Go now to Cody in Albuquerque, New Mexico, listening on Immaculate Heart Radio. Cody,
what's your question for Jimmy? Hello, first of all I just want to extend my
welcome to the new guest, I forget your name but welcome to the job. Oh that's me, Cy.
Yeah. New host. Yeah. Right. Oh really? Yeah, I'm an old guest.
Are you the one who hosted The Bright Side? I did, yes I did indeed, thank you. Wow, I'm
very impressed. Your knowledge is impressive. He's an Immaculate Heart
listener in New Mexico. Yeah. I'm blind, all I do is listen.
Well all I do is talk, so we go together well. What's your question for
Jimmy? Okay, I'm curious about what the...how
close the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church are, in particular, to
coming into full communion with one another. I've read some articles recently that suggest
that there is still a lot of work to do, I mean, I know the course the Lutheran
Church has invalid, you know, sacraments such as Communion, but I do
realize that we have a lot in common with them. Their services are
very similar to the Mass; I know that because I've been to many Lutheran
services, and I'm just curious because from what I'm
reading, there's not much... there isn't much difference between the
two and I'm curious how we are. Okay. So there are differences between the two.
Now after...at the time of Vatican II and shortly after, there was a lot of
speculation about some kind of imminent reunion with Lutherans. There were
Catholic theologians, including Joseph Ratzinger,
who suggested that if you had a proper reading of the Lutheran Augsburg
Confession, that it wouldn't be a problem, that you could be in union with with the
Catholic Church. And so there was discussion of "Hey, maybe it would be
possible to kind of create a Lutheran rite of the Catholic Church, where
they'd have a properly Catholic theological understanding of various
issues, but still have their own form of tradition in terms of how they
lived out the Christian life." So not unlike the way we now have an Anglican
use in the Catholic Church. So there was a big hope for that at the time, but
reality settled in, and it realized, "No, we're not that close, we can't reunite
imminently," and unfortunately the record since then has been mixed. There's been a
lot of ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans, and we've grown
closer in some ways; for example, probably the most famous thing in that regard is
the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, where
we professed a very similar pair of understandings of how justification
works. We don't agree on absolutely every point, but we're much closer than was
commonly recognized, even a few decades ago. And so there's been a convergence in
that respect, but there's also been divergence since the Second Vatican
Council, in particular because, among other things, Lutherans have accepted
female clergy. And that creates a problem for reconciliation with the Catholic
Church that didn't exist back at the time of the Second Vatican Council. So in
some ways, we've grown closer, in some ways we've grown farther apart; don't
expect it to happen next week or even in our lifetimes, but hopefully some day, and,
you know, it might take a century or two, it might take longer, it may not happen
before Jesus gets here; but eventually when Jesus gets here, all Christians will
be reunited. Yeah the reason I was curious is because I'm actually--I
have a very positive relationship with a Lutheran Church in my hometown. They know
I'm Catholic and they know I don't take Communion with them, they're very respectful; but
I knew them before I became a Catholic, and I'm a musician so occasionally I go
Sunday mornings to play with them in their music ministry after Mass. And I
was, I mean, I would ultimately--I would look forward to seeing the day we can all
share Communion with one other, but-- Right. Well that's probably how it's going to happen,
by befriending one another, right? You think? That's part of the process.
Cody, thank you so much.