Anglican, United church dialogue goes one step further [Belleville, Ontario] Talks between the Anglican and United churches in Canada — the first formal dialogue since the collapse of a proposed Plan of Union in 1975 — are progressing slowly, but enough to warrant two meetings this month. A recent gathering of church representatives in eastern
… Read more » … lire la suite »

An effort to make an existing Protestant-Roman Catholic committee the top ecumenical body for Ireland has been stymied by a vote of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI).

The plan, which had been approved by the three other major denominations in both the Republic and in Northern Ireland – the Anglicans, the Methodists and the Roman Catholics – went down by a 224-144 vote during the Belfast General Assembly in June. Its opponents say it was defeated by the fact that an institutional identification with the Roman Catholic Church would imply approval of its doctrine.

And that is, in a word, apostasy.

If this all sounds like theological separatism, it is. But this is Northern Ireland, where politics and religion stay unintelligibly and painfully entangled – no matter how much distance Catholics and Protestants put between themselves, and no matter how many centuries go by.

The political stalemate isn’t so dissimilar.

Ulster’s major unionist (and largely Protestant) party is refusing to form a four-party administration to govern Northern Ireland – including Sinn Fein, the radical republican party – because the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) has refused to disarm, and because of apparent breaches of the outlawed group’s 1997 cease-fire.
… Read more » … lire la suite »

by Stephen Brown, Ecumenical News Service [GENEVA] A special commission set up by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in a bid to resolve complaints by its Orthodox member churches is scheduled to hold its first meeting in December. The scheduling of the meeting follows a series of delays and apparent unwillingness by some Orthodox
… Read more » … lire la suite »