Utopian rhetoric
While visiting the Evangelical Lutheran church of Rome on November 15, 2015, Pope Francis declared that despite the doctrinal differences between Lutherans and Catholics, the hour for “reconciled diversity” had arrived. This oxymoron recalls the “differentiated consensus” that made it possible to sign a Joint Declaration on the doctrine of justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church in Augsburg, Germany, on October 31, 1999. In this way, therefore, we will have from now on a “diversified reconciliation” thanks to the “consensual differences” achieved in the final years of the last century.
The oxymoron allows those who use it to emancipate themselves from reality, which is governed by the principle of non-contradiction. Thanks to this rhetorical figure of speech everything is possible: the difference becomes the consensus and diversity turns into reconciliation. But all this is possible only rhetorically, because in reality the facts stubbornly persist as they are. Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, while for Lutherans the bread and wine remain bread and wine.
While waiting for a true conversion, some will try to make us believe—“eyes fixed on an illusion”, as Saint Pius X used to say—that through the grace of conciliar ecumenism the divergences become convergences, that parallel lines will end by intersecting, and that deep down Luther was a child of Mary.
Father Alain Lorans
From Rome
Pope Francis visits Evangelical Lutheran church in Rome
Behind the revelations about financial scandals in the Vatican…
Contrasting Reactions to the Synod
The Church in the world
France: Paris terror attacks, from compassion to reality
Holy Land: 100th anniversary of the death of Charles de Foucauld
News from Tradition
France: Pictures from Pilgrimage to Lourdes (October 25-27, 2015)
Upcoming events
USA: 4th Annual Pascua Florida Pilgrimage (March 29 till April 03, 2016)
USA : Ordinations to the Diaconate (November 28, 2015)
Document
Download
