Cardinal Walter Kasper is already out in the fields, with a hammer and nails, mending some fences. He’s trying to patch things up with our Protestant neighbors:

“What unites us is bigger than what divides us,” said Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is responsible for the church’s relations with other denominations.

The Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog yesterday released a document, which was ratified by the pope, to clear up “confusion and doubt” about the Catholic Church’s relationship with other faiths.

It recognised the “many elements of sanctification and truth” in other Christian denominations but said Protestant and Anglican Churches were “not churches in the proper sense of the word”, but rather “ecclesial communities”.

The document provoked a wave of condemnation from churches, which said it was a “slap in the face” for the ecumenical community, provoked tensions and “goes against the spirit of our Christian calling”.

But Cardinal Kasper said the declaration “does not say that Protestant Churches are not churches, but that they are not churches in the proper sense, that is they are not churches in the way the Catholic Church understands the word church”.

Stay tuned. I suspect there is still more to come.

Meantime, let’s hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.”