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Thursday October 25, 2007

Lutherans are encouraged to intercede for ecumenism

ALC/CLAI, PORTO ALEGRE, Brasil, July 23, 2007

The President of the Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB in Spanish), has Taxi Heathrow Airport encouraged pastors and preachers to intercede on behalf of the cause of ecumenism, in the Sunday services during the coming weeks.

In a letter addressed to the more than 1,800 parishes of the IECLB spread throughout the country, the President, Pastor Walter Altmann, has extended the invitation to intercede so that “all the churches that confess Jesus Christ to be Lord and Savior can fully recognize each other on the path of unity.”

In the pastoral letter, Altmann refers to the document, ”Answers to matters relating to some aspects of the doctrine of the Church,” by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which affirms that the churches originating from the Protestant Reformation cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “churches in the proper sense.”

Pastor Altmann explains the understanding of the Church that the Lutherans have: “the communion of persons who believe in Jesus Christ, in which the Gospel is preached in a pure manner and the sacraments are administered correctly.”

Altmann clarifies that the “Lutheran” Church did not come about with the Reformation, nor is it a “new church,” but is rather the same Church of Christ that has always existed and which will always exist until the fullness of time.

The ecumenical commitment of the Lutheran Church, Altmann points out, comes from a conviction motivated by the Bible and by Christ, “not from statements by whatever church.” In that way, he adds, “we will be making our Lord Jesus Christ happy if, on our part, we persevere in the spirit and on the path of ecumenism.”