Lutheran Minister: Pope Francis Told Me Protestants and Catholics Are ‘Very Close’ in How We ‘Worship’

Except for one small detail, Holiness! We have a sacrificing priesthood, confecting the Most Holy Eucharist. They have laymen playing dress up!

From LifeSiteNews

By Dr Maike Hickson
 
January 21, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – On January 10, Pope Francis granted a private audience to Reverend Michael Jonas, pastor of the Lutheran Evangelical Community in Rome. In a subsequent interview with the official website of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), evangelisch.de, Jonas reports on his conversation with the Pope, saying that the Pope “stressed” that “Catholics and Protestants are very close to one another in what they do in their public worship [Gottesdienst].”

He also reported that the Pope then referred to an incident where a Catholic priest helped a Lutheran minister in celebrating a liturgy of the word for his Lutheran community.

This interview with evangelisch.de had sparked interest both in German-speaking and English-speaking outlets.

The minister’s claim that the Pope told him that the Catholic Mass and a Lutheran worship service are very similar is causing a stir in some Catholic circles. The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Holy Eucharist and that during Mass there takes place an unbloody sacrifice of Our Lord. Lutherans, in general, however, do not believe in the Real Presence of Our Lord, nor in His unbloody sacrifice at Mass. Lutherans also do not pray for the Pope and the bishops of the Catholic Church, nor do they invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mother and of all the saints during their worship ceremony.

LifeSiteNews reached out to Reverend Jonas, asking him for confirmation of this earlier Evangelisch.de interview and for clarification concerning a passage of the evangelisch.de interview which seems to indicate that it was the Pope himself who had once helped out with the public worship of a Lutheran pastor in the north of Europe.

However, in response to LifeSite's request, Dr. Jonas clarified that the Pope told him that “he experienced [in the Baltics] that, from the side of the Catholics, one helped out Lutherans with their liturgy of the word.” That is to say, a Catholic priest helped out a Lutheran minister by presiding over a Lutheran liturgy of the word.

As the comments by Dr. Jonas indicate, this comment was made by Pope Francis in a positive sense and with respect to the closeness of Lutherans and Catholics in their public worship, rather than in a negative sense. The Pope has not “explicitly” said that he himself had once replaced a Lutheran minister, Jonas explained to LifeSiteNews, thereby correcting his earlier Evangelisch.de interview. Jonas says now from the way the Pope talked about this incident, it was not clear whether he himself performed that Lutheran liturgy of the word or, rather, another Catholic priest.

Dr. Jonas is the pastor of the same Lutheran Evangelical Community which Pope Francis had visited in November of 2015. During that visit, Pope Francis caused “controversy by appearing to suggest that a Lutheran wife of a Catholic husband could receive Holy Communion based on the fact that she is baptized and in accordance with her conscience,” in the words of Rome Correspondent Edward Pentin.

During a question and answer session at that meeting, a Lutheran woman had told the Pope that her husband and she cannot receive together Holy Communion because she is not Catholic. The Pope first answered with the words: “It’s a problem each must answer, but a pastor-friend once told me: 'We believe that the Lord is present there, he is present. You all believe that the Lord is present. And so what’s the difference?' — 'Eh, there are explanations, interpretations.' Life is bigger than explanations and interpretations. Always refer back to your baptism. 'One faith, one baptism, one Lord.' This is what Paul tells us, and then take the consequences from there. I wouldn’t ever dare to allow this, because it’s not my competence. One baptism, one Lord, one faith. Talk to the Lord and then go forward. I don’t dare to say anything more.”

Not long after this incident, in January of 2016, a group of Finnish Lutherans received Holy Communion at St. Peter's Basilica. They had come to a Holy Mass with their bishop, Samuel Salmi, who had had a private audience that day with Pope Francis. During that Mass, after the Lutherans had approached the communion rail with their arms crossed in order to ask for a blessing, the priest insisted on giving them Holy Communion. The Finnish bishop later told Kotimaa 24 that “I myself accepted it [Holy Communion],” adding that “this was not a coincidence,” and that is was not a coincidence either when, two months earlier, the Pope had seemed to accept the idea of a Lutheran woman receiving communion with her Catholic husband.

Reverend Jonas, when meeting with Pope Francis on January 10, also spoke about the refugee crisis in Europe, the importance of ecumenism, and the loss of faith in Europe. This he told Vatican News. Speaking about the rising secularism in Europe, the Pope said that it was important to learn to proclaim the Gospel in “very elementary forms,” Jonas explains and then continues: “He [the Pope] also made this for me very impressive statement: 'The danger of the churches is the empty moralism.' That we tell people how one should do things and that we erect big moral edifices of thought but then are defective when it comes to the concrete implementation and the witness. Here, we should perhaps return to simple signals of mercy that are understandable for all.”

When Jonas invited Pope Francis to come and visit the Lutheran Evangelical community in Rome again, the Pope answered: “I am always available to you!