Vatican prefect thanks Spanish priests for dedication during pandemic

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. / Nickolay Vinokurov via www.shutterstock.com.

Maynooth, Ireland, Mar 9, 2022 / 12:10 pm (CNA).
Irish Catholic bishops have appealed to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to support a ceasef… […]

CNA Staff, Nov 9, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops’ conference, reaffirmed Sunday his view that intercommunion with Protestants should be possible, despite Vatican objections.

He made the comment in a Nov. 8 message to the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).

“The community in faith, which is already ecumenically visible in many ways, aims at a unity that will also be able to be experienced as a communion in the Eucharistic and the Lord’s Supper,” Bätzing wrote in the message.

He said he considered it “good” that a document produced by the Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (ÖAK), called “Together at the Lord’s Table,” had “rekindled the debate on the remaining open questions on the way” to what the paper calls “reciprocal Eucharistic hospitality” between Catholics and Protestants.

As CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German language news partner, reported, Bätzing continued: “I will undertake every effort in the bishops’ conference and also in dialogue with Rome to ensure that an intensive discourse is held on this issue and that the findings of the ecumenical dialogues are examined and acted upon.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said in September that the proposal made in “Together at the Lord’s Table,” issued in September 2019, did not do justice to the Catholic understanding of the Church, the Eucharist, and Holy Orders.

The 57-page text advocated “reciprocal Eucharistic hospitality” between Catholics and Protestants, based on previous ecumenical agreements on the Eucharist and ministry. In response, the CDF issued a letter Sept. 18, signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The letter was accompanied by a four-page doctrinal note raising a number of theological concerns. The CDF said that Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops, had requested a doctrinal assessment of the document in May. It noted that the German bishops had discussed the text at their plenary meeting that month in Mainz.

The CDF letter said: “The question of the unity of the Eucharist and the Church, in which the Eucharist presupposes and brings about unity with the communion of the Church and her faith with the pope and the bishops, is undervalued in the aforementioned document.”

“Essential theological and indispensable insights of the Eucharistic theology of the Second Vatican Council, which are widely shared with the Orthodox tradition, have unfortunately not been adequately reflected in the text.”

Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said in an interview in September that he believed that the pope backed the intervention by the Vatican’s doctrinal office.

“I have also heard from other sources that the pope has expressed his concern in personal conversations,” Koch said, explaining that he was not referring simply to the question of intercommunion. 

“Not only, but about the situation of the Church in Germany in general,” he said, noting that Pope Francis addressed a long letter to German Catholics in June 2019.

CNA Deutsch reported that the ÖAK adopted the intercommunion document under the co-chairmanship of Bätzing and the retired Lutheran Bishop Martin Hein.

It added that Bätzing announced recently that the text’s recommendations would be put into practice at the Ecumenical Church Congress in Frankfurt in May 2021.

The ÖAK was founded in 1946 to strengthen ecumenical ties. It is independent of both the German Catholic bishops’ conference and the EKD, an organization representing 20 Protestant groups, but it informs both bodies about its deliberations.

The doctrinal congregation emphasized that significant differences in understanding of the Eucharist and ministry remained between Protestants and Catholics.

“The doctrinal differences are still so important that they currently rule out reciprocal participation in the Lord’s Supper and the Eucharist,” it said.

“The document cannot therefore serve as a guide for an individual decision of conscience about approaching the Eucharist.”

The CDF added that the ÖAK text should inspire further theological discussions. But it cautioned against any steps towards intercommunion.

“However, an opening of the Catholic Church towards Eucharistic meal fellowship with the member churches of the EKD in the current state of the theological discussion would necessarily open new rifts in ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox Churches, not only in Germany,” it said.

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Norcia, Italy, Jun 14, 2017 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It was God and beer sales that helped sustain the Benedictine monks of Norcia, and it is God and beer sales that will help them rebuild.

Last year, in August and again in October, strong earthquakes rocked the town of Norcia, Italy, killing hundreds of people and destroying the 14th century Basilica of St. Benedict, where the monks of Norcia dwelt.

Miraculously, their brewery, where they produce Birra Nursia, was mostly left intact.

The monks were forced to dwell in tents and cabins through a particularly cold Italian winter while they began rebuilding a new, earthquake-proof monastery in San Benedetto in Monte, just outside the walls of Norcia.

Now, the monks have announced a special project that will help them rebuild: Leffe, a Belgian brewery, has agreed to partner with the monks for a special edition brew, the proceeds of which will go directly to the monks’ new monastery.

“Leffe beer, one of the most highly prized beers of Belgium and brewed in the monastic tradition, launched a special limited-edition brew with Birra Nursia, our own beer, as a joint label with Leffe Blonde,” the monks announced online.

“While the two beers, Leffe and Birra Nursia, remain distinct, the Nursia name on the Leffe Blonde bottle signifies the shared commitment of the two breweries: to rebuild Norcia and bring hope to the tragedy-stricken region.”

The 100,000 bottles of the special edition brew will only be available for distribution in Italy, and will directly fund the new wooden chapel, “which is not just for the monks, but is open to all those thirsting after God,” the monks noted.

Leffe beer itself has monastic roots. Norbertine canons of the Leffe abbey had been brewing beer in the town for centuries, until the French revolution resulted in the abandonment and destruction of the brewery. In the 1950s, determined not to let the brewing tradition die, the abbey’s Father Abbot Nys met master brewer Albert Lootvoet, and an agreement was struck.

Shortly after, the Leffe brewery was back in full effect, today under the ownership of Anheuser-Busch InBev. Some of the proceeds of the beer still support the Leffe monastery.

For the Norcia monks, the wooden chapel is the first phase of a full reconstruction for the abbey. While it will be officially inaugurated in September, the monks already held a Mass of thanksgiving in the chapel on Pentecost, despite an unfinished roof.

“In this way, we remember: Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eum,” the monks said: “Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do the laborers build it.”

The monks said the whole experience has been a reminder that “in moments of tragedy when all seems lost, God calls us to trust that somewhere, somehow, good can come from it.

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