“This is an important moment in the life of CEC,” the group’s president, Jean-Arnold de Clermont, said of the call by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I, a spiritual leader who represents Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
In a July 19 address to the 15-21 July CEC assembly in Lyon, France, the patriarch said that a grouping of all main Christian traditions in Europe would enable them to act jointly on continental issues such as secularization, human rights violations, racism, the economic crisis, and threats to the environment.
Bartholomeos was speaking at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of CEC, which was founded at the height of the Cold War to provide a bridge between churches in the east and west of Europe.
Speaking at a media conference on July 20, de Clermont said there needs to be “a voice of all the Christians in Europe.” He believed that the patriarch’s appeal challenged not only the Catholic Church but also whether in CEC, “we are open to such collaboration.”
De Clermont, a French Protestant pastor, said CEC and the Council of European (Catholic) Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) need to reflect together, “on how we can say yes to such a challenge.”
Also on July 20, the 300 delegates at the once-every-six-years assembly, agreed to the appointment of 40 members to make up the group’s main governing body, its central committee. The committee now consists of 17 women and 23 men, of whom 12 are lay people and 28 ordained, and six are young people.
The central committee will elect a new president and executive committee for CEC at its first main meeting, which is likely to be in December 2009.
Bishop Martin Schindehütte of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) said he supported closer institutional cooperation between the Catholic Church and other churches in Europe.
“This is an important aim, and one we see as possible as far as we are concerned,” Schindehütte told the German Protestant news agency epd. Still, the Vatican’s understanding of what a church is presents an enormous obstacle to such cooperation, Schindehütte added. According to Catholic statements, Protestant denominations are not churches, “in the proper sense.”
