That all may be one

Ecumenism is more important than ever now, Cardinal Anders Arborelius tells Greg Daly

“We were of course very honoured and happy that the Holy Father could come here, and I think this has some historical reasons,” Cardinal Anders Arborelius tells The Irish Catholic of Pope Francis’ decision to visit the Swedish city of Lund last October 31 at the start of the year that marked half a millennium since Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation.

Explaining how the Lutheran World Federation was founded in Lund 50 years ago, the cardinal – the first native-born Swedish cardinal, and only the second native-born Swede to be ordained bishop since the Reformation – says the Finnish and Swedish Lutheran Churches have liturgical and other similarities to the Catholic Church.

“You can find many things that you won’t find in the Lutheran church in Germany – for instance – and I’ve also heard that in Germany it would be a bit delicate for the Pope to come to commemorate the Reformation,” he says.

Delicacy

There was no such delicacy in Sweden. “He was very well received from everyone from the king down to the people in the streets,” he says, noting the clear happiness the Lutherans felt about the papal visit, “and for the Catholics it was really something very special especially because we could celebrate holy mass with the Holy Father”.

Not, of course, that the visit had come out of the blue.

“We had a very good relationship between John Paul and the former Lutheran archbishop here, and a history of a long and fruitful dialogue,” the cardinal observes, adding, “I think it’s also very realistic because we know that there are differences in doctrine and ethical questions,  but we have always tried to co-operate in those areas where we have no difficulties.  Swedes are very pragmatic people, you see.  If we cannot speak about somethings when we know the differences are there, we try to concentrate on issues where we have something in common.”

Repeating that the doctrinal and ethical differences between the two Churches are well-known, he highlights two key areas of effective cooperation. “The field of spirituality – that has been very obvious in Sweden, where  many Lutherans adopt  the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola and they are also very open to classical Carmelite and monastic spirituality – and then for instance on the issues of migrants and refugees,  and social issues,” he says.

Sweden’s Lutherans even have a small but distinct group who claim to have a Catholic faith within the Church of Sweden, he adds, with this – and not simply ‘the Lutheran Church’ – being the name of the state church. “It’s more a national church than a confessional church, he says.

Three years before the ecumenical gathering in Lund, the joint document From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 was published, mapping out a common path for commemoration and drawing together the world’s many distinct Lutheran groupings. Had the ecumenical project served to help bind the Lutherans themselves together?

“Well I think so,” the cardinal says, adding, “and of course there are no real doctrinal issues taken up – it’s more about how shall we try to dialogue, and  I think that in that way it can be accepted by all groups within the Lutheran church.”

The cardinal was in fact born into a Lutheran family, not becoming a Catholic until he was 20. Despite this, the development of Catholic-Lutheran relations over recent decades do not seem unusually moving for him.

“I was not a very good and active Lutheran,” he explains, continuing, “I have to admit that during my childhood and youth I was never very active in the church. I was a believer – it’s like that in Sweden – most Lutherans are not very active churchgoers.  Of course society at that time was imbued by the Lutheran Church that was the established church we had catechism at school and prayer so of course I was in a way influenced.”

Although there had been Lutheran pastors on both sides of his family tree, his own parents rarely went to church, he continues. “Secularisation came early in the 20th century to Sweden, so it was very rare in my childhood or youth that people would go to church.”

While describing Catholic-Lutheran ecumenism as “a very slow process”, he notes that one of the effects of Sweden’s secular character, he says, is that it pushes Christians of all sorts to cooperate because there are so few of them left.

“I would say that somehow those who believe – who are still Christians – we have to  do what we can in order to work together and pray together and somehow we have to accept that there are different outlooks and different traditions among the other churches,” he says. Adding that it remains a source of disquiet for Lutherans that Catholics and Lutherans cannot share Communion, he says “we have to calm them down”.

Describing this kind of common solidarity – as much as possible – as “realistic”, and noting that it is more multilateral than bilateral, involving as it does a range of Christian churches, he acknowledges that this ‘ecumenism of necessity’ in a sense parallels the far more dramatic and alarming ‘ecumenism of blood’ that is a reality among the Christians being persecuted in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Sweden, he says, “has become a safe haven for Christians from the Middle East”, and that with large numbers of Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean Christians in the country, “martyrdom has become also very present for many Christians in Sweden thanks to these immigrants from those parts of the world”.

Recalling the diversity of Sweden’s own Catholic community – in many respects an immigrant Church, immigration has dramatically boosted Catholic numbers in Sweden of late – the cardinal recalls that solidarity among Christians worldwide was at the heart  of the ecumenical commemoration last October.

“I was struck that in the common service in the cathedral in Lund, the Holy Father and the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation spoke in Spanish,” he says, adding that Dr Martin Junge was raised in Chile

“Somehow I think we realised that in our global world ecumenism is more important than ever especially when we think about the situation of the persecuted believers in so many parts of the world,” he says.