World Council of Churches Press Update 27 May 1999 Consultation on the Churches and the Crisis in the Balkans (Budapest, Hungary, 26-27 May 1999) c.f. WCC press release of 21 May 1999 Over 40 church leaders and representatives from Eastern and Western Europe as well as from North America met in Budapest, Hungary, from 26
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ROCHESTER, N.Y. (ELCA) — The Lutheran Ecumenical Representatives Network (LERN) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) began an identity-building transition at its annual meeting here May 3-6 during the National Workshop on Christian Unity. The Rev. Robert A. Kriesat, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Chatham, N.J., was elected to a one-year term as LERN’s
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ROCHESTER, N.Y. (ELCA) — Many of the speakers here May 3-6 for the 36th annual National Workshop on Christian Unity discussed various ecumenical relationships in which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) finds itself. About 50 ELCA members were among the 400 ecumenical officers and representatives from a number of Christian denominations in attendance.
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So women deacons in the early Church had no part in the sacramental ministry, according to Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos (The Tablet, 3/10 April, p. 500). His statement must have made the thousands of women deacons who faithfully served the Church in the past turn in their graves. For they were formidable women, if we are to go by the 28 tombstones on which some of them are commemorated. One was Athanasia in Delphi in the fifth century AD, who was ordained by Bishop Pantamianos. The stone carries a curse: May anyone who disturbs the tomb in which this honoured and blameless deaconess lies buried, receive the fate of Judas who betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ.

Fifty years ago, church historians and theologians alike routinely dismissed the women’s diaconate as obviously a historical sop to women, a blessing of some sort or just a minor order, for the simple reason that a sacramental ordination of women seemed a priori excluded. But the historical facts are becoming clearer by the day, and this position is now untenable.

From the outset we should realise what is at stake. If, as the records show, women were for many centuries admitted to the full diaconate which is now only imparted to men, then they did receive the sacrament of holy orders. For this sacrament has three levels: episcopacy, priesthood and diaconate. Anyone who receives any of the three is consecrated to the ministerial priesthood, as the Council of Trent defined it.

But were women ordained as real deacons — into a sacramental diaconate tied theologically to the Holy Spirit, to borrow Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos’s words?
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Protestants and Catholics are working together more and more these days in Canada. Each believes it is the best expression of Christian faith, and each has often condemned the other’s teachings. Now some are trying to move beyond these criticisms and to forge limited new forms of cooperation, according to a series of articles in the May/June issue of Faith Today.

Gary Walsh, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), visited the offices of the Catholic Bishops in Ottawa and found himself “thanking the Lord for the things we share in common.” Despite doctrinal differences between the two organizations, EFC is having regular contact and working closely with Catholics on public policy issues such as abortion, family life and euthanasia, according to the lead article by Harold Jantz, a consultant and project manager of church-related projects in Winnipeg.

Sr. Donna Geernaert, who speaks for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in Ottawa, observes that not only have Catholics and the EFC joined with one another for presentations to government, they’ve also coordinated their efforts so they could prepare complementary briefs.

George Vandervelde of Toronto, convener of the World Evangelical Fellowship‘s task force on ecumenical issues, believes that dialogue between evangelicals and Catholics is important “simply to understand one another and clarify how we are different and how we are similar.” He says we shouldn’t be bearing false witness against each other. “If in evangelicalism we say this or that against Roman Catholicism, we should know that we are speaking truth, and you can find that out only by speaking to one another.”
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