Europe by 40 or 70 years of propaganda and atheistic
education," he observed.

"What can be more obvious or urgent than, as the next step in the long road toward full
communion, we form an alliance to rediscover the Christian roots of Europe?" the Vatican official
asked.

He described such an alliance as designed "to help one another mutually in favor of common
values, of a culture of life, of the dignity of the person, of solidarity and social justice, of peace
and the safeguarding of creation."
[Commentary: If the Orthodox enter into such an alliance for such
purposes they will be relinquishing their long-held belief that dogma and
ethos cannot be separated and that what must first be overcome are the
dogmatic diversions and perversions that have been embraced in the
West. This alliance will only further the purpose of transforming the
Church from a theanthropic organism which is not of this world into a
humanistic organizaion which has the purpose of serving this world. And
it will not only not help the heterodox realize their errors and come to
acquire a "good uneasiness, it will increase their sense of self-
sufficiency and block their path to repentance.]

Cardinal Kasper also presented this "alliance" to Protestant brothers who face this same
challenge.

In addition, he addressed the question of the Petrine ministry, of the Bishop of Rome, which is
one of the difficulties for progress toward full unity.

In this connection, the cardinal echoed John Paul II's proposal in the 1995 encyclical "Ut Unum
Sint" "to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential
to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation."

"What is impeding us from starting today, here in Bari, to discuss this proposal?" the cardinal
asked those present. "Why not reflect together on an osmosis between the principle of synodality
and collegiality and the Petrine principle, which, precisely in past weeks, has shown its spiritual
strength?"