BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
18/11/2009
Cardinal points to true 'enemies' of believers
Cardinal Walter Kasper: "Our enemies today are not other confessions, but secularism and godlessness"
MINSK, Belarus (Zenit.org): The head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has affirmed that the enemies of believers are secularism and godlessness, not members of other faiths.
Cardinal Walter Kasper said this on Nov-ember 10 during a meeting with the bishops' conference of Belarus.
Cardinal Kasper was visiting at the invitation of Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk.
Along with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington, the Vatican official participated in a conference on Christian-Jewish dialogue that ended on November 11.
On the day of his arrival, Cardinal Kasper gave the homily in an opening Mass, in which he recalled that this was his second visit to Minsk, his first taking place on December 14-18, 2002.
He affirmed that he visited "the Belarusian capital to meet with the Most Reverend Metropolitan Filaret and lecturers of the Institute of Theology of Belarusian State University".
"We already became good friends as we are guided by the same objective: to work together in order to reach full communion of the Catholic and the Orthodox Church," Cardinal Kasper said.
In his meeting with the Catholic bishops' conference, Cardinal Kasper said: "We need to listen to other people, change our way of thinking and hearts. Only then will it be the true ecumenism."
He described three columns of ecumenism: dialogue with the Orthodox Church, dialogue with Protestant communities - such as that with the Anglicans that has been recently furthered by the document on those wishing to enter the Catholic Church - and working with new movements in the Church.
"Our enemies today are not other confessions, but secularism and godlessness," he said.
"This is why we need a joint answer to the challenges of the present."
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