Evangelizing Ecumenism?
The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity now has a new president; Cardinal Kaspar has been replaced by Bishop Koch, until now bishop of Basel. At the same time, a Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization has been created; it will be directed by Archbishop Fisichella, formerly president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. Vaticanists are buzzing about these promotions, trying to predict how the just-nominated new presidents will govern.
More seriously, it is important to ask how these two pontifical councils will coexist at the heart of the Roman curia. How will the ecumenical dialogue of the one and the evangelical preaching of the other be coordinated? Can openness to all Christian confessions be reconciled with the battle against religious indifference caused, to no small degree, by the scattershot/omnilateral ecumenical dialogue of the last fifty years? Evangelizing ecumenism (or ecumenical evangelization) is the sort of mission that can be entrusted not to a Catholic preacher, but to a pyromaniac fireman.
Abbé Alain Lorans
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