{"id":6032,"date":"2006-09-08T08:36:29","date_gmt":"2006-09-08T08:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/because-he-was-a-german.html"},"modified":"2006-09-08T08:36:29","modified_gmt":"2006-09-08T08:36:29","slug":"because-he-was-a-german","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/because-he-was-a-german.html","title":{"rendered":"“Because he was a German”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review in America<\/em> of a new book (published by Eerdmans) about Cardinal Bea and the origins of the ecumenical movement:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Pope John XXIII\u2019s heralded hope that Vatican II would promote Christian unity faced resistance from these same officials who hoped to control the preparatory process. Then, on May 30, 1960, Pope John announced his intention to establish a new curial entity called the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity (S.P.C.U.), and he named a new cardinal, with whom he had scant contact, to head it. Cardinal Augustin Bea, S.J., like the pope 79 years old, was a biblical scholar and respected religious, having been Pope Pius XII\u2019s personal confessor and having served the Holy Office as a German consultant, under the formidable Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. Jerome-Michael Vereb\u2019s \u201cBecause He Was a German!\u201d<\/em> tells the engaging story of how Bea and his secretariat came to be the \u201cecumenical conscience\u201d of the Second Vatican Council. <\/p>\n

The book relates the beginnings of ecumenical activities in the 20th century, with special attention to the \u201cGerman theater.\u201d Why Germany? Several factors conspired to produce an ecumenical kairos<\/em> in the \u201ccountry\u201d that was the cradle of the Reformation. First, the collapse of the Reformation principle cuius regio, cuius religio<\/em> at the end of World War I and then the nightmare of the Third Reich stimulated a new appreciation of the church\u2019s nature and the shared Christian call to holiness. Second, ressourcement<\/em> in Reformation historiography by Lutheran and Catholic scholars helped to set aside sterile polemics and clear a path for dialogue. Third, prophets of \u201cspiritual ecumenism,\u201d notably Max Metzger and the Una Sancta movement, placed high value on lived experience and promoted exchanges with ecumenically minded Protestants. Vereb cites Cardinal Willebrands, co-founder of the Catholic Conference for Ecumenical Questions and subsequently secretary and then president of the S.P.C.U., who stated that the \u201csingle greatest cause for the dynamic of the ecumenical movement\u201d was \u201cthe \u2018life together\u2019 of Protestant and Catholic clerics in concentration camps.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review in America of a new book (published by Eerdmans) about Cardinal Bea and the origins of the ecumenical movement: Pope John XXIII\u2019s heralded hope that Vatican II would promote Christian unity faced resistance from these same officials who hoped to control the preparatory process. Then, on May 30, 1960, Pope John announced his intention…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n"Because he was a German" - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/because-he-was-a-german.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Because he was a German" - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Review in America of a new book (published by Eerdmans) about Cardinal Bea and the origins of the ecumenical movement: Pope John XXIII\u2019s heralded hope that Vatican II would promote Christian unity faced resistance from these same officials who hoped to control the preparatory process. Then, on May 30, 1960, Pope John announced his intention…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/because-he-was-a-german.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-09-08T08:36:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Because he was a German\" - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/because-he-was-a-german.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Because he was a German\" - Via Media","og_description":"Review in America of a new book (published by Eerdmans) about Cardinal Bea and the origins of the ecumenical movement: Pope John XXIII\u2019s heralded hope that Vatican II would promote Christian unity faced resistance from these same officials who hoped to control the preparatory process. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}