Cardinal Kasper Has Submitted His Resignation

Wow. It's the end of an era. Can we have a parade or something?

Per Zenit:

After more than 10 years as the point man for the Church's efforts to promote Christian unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper today announced his resignation as president of the pontifical council dedicated to that cause.

I can't say I'm sad to see him go. It's difficult to see his work as anything but damaging to the Church and any real ecumenical effort. This is the same guy who spent years telling Anglicans NOT to convert.

In the realm of things I didn't know:

For three years he worked as an assistant to Leo Scheffczyk and Hans Kung.

That probably explains a lot. So does the rest of the article. It's not that long, but when you read it, it gives some great insight into why Cardinal Kasper never seemed to have a clue. Consider:

"Dialogue is life," he said. "Dialogue is an integral part of the life of the Church."

This illustrates why no real progress was ever made under his watch. It's not about conversion of others. It's dialogue. Dialogue is the end unto itself. How an entity like the Church, which declares itself to have infallible teaching authority over all God's faithful, could tolerate endless dialogue is a mystery to me. Have you ever tried to dialogue with a math professor over why your formulas are really right rather than wrong? It doesn't work very well.

Note also his comments here:

"The unity of the Church cannot be planned or fabricated."

Yeah, we know that because the unity of the Church already exists. Otherwise, there would be no Church. We talked about this before when we looked at Blessed John XXIII's take on the subject. Unity is here. Others should be received into it. Dialogue might be a good tool for convincing them to do so, but it has its limits.

Regardless of my opinion on his performance, may God bless the Cardinal in his retirement and his successor in his future endeavors.