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Pope Francis' encounter with a Lutheran community in Rome this weekend was his chance to advocate for greater unity among Christians, a theologian has reflected. “He was urging that, if we share so much, we should be ‘walking together’ … and we should be impatient for unity, so that we can share the Eucharist,” said Msgr. Paul McPartlan, the Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism at the Catholic University of America.
“We mustn’t just accept division and separation – it is not right that we should be divided, especially since we share one Baptism!” he told CNA in an e-mail interview. The Pope visited the Lutheran community Nov. 15, celebrating vespers with them and delivering a homily. He also answered questions from three people while there. Much of his message focused on the points in common between Catholics and Lutherans, and on the aim of unity among Christians. However, his response to Anke de Bernardinis, a Lutheran who is married to a Catholic, raised eyebrows in some circles. Anke, noting their happy and lengthy marriage and the regret of not being able to participate together in the Eucharist, asked, “What can we do to achieve, finally, communion on this point?” The Pope responded at length, saying, “It’s true that in a certain sense, to share means there aren’t differences between us, that we have the same doctrine – underscoring that word, a difficult word to understand — but I ask myself: but don’t we have the same Baptism? If we have the same Baptism, shouldn’t we be walking together?” adding that when Anke and her husband pray together, their baptism “grows, becomes stronger.”
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