Before we go out and start calling our bishops heretic, there is an obligation to interpret his statements through a charitable. After all, you may have misunderstood his words. I would assume that whatever he means, the first sentence does not mean to deny a moral obligation on the part of our Protestant friends to reconcile to the Catholic Church. My first guess, when he says, “we do not expect,” he does not mean contradict the Catechism, but rather is stating, “we do not consider it likely.” However, this seems to be ad odds with what follows so I will suspend my interpretation of that until later. The bishop says, “She holds that the still dividing differences – especially in the areas of Ecclesiology and the meaning of office [Holy Orders] – need to be resolved.” Well, if the dividing differences in ecclesiology were resolved, then that means, for one thing, that Lutherans would have to acknowledge the pope as, well, the pope rather than “the very Antichrist,” as it states in their current official confessions. Thus, I do not see how a resolution of dividing differences, once acknowledged and acted upon, could lead to anything but a true unity, since how could “visible unity” be anything less than a true unity? If the Catholics and Lutherans in Germany remain at all separated (either ecclesiologically or doctrinally), then of course there is no visible unity.
Another phrase that effects how these words must be interpreted is “return to [the Catholic Church].” It would be one thing, if he meant that he did not expect Protestants to reconcile themselves to the Church. However, given that the second sentence says that “dividing differences… need to be resolved,” I cannot see how that is a possible interpretation. So what does he mean that the Catholic Church does not “expect all others to return to Her.” Perhaps his intention is that the Catholic Church does not expect all Protestants to show up in sackcloth and ashes at their local Catholic parish and be reconciled in that way. Perhaps he is suggesting that Lutherans, for example, be allowed to retain as much as possible their existing structures and that reconciliation be by the way of union rather than assimilation (the Anglican ordinariate being an example). With this possible interpretation in mind, I would interpret the first sentence as saying, “the Catholic Church no longer expects all others to be simply assimilated into the existing structures of the Church as the only possibility of reconciliation. But she does desire visible communion, and she holds that the still dividing differences–especially in the areas of ecclesiology and the meaning of office [Holy Orders] – need to be resolved.”
Since I do not read German, I can only go off of those two sentences, and even if my reading is off-base, I am sure whatever he meant is far from what some of the other posters in this thread have suggested. CutlerB, you will have to be the one to read over that letter and decide for yourself what the bishop is saying. But there is a difference between something being, in your opinion, not well-expressed and something that is totally wrong.
I doubt it, though I would like to see a response. It’s “only” a pastoral letter for Lent, which isn’t going to get through to Rome too quickly, I suppose.
That’s why I said it was my first guess but I later said that it seemed to be at odds with the rest of the excerpt. I was trying to show my thought process. I guess I should have made that clearer in my earlier post.