Charter Oecumenica

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The Charter Oecumenica is a jointly presented document by the Conference of European Churches (CEC), a regional ecumenical organization , and the Council of European Bishops' Conferences ( CCEE ), a Roman Catholic organization , which provides guidelines for growing cooperation among the churches in Europe contains. It was commissioned by the Second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz in 1997 and developed in an eight-person working group in the following years. On April 22, 2001 (Sunday after Easter), the charter, which was initially written in German, was signed by the presidents of KEK and CCEE on the occasion of the European Ecumenical Meeting in Strasbourg .

content

The Charta Oecumenica cites basic ecumenical convictions and derives ecumenical self-commitments of the churches from them. It is based on the conviction that a church's commitment to ecumenism and membership in ecumenical organizations should be recognizable in the behavior of this church. The document names self-commitments in the behavior of the churches towards one another (points 2 to 6), towards society (points 7 to 9) and towards other religions and world views, especially Judaism and Islam (points 10 to 12).

In the encounter with Judaism, the undersigned undertake to “ oppose all forms of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism in church and society” and “to seek and intensify the dialogue with ... Jewish siblings at all levels”.

With regard to Islam, it is a matter of “ treating Muslims with appreciation” and “working with Muslims on common concerns”.

The Charta Oecumenica has no doctrinal-dogmatic or canonical-legal character. It sees itself as a letter to the member churches of KEK and CCEE, which are invited to make the above-mentioned voluntary commitments their own.

distribution

In various countries the Charta Oecumenica has been signed by churches or national church councils, or there are efforts to do so in the future. In Germany, this was done at the first Ecumenical Church Congress in Berlin in 2003 through the member churches of the Working Group of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK) . There the Charter Oecumenica was accepted and signed as a guiding perspective for ecumenical cooperation.

The ACK sees the implementation and specification of the charter as a central task for the churches and the ACK for the future. The Working Group of Christian Churches in Switzerland has also signed the Charter oecumenica.

literature

  • Viorel Ionita , Sarah Numico (eds.): Charta Oecumenica: A Text, a Process and a Dream of the Churches in Europe . WCC, Geneva 2003.
  • Antje Heider-Rottwilm: Charter Oecumenica - guidelines for growing cooperation among the churches in Europe . In: Kirchliches Jahrbuch 2001, Liefer 1, Gütersloh 2004, pp. 108–132.
  • Dietrich Pirson : Legal Implications of the Charter Oecumenica . In: Journal for Protestant Church Law 50 (2005), pp. 307–323.
  • Tim Noble, Ivana Noble, ME Brinkman, Bernd Jochen Hilberath (Eds.): Charting Churches in a Changing Europe: Charter Oecumenica and the Process of Ecumenical Encounter . Rodopi 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Note in the Leporello edition published by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria