| | The Pope in Germany (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-23) |
 | | In 1980 the Pope met at Mainz with a number of Protestant bishops-including the leading bishop of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), Eduard Lohse-who pressed him on the urgency of alleviating ecumenical tensions in the land where the Reformation began and where the population is now almost evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics. |
 | | I believe that, at this point, one cannot reasonably have expected the Pope to go further than he did, especially in view of the fact that in 1994 the German Lutheran synod gave only a lukewarm response to the results of the condemnations study. |
 | | At Paderborn, however, the presiding bishop of the EKD, Klaus Engelhardt, told the Pope that the Protestant churches no longer hold to the sixteenth-century condemnations of Rome, and he unambiguously declared his support for the 1994 request of the German Catholic bishops conference that Rome declare the condemnations of Reformation doctrine to be obsolete. |
| www.firstthings.com /ftissues/ft9612/opinion/pannenberg.html (1350 words) |