Newswise — A pair of documents representing years of collaboration, joint ministry and missioning between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches are getting their first public exposure as the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation approaches in 2017.

“From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017” and “Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry and Eucharist” are the product of half a century of Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogue seeking common ground and ecumenical touchstones to widen both Catholic and Protestant understandings of the historical Church, its ministry, and the Eucharist.

“It’s a story we tell together,” said the Rev. H. Ashley Hall, Ph.D., associate professor of historical theology at Creighton University and chaplain for Creighton’s Lutheran Campus Ministry. “It is a reconciling narrative that shows, after 50 years of talking and thinking about these issues, we have a lot more in common than we have differences. ‘The Declaration on the Way’ gestures beyond consensus to the hope of a full reconciliation of ministries and full communion, and we continue to make progress.”

Hall is also a delegate for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Round XII of the official bilateral dialogue with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

“Declaration on the Way” was released Oct. 30 after approval by the Council of Bishops of the ELCA, the Church Council of the ELCA, and the USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs. “From Conflict to Communion” has been circulating among both Catholic and Lutheran church leadership after the document’s approval by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation, a step also in the works for the “Declaration on the Way.”

Creighton Vice Provost for Mission and Ministry Eileen Burke-Sullivan, STD, said the advent of the documents is a promising sign, especially as it appears both originated at a grassroots level and have now garnered approval at the highest levels in the ELCA and the Catholic Church.

Burke-Sullivan, whose research interests run to the practice of ecumenism, said a noteworthy change in the pontificate of Pope Francis is a renewed willingness for local churches and dioceses to advocate for change and appeal to Rome to put forth official platforms based on what’s happening at that parish, diocesan, or national level.

“Rome is putting together a world picture, based on what’s happening not only in this country, but in other cultures — particularly Europe, in this case — and saying, ‘We are actually at this next step,’” Burke-Sullivan said. “With something as important as ecumenism, on the one hand, official teaching has to come from on high. But praxis, what’s happening on the ground, is what’s going to make it real. If those two processes can be put into a relationship, the whole thing moves much more rapidly. We have a history of something starting on the ground and getting squelched by Rome, or something starting at Rome and just dying on the vine but this particular set of dialogues has been enormously fruitful.”

Veterans and scholars of the dialogue from both Catholicism and Lutheranism helped to create, and an outside faction of disinterested observers helped to vet “Declaration on the Way.” From Hall’s position at Creighton, a Jesuit, Catholic university, he said there has been interest all along in maintaining an open dialogue on ecumenism. Burke-Sullivan agreed and said she’s hopeful Creighton might be able to help lead a dialogue on the two documents.

Liturgical practices between the ELCA and the Roman Catholic Church line up fairly consistently, she said, and the fact the second-largest religious denomination among students at Creighton is Lutheranism, she said, invites more common vocabulary into the dialogue.

“I’m really, incredibly heartened and enthusiastic about this,” Burke-Sullivan said. “While there are still some major questions, I think you could see some softening on the Roman Catholic side, some softening on the Lutheran side that would continue to see this dialogue move further down the path.”

For its part, Creighton welcomed two prominent Lutheran theologians over the past year in the Rev. Timothy Wengert, Ph.D., who spoke on the topic and provided insight on how Lutherans and Catholics together might celebrate the Reformation, and the Rev. William Rusch, D.Phil., who has spoken on Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism.

While divisive issues still endure, namely along the question of the ordination of women — the ELCA has ordained female clergy since the 1970s — and the institution of religious orders, generally, there continue to be more liturgical and doctrinal commonplaces than divisions.

Both Hall and Burke-Sullivan said the two documents, along with the approaching anniversary of the Reformation provide a good moment for both Catholics and Lutherans to think about their shared theological heritage and the ways each has complimented the other over half a millennium.

“This is a very big deal for both Lutherans and Catholics to look at the coming anniversary and say, ‘This is a worthy celebration and something we can commemorate together in a spirit of mutual repentance, reconciliation and affirmation,’” Hall said. “We talk about it as a journey on which our two paths have converged and even if the situation is such that we can’t share the Eucharistic table and ministry, we can continue to share so much in terms of liturgy and mission and tradition.”

Hall said the documents do not go so far as to immediately put Lutherans and Catholics into communion, but there are passages in the document making a feint toward allowing for particular instances of crossover, say in the extreme exigency of a person nearing death and needing to be communed.

“[‘Declaration on the Way’] builds on previous dialogues that have affirmed our shared understanding of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper,” Hall said. “Is there a way to transform this mutual affirmation and recognition into formal, institutional expressions of praying and worshiping together?”

Hall and Burke-Sullivan also point to Jesuit founder St. Ignatius of Loyola and Reformation leader Martin Luther — rough contemporaries in the late 15th to mid-16th centuries — along with the Jesuit Pope Francis, as providing touchstones for the dialogue at Creighton. Another 16th century Jesuit recently St. Peter Faber, was instrumental in preserving an ecumenical dialogue with Lutherans who had broken with Rome.

“There’s a lot of written history that the Jesuits preserved the Church by pulling it off the brink during the Reformation,” Burke-Sullivan said. “Peter Faber stood as a light to the method. He preferred not to be harsh or condemnatory, but to invite Lutherans into a dialogue, and to see where they were coming from, to find the common paths.”

Earlier this month, Pope Francis visited a Lutheran church in Rome to pray with Lutherans. The pope recommend Lutherans and Catholics find ways to heal rifts and seek pardons and, in answer to a Lutheran woman’s question about being unable to receive communion with her Catholic husband, answered with an echo of Luther’s apocryphal words on his excommunication (“Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”) said: “It is a question that each person must answer for themselves. There is one baptism, one faith, one Lord, so talk to the Lord and move forward. I dare not, I cannot, say more.”

“While Francis brings a new tone to the papacy, the seeds of this idea were planted long ago with John XXIII and Paul VI and Pope Benedict XVI helped preserve the joint declaration and paved the way for substantive talks about theology, history and biblical scholarship,” Hall said. “Pope Francis is encouraging this, too, because he understands ecumenism doesn’t ignore what the differences are, but shows us more of what we hold in common.”

The two Creighton theologians said the continuing dialogue heartens and proves, in its way, higher powers are certainly at work.

“This is being driven by the Holy Spirit, I firmly believe that,” Burke-Sullivan said. “It’s in the spirit of what Jesus Christ said in John 17: ‘I pray that they may all be one.’ That is the guiding light here.”

Said Hall: “The trope is that Christians fight too easily. Here’s an area where we’re coming together. As we come to know more about our own commonality and share a dialogue, we are working together with our sisters and brothers in Christ.”