Karl Lehmann

I believe that Orthodoxy has been thinking lately, and despite other impressions, that we can’t have full sacramental communion if we don’t first have a fundamental agreement on the question of the primacy, that still isn’t there.

There’s always the tendency to transform the Church into an ethical agency, and of measuring the Church by the yardstick of social and cultural utility.

The Synod of Bishops has existed for forty years. In that long span of time it has been for all of us a good school for introducing us to the universal dimension of the Church.

Common participation in the Eucharist can only be a final outcome of ecumenic dialogue, not the starting point.

Christians who have influence in political life must feel as individuals responsibility in front of their own faith. And the duty of encouraging laws that are not in contradiction with the Commandments comes within the mission of the Church.

But when one identifies the Church with a cultural and political bloc, there is the danger of making difficult the Church’s contact with all those outside the bloc.

The interest in the supernatural in a very generic sense and in the spiritual is not in itself a factor that helps the communication of the Christian faith.

For the future, I would suggest avoiding subjects of too vast a scale. It would be useful to make out a list of fundamental questions on the matter to be dealt with, and discuss only those.

The mission proper to the Church is that of proclaiming the Gospel.