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UNITY-KASPER Jan-23-2007 (410 words) xxxi
Cardinal: Education in Christian basics is needed for Christian unity
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- While the search for Christian unity may need some creative ideas for overcoming long-standing denominational differences, it definitely needs education aimed at shoring up the basics of Christian faith, said Cardinal Walter Kasper.
If ecumenism is based on unity in faith, then Christians must know and believe the faith they claim to share, said the cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
"How can you speak, for example, of justification by faith if there is no longer an awareness of God and of sin, an awareness that there is a need for forgiveness and redemption," the cardinal said at a Jan. 23 Vatican press conference.
The cardinal was presenting his "Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism" during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The handbook includes dozens of concrete suggestions for how Catholics individually and in groups can prepare spiritually for the gift of Christian unity.
Cardinal Kasper said "spiritual ecumenism," including prayer for the fulfillment of Christ's will that his disciples be one, must be accompanied by "fundamental ecumenism," a common Christian focus on the basics of faith.
Over the past half-century, he said, ecumenism has been based on a conviction that Christians who share the same faith in the triune God and in Jesus Christ as savior can and must build on their shared beliefs to find a way to overcome their divisions and unite fully in one faith.
Ecumenism assumed that "all Christians have this in common," he said. "Do they still? The question is important."
Cardinal Kasper said teaching the basics of the Christian faith is an essential part of ecumenism today, especially in the increasingly secularized countries of the West.
"We are in a situation where we must speak not only about what divides us, but especially about that which we should hold in common, to reinforce the foundations of our faith, concentrate on the essentials and give a common witness to the faith that unites us and that the world needs," he said.
Cardinal Kasper also told reporters that relations between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church "have improved" and there is "closer cooperation" between the Moscow Patriarchate and several Vatican offices.
But, he said, "at the moment nothing concrete is being planned" for "the possible and, for us, hoped-for meeting" of Pope Benedict XVI and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow.
END
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