Pope warns Lutherans of Christian challengers

Pope Benedict, visiting the German monastery where Martin Luther lived before launching the Reformation, warned his Lutheran hosts on Friday that what he called "a new form of Christianity" posed challenges to mainline Protestants and Catholics alike.
While not naming them, it was clear he was referring to the evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which have rapidly spread, especially in developing countries, by attracting converts from more established churches.
The Bavarian-born pope also appealed for unity between Roman Catholics and Protestants, who began their split from the church in the 16th century with the posting by Luther, who had lived in Erfurt as a Catholic monk, of his 95 Theses in 1517. Few people turned out to see him in Erfurt, a traditionally Protestant city under tight security for the visit, but about 90,000 Catholics - 40,000 more than expected - flooded the nearby Catholic town of Etzelsbach for a vespers service there.
Speaking on the second day of his third trip to his homeland as pontiff, Benedict told the Lutherans: "Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss.
"This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability. This world-wide phenomenon poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse?"
Geoff Tunnicliffe, Vancouver-based secretary general of the World Evangelical Alliance, told Reuters his organisation had recently issued a code of conduct for responsible missionary work with the Vatican and World Council of Churches. "I don't see this as a blanket statement on evangelicals, which includes Pentecostals," he said. The three groups that signed the pioneering code of conduct in June, after five years of work, claim to represent over 90 percent of Christianity.
While he stressed Christian unity, Benedict deflected recent public appeals from Protestants for a relaxation of rules barring them from participating in Catholic communion. He said it was a "political misunderstanding" to think he would come with an "ecumenical gift" such as permission for Protestants to receive the Catholic eucharist. Germany's top Protestant bishop urged the pontiff to take "real steps for reconciliation" before the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, which the Protestants would like to mark with Catholic participation.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, attended the service highlighted by interludes of sacred organ music by Johann Sebastian Bach and other German composers. The pope is due to hold an open-air mass in central Erfurt on Saturday when Church officials expect 85,000 faithful. At Etzelsbach, in the Eichsfeld region near the former Iron Curtain between East and West Germany, Benedict praised Catholics for keeping the faith despite pressure from "two godless dictatorships" - Nazism and Communism.
"Eichsfeld is a very religious place," said Holungen Wiebert, 67. "We're very proud to have a German pope again, for the first time in 500 years." Polish, Croatian and Bavarian flags in the crowd indicated some pilgrims had come long distances to see the pope.
Before leaving Berlin, Benedict met leaders of Germany's four million Muslims and promised co-operation with them as long as they respect Germany's constitution and the limits it sets on pluralism. Merkel warned Muslims last year that sharia, Islamic law, had no place in Germany.
Muslim leaders praised the pope for confirming through the meeting that Islam was now a part of German society. But they said their loyalty to the constitution was never in question. "As Muslims in Germany, we have always said that we see the German constitution as a good basis for peaceful life together," said Bekir Alboga, head of interreligious dialogue for the Turkish mosque association DITIB. He said the pope's short address also represented a change from his controversial 2006 speech in Regensburg, where his use of a Byzantine emperor's quote about Islam being violent and irrational provoked protests across the Muslim world.