The Canadian Church in the Third Millennium is the theme of a national conference featuring speakers from eight Christian denominations across theological and liturgical spectrums, June 4 and 5 at St. Peter Cobourg, Ontario. The conference is entitled Restless Gods: the New Story about What’s Happening in Canada’s Churches; the keynote speaker of the Conference
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West In response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, Muslim and Christian communities in Winnipeg planned a day to express their disapproval of violence. On December 13, Christians were invited to spend a day in fasting and prayer in solidarity with Muslims participating in Ramadan. In the evening, Muslims and Christians gathered at Canadian Mennonite
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Too many Young Theologians in Iceland REYKJAVIK, Iceland/GENEVA (LWI) – The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland (ELCI) may be ready to serve Anglicans in Britain and Ireland as needed, because of an oversupply of young theologians. Rev. Dr. Sigurdur Ami Thordarson of Reykjavik, who heads ELCI’s Division for Theologv and Society and serves as a
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ROSEMONT, Ill. (ELCA) — The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop and chief ecumenical officer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), gathered staff of the ELCA Department for Ecumenical Affairs and 15 advisors here Feb. 8-9 to discuss the church’s ecumenical priorities for the next 10 years. Hanson began a six-year term as
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Un document conjoint portant sur le sacrement du mariage et la pastorale des couples dont l’un des conjoints est orthodoxe et l’autre pré-chalcédonien, a été adopté par l’Église Copte et le Patriarcat orthodoxe d’Alexandrie, le 5 avril dernier. Signé par le pape Chenouda III, primat de l’Église copte et le patriarche Pierre VII, primat de
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The Armenian Apostolic Church and the Republic of Armenia celebrated in 2001 the 1700th anniversary of the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion in 301DCE. Armenians around the world are marking this event throughout the year. As part of these celebrations, Orthodox, Catholics and Armenians came together in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on
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Members of the Lutheran Biennial Convention and of the Anglican General Synod, meeting separately in Waterloo, voted in favor of the Waterloo Declaration establishing full communion between the two Churches on July 11. They will share resources and work closely together on common goals while maintaining their distinct identities. Rev. Sven Oppegaard, Lutheran World Federation
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Quebec The Emmaüs Centre of Spirituality of the Eastern Churches concluded the celebrations of its 30th anniversary with the inauguration of its new offices, September 16, at 3774 Queen Mary Rd: Montreal, Quebec, H3V 1H6, tel.: (514) 276-2144. The solemn Mass at 10:30 a.m. was followed by the blessing of the offices and a buffet
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Gambling ills too horrific, churches say: Pressure on city, province to halt casino expansion until problems addressed by Betty Ann Adam, Saskatoon Star Phoenix Saskatoon church leaders are raising their voices together against expanded casino gambling. Twelve leaders of churches have signed a joint statement directed to city council and the provincial government saying the
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Ecumenism at work: Nutana Park churches put theological concept into practice It started with one couple who wanted to practise grassroots ecumenism; today it is a grouping of nine churches of different denominations actively sharing worship experiences and learning what elements of the Christian faith they have in common. The group is the Nutana Park
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Sunday’s 17th annual Festival of Faith is particularly significant this year, according to Dr. Ivan Wilson, one of the organizers. Given the strong feelings aroused by the attacks on America, Wilson believes the Festival is especially important. “We need to understand one another and celebrate our religious diversity,” he says. “The Festival of Faith gives
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — In a report to the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop-elect, said he is “deeply committed” to ecumenical cooperation globally. However, he left open the possibility of revisiting the church’s 10-year-old ecumenical statement, noting that a change in leadership
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The underground Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia in Communist times ordained married men and a woman vicar-general. The aim was to bring the sacraments to those who otherwise would have to do without. Our Vienna correspondent has been reading a new biography of Ludmila Javorova.
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INDIANAPOLIS (ELCA) — The Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) affirmed by a vote of 892-25 that the ELCA accept an invitation to become a “partner in mission and dialogue” with Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC). The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, is meeting here Aug. 8-14
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Man on a Mission: Incoming bishop encourages frank talk on future of Catholicism by Jason Warick, Saskatoon Star Phoenix The man who will take over this fall as Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Saskatoon isn’t saying where he stands on controversial issues such as birth control or the ordination of women, but he
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An organisation bringing together campaigners from all over the world in favour of ordaining women met in Dublin for the first time last weekend. The delegates to the first-ever conference of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, or WOW, were mainly Catholics, but other denominations were also represented. Gathered in University College Dublin, the delegates, from 26 countries, made an impressive and colourful gathering, but the most significant part of the event was what happened behind the scenes.

First, there was the case of the would-be keynote speaker on the first night, Aruna Gnanadason of the World Council of Churches (WCC). In mid-May the organisers announced that Gnanadason would not be able to attend. The reason given was that the WCC didn’t want to interfere in the internal affairs of the Catholic Church. But one of the conference organisers, Soline Vatinel, told the Irish Times: The unofficial reason was that the Vatican said it would withdraw from commissions involving the WCC if Ms Gnanadason spoke at the conference. Some observers suggested that Orthodox Churches who are members of the WCC were also unhappy about her participation. In any case, her slot was instead filled by a Jamaican-born London vicar, the Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, while the text of Gnanadason’s undelivered speech was circulated to conference participants.
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Pope John Paul, who celebrated his eighty-first birthday this week, is a man in a hurry. In the twilight days of his long papacy, he is expanding the perspective of his by now traditional pastoral visits around the world and he is laying down markers for the future. These concern the future relations of the Roman Catholic Church both with the separated Orthodox Christian Churches, and with the other monotheistic religions, Islam and Judaism.

Hence the first-ever visit this month by a pope to a mosque, the impressive Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Twenty years ago it would have been inconceivable that a pope from Rome should remove his shoes, put on white slippers and traverse one of the great Holy Places of Islam for a meeting with the Grand Mufti and other clerics in the courtyard of the mosque.
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SAN DIEGO (ELCA) — Fifty of about 300 participants at the National Workshop on Christian Unity (NWCU) here April 30-May 3 were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). A list of ecumenical dialogues and agreements put the ELCA at the center of many of the workshop’s seminars, plenary and luncheon speeches, and
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SAN DIEGO (ELCA) — The Lutheran Ecumenical Representatives Network (LERN) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) sent a “Statement of Concern” to its membership and staff and to its counterpart organization in the Episcopal Church. LERN outlined problems it has with a proposed bylaw of the ELCA Constitution that the church’s bishops —
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A dozen Saskatoon church leaders are calling on the federal government to establish an independent commission to implement aboriginal land and treaty rights.

The leaders signed a petition advocating First Nations land rights Thursday.

The petition is being circulated to faith groups across Canada and is part of the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative, a campaign dedicated to caring for and renewing the earth.

“The church leaders are concerned about the world, they are concerned about the fact that we have, as a country of Canada, places of injustice,” said Sister Anne Keffer of the Prairie Centre for Ecumenism.

“It is from our aboriginal neighbours and friends that we need to learn how to care for the earth and to listen. To achieve true healing of this wounded Canadian life, there’s work to do that requires the active co-operation of Canadians as a whole,” Keffer said.
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The recent elevation of 44 new cardinals may have seemed to show that for the Catholic Church, it was business as usual. In reality the ceremony marked a radical break. For this first consistory of the new millennium was at the same time a farewell ceremony for a whole era — the era of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The eminent prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), that capable and controversial guardian of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, had enjoyed a monopoly of spiritual power under papal primacy. Now that was challenged. The consistory was both an individual personal drama and an institutional setback to Roman centralism.
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In recognition of their contribution to ecumenism on the local, national and international levels, the 2001 Ecumenical Leadership Award is presented to Ray and Fenella Temmerman.

Ray, along with his wife Fenella, are an interchurch couple who have been active in the Canadian Association of Interchurch Families since it was established in 1996. Ray pioneered interchurch families on the Internet, by establishing the interchurch families website [www.interchurchfamilies.org] which is the premiere website for interchurch families worldwide. His website hosts information on interchurch families and their associations around the world and in several languages. Ray continues to be the webmaster and email list administrator for interchurch families.

From August 1-6, 2001 Canada hosted an international conference for interchurch families in Edmonton, Alberta. This conference brought together families from eight countries on three continents to share their joys and pains of interchurch life. The success of this conference is largely due to Ray’s efforts. Ray was involved in the planning for the 2001 conference since it was conceived in July 1998 and was an anchor in the planning from the beginning. He set up an e-mail list expressly for the preparation of this conference and ensured that Canadian families from across the country had input into the format and content of the conference. He also organised regular Internet chat sessions leading up to the conference where people from around the world, including a couple from England, discussed electronically, issues relating to the conference. It was through these chat sessions that the site for the conference was decided, the theme for the conference was established, and the keynote speakers were selected, among other issues. Ray’s expertise with computers and the Internet has given people from across the country a chance to make a real contribution to the conference.
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One of the subtleties of Shakespeare’s As You Like It is the existence of layers of sexual ambiguity implied in its original performance: a boy-actor played the part of a young woman disguised as a young man who at one point is pretending to be a girl. I was put in mind of these layers of meaning when I read The Eucharist: sacrament of unity (ESU), the Church of England’s highly courteous and careful response to the British and Irish bishops’ 1998 teaching document on eucharistic doctrine and sharing entitled One Bread One Body (OBOB). There is of course one vitally important difference: whereas the play’s layers form the stages in a dialectic, i.e. an interactive process, of ambiguity, the theological document offers a dialectic of clarification, which provides a model of what is involved in ecumenical reception.
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Pope John Paul is to make a brief visit to Athens in May. Many of the Greek Orthodox clergy and the monks of Athos are up in arms. Could this nevertheless turn out to be a breaking of the ice which has lasted since the Western and Eastern Church split in 1054? An Assumptionist priest who was formerly stationed in Athens looks at the tensions.
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[ACNS 2417]By Charles Sherlock The first permanent Commission of the Anglican Communion met for the first time in early December 2000 – the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations (IASCER). The diverse group of sixteen people – men and women, lay and ordained, parish clergy, theologians and bishops, from ten nations and five continents –
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If you ever go to the Vine, bring your Bible, some business cards, and a good pair of walking shoes. But, most importantly, bring your voice, because those who attend this conference—mostly Gen-Xers—like to talk. They talk in the hallways, they talk over lunch, and they talk in panel discussions that cover topics from “Glorifying God in the Arts” to “The Soul of the Internet.” Everyone serves as panelist, commentator, or moderator for at least one panel discussion. At last year’s event, one especially lively panel explored “The Silent Priests: Media and Culture.” A Princeton seminarian held forth about popular Christian icons, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago explained why evangelicals make such lousy movies. Carlos Aguilar, a performance artist-cum-Talbot School of Theology student, explained “What Aristotle and Snoop Doggy Dogg Can Teach Our Youth.”
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On 7 January, Russia’s Orthodox Church celebrated the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Christ. Thousands attended the Christmas liturgy in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, triumphantly, and, many have averred, tastelessly, restored to the city’s skyline more than 60 years after Stalin ordered its obliteration from it. Live coverage of the event was marred, however, when Patriarch Alexis II arrived more than an hour late, delayed by his participation in the day’s informal meetings between President Putin and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

As the television cameras panned in on the massed faithful awaiting their Patriarch, they picked out the emerald robes of seemingly the most senior cleric in attendance — Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of Russia’s Central Spiritual Directorate of Muslims. For the third year running, the chief representative of Russia’s Roman Catholics, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, had not been invited.
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[ACNS 2357] A new high-level working group has been announced by the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. Comprising prominent Church leaders from a variety of countries, assisted by specialists, the Anglican-Roman Catholic Working Group will have the task of reviewing the relationship between Catholics and Anglicans worldwide, consolidating the results of more than thirty
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It seems a far cry now from the mid-1950s when Roman Catholic ecumenism was in the main led by the Abbé Paul Couturier and other French pioneers, though a church historian could look further back to the Malines Conversations in Belgium between Catholics and Anglicans, and to the work of the Sword of the Spirit during the Second World War, when Cardinal Hinsley co- operated with William Temple, by then Archbishop of Canterbury. I well remember being involved with Oxford’s Catholics in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in its refashioned form — praying for the unity Christ willed for his Church by the means he chose. With some trepidation some of us ecumenical cognoscenti went to St Aloysius’ in St Giles, where we were invited to take part in Benediction. Well, there was no harm in entering in at the deep end, was there?
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by Bruce D. Marshall, FirstThings.com Future historians of Christianity may well describe the century just past as the age of ecumenism; some have already given it that label. Yet the modern ecumenical movement has almost completely failed to attain its one overriding goal: the reunion of divided Christian communities. The great labor of ecumenism has
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Facing an unprecedented shortage of priests, Roman Catholic officials in Saskatchewan have begun a massive restructuring that will lead to radical changes in the church. Shortages have affected rural areas for several years, but now the church can’t supply a priest to every parish in the city of Saskatoon. “I am very concerned about the diminishing number of priests. It’s challenging our identity (as a church),” said Rev. Ronald Beechinor, the administrator for the Diocese of Saskatoon, who is performing the duties of bishop until a new one is named. “We’ve got to make substantial changes.”

Many of the area’s 95,000 Roman Catholics from more than 100 parishes attended meetings this fall to suggest ways to deal with the loss of as many as 10 priests by next June. The reports from the seven deaneries in the area were discussed last weekend and a final plan should be ready by February.
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Inspired in part by the Jubilee 2000 campaign against debt and by the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, a unique alliance to harness the collective energies of the worldwide church to promote justice and peace issues has been launched in Geneva.
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As the Reverend Ken Newell, a prominent Presbyterian evangelical, spoke on BBC Radio Ulster in 1981 about his commitment to peace in Northern Ireland, he had no idea that members of the Redemptorist Order at Clonard Monastery in West Belfast were listening in.

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The Rev. Dr. Bernard Wilson used his own family as a metaphor for the ecumenical movement in his address to the National Council of Churches General Assembly today, “A Pentecostal Vision for the Future of the Ecumenical Movement.”

“My eight siblings and I have established a scholarship fund that gives nine scholarships a year,” said Dr. Wilson, a minister of the Church of God in Christ, “but getting the nine of us to the same table, on the same day and at the same time, for our monthly board meetings is a challenge. Sometimes one is mad at another and submits a letter of resignation. What they really want is to resign from the family. They can’t, so they take it out on the board.”

Similarly, he said, Christians: mainline Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Roman Catholic and so forth — make up one family, as divided as we are. And as much as we’d like to sometimes, we can’t “resign” from our family, he said.
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In an address that emphasized the personal, heart-felt dimensions of the movement for Christian unity, the Rev. John T. Ford, C.S.C., Professor of Theology and Coordinator of Hispanic/Latino Studies at The Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., offered the image of a “family reunion” as “a possible model for expanding the relationship of the Roman Catholic Church and the National Council of Churches.”

A renowned Catholic theologian, Ford has, for 20 years, been a member of the NCC’s Faith and Order Commission, a body that focuses on the theological underpinnings of the ecumenical movement. “Faith and Order here in the United States provides a venue where Christians can meet and share their faith: both their commonalities and their differences,” he said. Where else can one participate in a theological conversation that includes Quakers and Orthodox, Pentecostals and mainline Protestants, Evangelicals and Roman Catholics?”

“Faith and Order has been like a family reunion where long-lost cousins finally meet,” he said.
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Pope John Paul II has never made it a secret: As the first Slavic pope, as a church leader from eastern Europe, he dreamed of being God’s instrument to bridge the millennium-old schism between East and West.

Over the years, out of sensitivity to the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow, he has declined repeated invitations from the eastern Catholics in Ukraine and from the Ukrainian government to visit them.

The pope is aging quickly and the rhetoric between the Orthodox and Rome is heating up rather than calming down — the Orthodox have moved beyond complaints of proselytizing; they now speak of outright “persecution” of their people by the Latin Church. All this has led the pope to change his mind and visit the millions of Eastern-rite Christians who have paid a martyr’s price for their loyalty to the Chair of Peter.

John Paul recognizes that this is a dangerous move in terms of his long-term dream of reuniting Constantinople/Moscow and Rome. To offset, as much as possible, any ecumenically negative consequences, the Vatican is continually talking about this visit as a reaching out to full brothers and sisters (see page 4).

The Slavic pope has even made a substantial donation ($150,000) toward the building of a new Orthodox cathedral in Bucharest. His generosity, however, is not limited to this sensitive trip to the East. Back in January 1995, the pope helped build the Orthodox cathedral in Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin.

The people of Ulyanovsk, who were sorely strapped for funds, could not have been more gracious in accepting the gift: they named the pope “an honorary member of their communion in Christ.”
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CHICAGO — Representatives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) discussed their churches’ ecumenical goals and views on the “Church Growth Movement” here Oct. 2-3. The last of three scheduled meetings included talk about the possibilities of publishing papers from the meetings and of future discussions between the
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Unless Latin America’s evangelicals, both Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal, learn to get along, church growth in Central and South America will stall sometime soon, warns a prominent Christian leader.
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The declaration entitled Dominus Iesus released on Sept. 5 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has given rise to a firestorm of mixed reaction. Its context is the relatively new situation of religious pluralism that now marks the western world.

A lively debate has been under way among Christian theologians; it was inevitable that Christians in general, and not just theologians, stop and reflect on what this new awareness of religious diversity means for their own religion.

The Vatican declaration has provided that occasion. At issue in this debate is nothing less than what we as Christian believers should think about other world religions and their adherents, our new neighbours. The question at the bottom of it is an old one: “Who do you say that I am?”
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The United Church has dropped an attempt to substitute gender-neutral language for “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” in the baptism rite — a proposed change that caused concern among the church’s ecumenical partners, including the Anglican Church. About 100 groups and congregations last fall were asked their opinions of various new forms of the rite, said Fred Graham, liturgical officer for the United Church. The church is developing a new worship book, Celebrate God’s Presence. Conservatives, however, did not care for the changes — as Mr. Graham put it, “that sector in our church rose up” against alternate wording. Others felt, he said, that inclusive language was to be encouraged. At the same time, the United Church’s General Council Executive, which rules on matters of doctrine and faith, decided that such a fundamental change would need to be put to a church-wide vote.
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A week after publishing a document which casts doubt on the validity of Protestant Christianity and asserts Roman Catholic superiority over all other churches, the Vatican continues to draw criticism both from other churches and from within its own ranks.

The general secretaries of two organizations representing major wings of Protestantism have publicly lamented the harm done to ecumenism by Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published on Sept. 5 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document declares that churches that do not have a “valid Episcopate [bishops] and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not churches in the proper sense.”

Another document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in an Italian magazine this month orders Catholic bishops not to use the term “sister church” in reference to Protestant churches. This too has also caused dismay in ecumenical circles.
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — The general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) said Sept. 8 that he is “disappointed” that 35 years of ecumenical dialogue between Lutherans and Roman Catholics apparently were not considered when the Vatican issued a document earlier this week and sent a letter in June to presidents of Roman Catholic Bishops’
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Statement by Dr Ishmael Noko, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, on the Vatican document “Dominus Iesus” The Lutheran World Federation has received news of the document, “Dominus Iesus” – On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the
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Prominent ecumenists have declared that the Millennium World Peace Summit of about 1,000 religious leaders, held in New York at the end of August, may well have a good result. But they also criticized the event as too cumbersome and too vague.
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Statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the Roman Catholic document ‘Dominus Iesus’ [ACNS 2219 – Lambeth Palace, 5 September 2000] By restating the long-held view of the Roman Catholic Church on the position of other Christian churches, this document breaks no new ground. But neither does it fully reflect the deeper understanding that has
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Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), has criticized key elements of the Millennium World Peace Summit in New York—a major gathering of 1000 religious leaders at the United Nations headquarters from August 28 to 31.
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Some say news reports were ‘misleading’ by Jerry L. Van Marter, PCUSA News Service LOUISVILLE, Ky. — So what’s the big deal about Dirk Ficca? Ficca, a Presbyterian minister member of Chicago Presbytery and executive director of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, ignited yet another heated theological debate in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) when
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‘Bitter differences’ lead to dead-end, Polish ecumenist says by Jonathan Luxmoore, Ecumenical News International [WARSAW] High-level talks between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches which ended in the United States recently were marred by “methodological deficiencies” and a “polemical atmosphere,” leaving relations between the two Christian communions at a dead-end, according to an expert on
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In one of his first major sermons since becoming general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ (USA), clergyman and former politician Robert Edgar renewed his call for America’s faith community to tackle the issue of poverty.
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The face of ecumenism in the United States may be changing. Recently, the National Council of Churches (NCC) has taken a first step to broaden its reach to include conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics, and charismatics.
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