Walter Kasper

On 3 March 1999, Kasper was appointed Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity – and as such, President of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews – and resigned from his post in Rottenburg-Stuttgart.

Kasper recognized that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document Dominus Iesus (2000) was offensive to many Jewish people and was thus somewhat critical of its presentation. However, he affirmed the validity of its content, and called it "not the end of dialogue but a challenge for a further and even more intensive dialogue" between Catholics and Jews.[3]

In 2003, he wrote a text called Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed for the European Day of Jewish Culture.[4] On 10 July 2004, at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary of Buenos Aires, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee presented Kasper the "Memorial Mural Award" for his lifetime dedication to the causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.[5]

Kasper was a member of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. On several occasions, in his capacity of President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, he led the annual official delegation of the Holy See to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople for the Feast of St Andrew the Apostle. In August 2007, he led the Catholic delegation to the funeral of Patriarch Teoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

In January 2009, Kasper told The New York Times that he had little, if any, input on whether to lift the excommunication of four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X.[6] Kasper was distancing himself from the scandal that ensued when it transpired that one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, was found to have claimed that reports about the Holocaust were exaggerated and that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers. As the Vatican official responsible for relations with the Jewish religion, Kasper felt it necessary to comment on the action and the process leading up to the lifting of the excommunications. He said that: "Up to now people in the Vatican have spoken too little with each other and have not checked where problems might arise." He said that in lifting the excommunications "there were misunderstandings and management errors in the Curia."[7]

In September 2010, Cardinal Kasper withdrew from the papal visit to Great Britain, after reportedly saying that Heathrow Airport gives the impression of a Third World country and that the United Kingdom is marked by "a new and aggressive atheism".[8] In an interview with a German magazine, he was quoted as saying: "When you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country". Kasper's secretary explained it as "a description of the many different people that live in Britain at the moment".[9] He said that when one wears a cross on the British Airways "you are discriminated against", a reference to the British Airways cross controversy. British Airways said that Kasper had been "seriously misinformed" in his claims about the airline, and that "It is completely untrue that we discriminate against Christians or members of any faith".[8]

A spokesman for the Church in Britain said that Kasper's remarks were not the views of the Vatican or of the Church.[8] The cardinal's secretary said that Kasper had decided not to travel because gout made it difficult for him to walk.[9] He also explained the cardinal used "aggressive atheism" to describe people like Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist, who have been very critical of the Pope and talked about making a "citizens arrest" of the Pope while in Britain.[9]

Cardinal Kasper has criticized the Church of England policies in relation to female priests and the elevation of women to the episcopate. He expressed his views in the address given to the Church of England Bishops' Meeting at 5 June 2006.[10] He said that the ordination of women as bishops would "call into question what was recognized by the Second Vatican Council (Unitatis Redintegratio, 13), that the Anglican Communion occupied 'a special place' among churches and ecclesial communities of the West." He warned that the "restoration of full church communion ... would realistically no longer exist following the introduction of the ordination of women to episcopal office."[11] He spoke at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, criticizing sharply the departures from Christian orthodoxy taken on women clergy and episcopate and even more by some member churches of the Anglican Communion on allowing the blessing of same-sex unions and non-celibate homosexual clergy. He called at the occasion for a new Oxford Movement to rise among Anglicanism.[12]

Pope Francis, on 17 March 2013, four days after his election as Pope, called Kasper "a clever theologian, a good theologian", in the course of a sermon in which he reported that Kasper's book on mercy "did me a lot of good".[1][13]

Cardinal Kasper's proposal to admit to communion the Roman Catholic couples who have remarried, while still being legally married according to the Church's doctrine, is the most controversial question in which he has been involved in so far during the pontificate of Pope Francis. On 21 February 2014, Kasper said at the cardinals Consistory held in Rome that "The Church cannot question the words of Jesus on the indissolubility of marriage. Whoever expects the Consistory and the Synod to come up with 'easy', general solutions that apply to everyone, are mistaken. But given the difficulties which families today face and the huge rise in the number of failed marriages, new paths can be explored in order to respond to the deep needs of divorced people who have remarried as part of a civil union, who recognise their failure, convert and after a period of penance ask to be re-admitted to the sacraments."[14] The proposal was met with hostility by some members of the College of cardinals, including Gerhard Müller, Raymond Burke, Walter Brandmüller, Carlo Caffarra and Velasio De Paolis, who co-authored the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church, released in English on October 2014, to refute Kasper's proposal.[15] Kasper later admitted that he didn't have Pope Francis' support on his proposal.[16] He praised Pope Francis encyclica Amoris Laetitia, saying that the correct interpretation is that it allows the admission of divorced and remarried people to communion in some individual cases.[17]

During the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2014, Cardinal Kasper told reporters that since African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries have a "taboo" against homosexuality, "they should not tell us too much what we have to do."[18] Once the story broke, he denied that he made any such comment. The reporter who wrote the story, Edward Pentin, subsequently produced a recording of the conversation, which verified that the Cardinal had made those statements.[18] Cardinal Raymond Burke called Kasper's remarks "profoundly sad and scandalous".[19] Kasper subsequently confirmed that he had had the conversation, and offered this response for one of his remarks:

If one of my remarks about Africans was perceived as demeaning or insulting, then I am honestly sorry. That was and is not my intention, and not my view at all. No one will deny that Africa's culture is different from Europe's in many respects. But I have been in Africa too often not to esteem African culture highly.[20]

Kasper also said parts of the Catholic media were engaged in a "deliberate dirty tricks" campaign against him, and said that "The fact that Catholic media (and unfortunately a cardinal in person) should participate in it, in order to tear down another position morally, is shameful."[20][21]

In his book The God of Jesus Christ, Kasper concluded that what Jesus effected was to give suffering "eternal import, the import of love." Kasper points out that Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo, working out of the New Testament, speak of a God who can freely choose to feel compassion, which implies suffering. Kasper adds that: "It is Origen who gave us the clearest statement. In Origen's words: 'First God suffered, then he came down. What was the suffering he accepted for us? The suffering of love.' Origen adds that it is not just the Son but also the Father who suffers so. This is made possible by God's freedom in love."[22]

Cardinal Kasper's book Jesus The Christ (1974) treats Christology in three manners: a contemporary approach, a historical approach and a factual approach. After these three approaches have been exhausted, the Christological themes of resurrection, mystery, and priesthood are treated. Ecclesiology is seen as part of Christology in this book because the Church is oriented towards Christ in his person, since Christ did not only say things, but he also did things.[23]