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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[CHICAGO | ELCA News] Talks between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas have arrived at “A Lutheran-Orthodox Common Statement on Faith in the Holy Trinity.” The 13-paragraph communique explains the emphasis of both traditions on the Nicene Creed and draws attention to a
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by J M Rosenthal, Anglican Communion News Service [ROME] While the Roman Catholic Church and Rome itself have been busy with massive campaigns of refurbishment of their great shrines, including St Peters, so too has the Anglican Centre in Rome been totally transformed. Fund-raising and awareness building programmes have been a huge success and the
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MAHTOMEDI, Minn. (ELCA) — While expressing support for a relationship of “full communion” between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and The Episcopal Church, almost 200 Lutherans gathered here at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church and resolved that the current Lutheran proposal, “Called to Common Mission,” is not the way to accomplish it. Speakers addressed
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In 1954, four years after the solemn definition of the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven, Pope Pius XII declared a Marian Year. With greater or lesser enthusiasm, Catholic Europe responded, and in my home town, on the east coast of Ireland, the response took spectacular form. The women were invited to donate jewellery, the men money, towards the creation of a solid-gold crown for the statue of the Blessed Virgin in our parish church. It was a poor community, yet the response to the appeal for the Virgin’s crown was remarkable, many of the women even donating their wedding rings. The statue, an insipid, life-sized plaster replica of Our Lady of Lourdes, white-robed, blue-sashed, smallbusted, neither a recognisably maternal nor even a very convincingly human image, was duly decorated with a crown which would have paid several times over for any one of the houses in which most of the donors lived.
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by United Methodist News Service As the World Council of Churches heads into a new millennium, it does so with a little less Love than it has had for the last two decades. For Jan Love, the WCC‘s December meeting in Zimbabwe marked the end of 23 years of heavy involvement in the ecumenical organization.
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[ACNS 1843] At a press briefing in Westminster Abbey, London, today, the co-chairmen of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), the Rt Revd Mark Santer (Anglican) and the Rt Revd Cormac Murphy-O’Connor (Roman Catholic), launched the document “The Gift of Authority,” the latest in study documents issued by 18 members of the Commission. This
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by United Methodist News Service United Methodists will meet in conversation with representatives of some churches within the Wesleyan Holiness tradition Feb. 18-20 in Dallas. Organized by the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, the meeting will take place on the Perkins School of Theology campus and at Highland Park United Methodist
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For five days in October, seven Mennonites sat face-to-face with six Roman Catholics to discuss reasons for the centuries-long separation between the two churches. The meeting here on October 14-18 was held to promote better understanding of each others’ faith and to overcome long-standing prejudices.

This international consultation was sponsored by the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (Vatican City). Helmut Harder (Canada) and Joseph Martino (United States) chaired the meeting.
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I remember, as an MA student, reading one of Margaret O’Gara’s essays in Grail on petrine ministry and what she called “the ecumenical gift exchange.” Drawing a comparison to the exchange of gifts in a large family at Christmas, O’Gara says that “in ecumenical dialogue, each Christian communion brings one or many gifts to the dialogue table, and each receives riches from their dialogue partners as well. But in the ecumenical gift exchange, the gift-giving enriches all of the partners, since we do not lose our gifts by sharing them with others.” Throughout my own research and the past four years of ecumenical ministry I have kept this concept close at hand.

O’Gara’s new book The Ecumenical Gift Exchange collects her own essays exploring issues of contemporary ecumenical dialogue, particularly: petrine ministry; infallibility; authority and dissent; feminism, and of utmost importance: the process of reception itself. How does one church receive the gifts of another? What level of agreement is necessary? When does the dialogue move from talking to acting? How does dialogue lead to repentance and then to reception?

She points out, “In a sense, the entire ecumenical movement rests on the recognition of the need for repentance, a willingness to ask whether we have a beam in our own eye before we concern ourselves with the mote in the eye of the other.”
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NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS BRINGS FORMAL GREETINGS TO NCC BISHOP GIVEN NCC’S RESPONSE TO PAPAL ENCYCLICAL ON ECUMENISM [CHICAGO] For the second year running, a representative from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops brought formal greetings to the National Council of Churches’ annual General Assembly, where he was given a copy of the NCC’s
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — “The ecumenical question is often posed as a vote for or against ‘Lutheran identity.’ We cite our confessional tradition as the reason for our continued separation from other Christian bodies,” said the Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). “I believe that it is precisely
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When Bernie and Shirley Karstad were considering marriage, they had an added twist to consider. While both were dedicated, devoted and active church members, the catch was that they belonged to different churches. Neither had any interest in switching to another church tradition. Adding further complication, each was bringing children from a previous marriage into
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Canada’s largest Protestant church, the United Church of Canada (UCC), has launched a challenge to the nation’s multi-billion dollar gambling industry, and to the federal and provincial governments which receive massive revenue by taxing gambling. The Canadian Council of Churches and other faith groups are being approached to support the campaign for an inquiry into gambling.
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Dr. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, has renewed his call for the main Christian churches to start, in the year 2000, a process to lead to a universal Christian council uniting all churches and Christians. He requested the bodies of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican and Pentecostal churches to make a solemn promise not to rest until such a council has been achieved.
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In his address on “Nation and Identity” to the Anglican General Synod, the Rt. Rev. Andrew Hutchison, Bishop of Montreal said that his vision of the church in Quebec would see it stay out of partisan politics while pursuing goals of reconciliation, justice and peace. Bishop Hutchison told the Synod that the church has no mandate to advocate one form of government over another. “How we choose to organize ourselves for collective security and well being is a political question that must be settled by voters at the ballot box, be they Christian or not,” he said.  But he added: “We do, on the other hand, have a mandate … to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.”
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The Saskatoon Centre for Ecumenism takes great pleasure in introducing Sister Anne Keffer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada who will become Associate Director of the Centre as of June 1, 1998. Sr. Anne Keffer completed her deaconess training at the Baltimore Deaconess School, and is an active member of the Lutheran Deaconess Community, ELCA (USA).
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Giving visible witness to Christian unity is the goal of a number of Saskatoon churches which have joined themselves together in Covenanting 2000.

Rev. Walter Donovan, of Calvin Goforth Presbyterian Church, is an enthusiastic supporter of the Covenanting 2000 project. His church has been twinned with Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church for a two-year period.

Donovan is one of the eight church leaders and representatives who has signed the Covenanting 2000 pastoral letter encouraging local inter-church initiatives. It has also been signed by leaders and representatives of the Anglican Church of Canada, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, the Mennonite Ministerial, Orthodox Church of America, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Catholic Churches, and the United Church of Canada.
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A pan-Orthodox conference that took place from April 29 to May 2, 1998, at Thessaloniki, Greece, was devoted to relations between Orthodoxy and the ecumenical movement – a topic which has caused concern among very many people not only in the Russian but also other Local Orthodox Churches.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (ELCA) — The Rev. David W. Tiede, president of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., affirmed Lutheran commitment to ecumenism and explained the cultural and theological factors that make proposals for full communion between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church “complicated.” Tiede addressed a gathering of Lutherans and Episcopalians
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by Virginia Battiste, Saskatoon Star Phoenix Jesus prayed that all believers might be one. In Saskatoon, two churches are close to achieving that goal. After several years of dialogue on national and international fronts, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) are moving towards establishing closer ties that would
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — Recent ecumenical decisions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have underlined differences between the 5.2-million member church and the 2.5-million member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). There are about 8.6 million Lutherans in North America. The ELCA’s 1997 Churchwide Assembly approved a relationship of “full communion” with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),
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WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. (ELCA) — Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America meeting here March 5-10 adopted a statement encouraging members of the church to “participate in the ongoing development of the revised proposal for full communion” with The Episcopal Church. The Conference of Bishops’ action expressed gratitude that a first draft of a
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by Gordon Legge, Calgary Herald One of the city’s most energetic ecumenists is being honoured in mid-February by a Montreal organization. Anna Tremblay, a member of the Roman Catholic Commission for Ecumenism, is receiving the 1997 Ecumenical Leadership Award from Montreal’s Canadian Centre for Ecumenism. At the same time, Rev. Richard Stetson, Tremblay’s nominator, will
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More than 25 years ago in Northern India I first met Fr Dupuis. That meeting prefigured my contact with his remarkable book, and was also thoroughly physical. As he gunned his Yugoslavian motorcycle along narrow roads in the foothills of the Himalayas, I clung to him for dear life and prayed not to fall into the cavernous valleys that flanked our route to a high-altitude Buddhist monastery. After visiting the monks Dupuis roared off down another road to a self-help Tibetan refugee camp directed by the Dalai Lama’s sister-in-law and then to a mountaineering school run by the Sherpa Tensing who had conquered Mount Everest in 1953 with Sir Edmund Hillary. These visits shaped my first impressions of Jacques Dupuis as someone who wanted direct contact with other religious traditions and was certainly not content to learn about them simply by reading texts at his desk.
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As a child, a friend of mine used to be told by his nanny: Before you say anything, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? The same three questions may well be asked about the current proposal to define Mary as Co-Redeemer.

Is it true? The answer to that question depends on the way in which we interpret the title Co-Redeemer, along with the related titles Mediator of All Graces and Advocate of the People of God. As a member of the Orthodox Church I have no objection to these three titles in themselves — provided that they are rightly understood.

Indeed, closely similar language occurs in the prayers and hymns used in the Christian East. With the greatest frequency in Orthodox worship we say to the Virgin Mary, Most Holy Mother of God, save us. In our invocations to other members of the Communion of Saints, including St John the Baptist, except on very rare occasions we never say more than … pray for us.
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — Church leaders stressed clarity and candor in their advice to the teams charged with drafting a revised proposal for full communion between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church. An advisory panel of ELCA pastors and lay people, bishops and scholars met here Dec. 18-19, together with the ELCA
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A sign in the hallway of the presbytery at St Patrick’s, Middlesbrough, leaves some visitors open-mouthed if they are unaware of the priest’s marital status. Under the heading of Turnham House Rules it reads: If you drop it — pick it up. If you sleep in it — make it. If you open it — close it. If you empty it — fill it up. If it rings — answer it. If it cries — love it. The list is not addressed to a misbehaving curate, nor is it there for mere display. Its author, Fr Derek Turnham, and his wife Margaret have three children, the eldest of whom has recently started at university. It’s his first time away from us and so we’re really feeling the loss at the moment, Fr Turnham says, echoing the common view of parents in a similar situation.

Yet as he leads me towards the living-room, it is also clear that this is a Catholic presbytery like most others: austere, modestly furnished and free of ornaments apart from the odd icon or statue. Outside lies the scabrous wasteland that covers much of post-industrial north Middlesbrough. Fr Turnham anticipates my thoughts as we survey it, explaining that the diocese were frankly very glad to have us occupying this house, because it would almost certainly have been vandalised if it had lain empty any longer.
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When Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople made a month-long tour of 16 cities in the United States in October and November, he was feted with honours at Washington’s Jesuit-run Georgetown University and greeted with splendour in Baltimore’s Catholic cathedral. As so often in inter-Church relations, however, the conciliatory declarations belied bitter realities.

Ironically, the sharp downturn in Catholic-Orthodox relations during the past six months came into the open after one of the Pope’s most impassioned appeals for Christian unity. The occasion John Paul II picked was a Eucharistic Congress held in May at Wroclaw in Poland. “In this our second millennium, when the unity of Christ’s disciples has suffered tragic divisions between East and West, prayer for the rediscovery of full unity is a special obligation”, the Pope said. “Can we bear joint and effective witness to Christ if we are not reconciled with one another? Can we be reconciled with one another without forgiving one another?”
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On October 24, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Bill Phipps, the moderator of the United Church of Canada had stated that the “divinity of Jesus and the reality of heaven and hell are irrelevant.”

The article, which was carried coast to coast in numerous papers, generated an immediate controversy and storms of protest to both the United Church national offices in Etobicoke, Ontario and the newspapers reprinting the article.

By mid-November battle lines were drawn with pundits, theologians, clergy and laity of both conservative and liberal hues voicing their opinions of Phipps’ statements and of his orthodoxy. It would not be terribly helpful (or appropriate) for me to add my views. But, I should, in the interests of bringing clarity to the discussion, make the following observations.

Firstly, both Bill Phipps and the United Church spokespeople have pointed out that the specific statements that were reported were lifted out of context and did not accurately represent his views. The entire article was published in the Ottawa Citizen on November 2, and while the statements are direct quotes, in my opinion Phipps clearly did not intend to deny the divinity of Jesus.
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Gambling is “an insidious form of evil that takes advantage of the poor and disadvantaged” and Christians need to take a more active role in opposing the dependency of governments on gaming revenues, says a new position paper released by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC)
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For many Anglicans, the eleventh day of the eleventh month stirs memories of present as well as past conflicts: last Tuesday was the fifth anniversary of the General Synod’s vote in favour of women priests. By common consent the decision presaged the biggest upheaval in the Church of England since the Reformation, prompting 300 clergymen to resign their orders in protest at what they saw as a fracturing of the apostolic ministry. But in ordaining its women deacons in 1994 the Church gained nearly seven times as many new priests as it lost, and the new recruits are now serving at all levels of the hierarchy up to the rank of archdeacon. There appears to be ready agreement among most church people that the ordained ministry has been refreshed by “more open and collaborative styles of leadership”, and that women priests are accepted with enthusiasm by an evergrowing majority of congregations in consequence. “It’s an incarnational thing”, said one erstwhile sceptic. “When you see someone doing the job effectively, you’re quickly won over.”
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CHICAGO (ELCA) — The Formula of Agreement approved at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Churchwide Assembly this summer presents a “unique and historical opportunity” for the expansion of mission outreach in the United States and Caribbean, according to a document called, “Ecumenical Shared Congregations.” The board of the ELCA’s Division for Outreach approved the
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PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) — By a narrow margin the Evanglical Lutheran Church in America has rejected a proposal to enter into “full communion” with The Episcopal Church here Aug. 18. The proposal needed the support of two-thirds of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly for approval. It failed by a vote of 684 to 351 — six votes
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PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) — Two prominent Lutheran theologians squared off Aug. 16 on the subject of relations between Lutheran and Reformed churches. The exchange between the Rev. William H. Lazareth, former bishop of the Metro New York Synod and the Rev. Timothy Lull, president of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, Calif., opened a discussion at
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PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) — “Unity in Christ has never been uniformity. Divisions in the church have injured us, but diversity has been enriching,” the Rev. Michael Rogness, professor of homiletics at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., told voting members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as they met in assembly here Aug. 16. He opened
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To some, he is the agent of England’s conversion to the True Faith, to others, a danger to the nation’s soul. At first sight Fr Michael Seed seems an unlikely candidate for either role. Sue Gaisford encounters the man behind the reputation.
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by John A. Bolt. Reprinted from “The Presbyterian Outlook” [DALLAS] Nearly four decades of Presbyterian presence in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) could come to an end in Syracuse as commissioners to the 209th General Assembly consider whether to proceed in the face of overwhelming presbytery rejection of the mechanism proposed to participate in
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by Gordon Legge, Calgary Herald Calgary Roman Catholic Anna Tremblay spent a week in Montreal a year ago that energized her faith as a Christian. She attended a week-long institute on ecumenism at the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism in Montreal. “It gave me the bug,” she says. “It was a really wonderful experience.” Next week,
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Rome — and Poland — are buzzing with rumour, counter-rumour and denial: will Pope John Paul and Patriarch Alexis of the Russian Orthodox Church meet in Vienna on 21 June or won’t they? Perhaps by the time this article is published there will have been an announcement that puts paid to the rumours, but even an eventual negative provides a timely stimulus to consider relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

One argument against the likelihood of a meeting between the Pope and the Russian Patriarch is obvious: there has been no preparation. The Patriarch will be in Vienna on his way to the European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz and the Pope wants to meet him. The Pope has spoken prophetically about his desire to see the reunion of East and West, to reverse the basic division in Christendom of nearly a millennium, before the year 2000. Yet his health and the ticking of the clock make this an unattainable goal, at least in human terms.
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by Virginia Battiste, Saskatoon Star Phoenix Dr. Roy Oswald has some advice for churches who want to keep their pastors in long-term ministry. He says it can help to avoid both clergy burnout and the frequent changes of clergy that can be disruptive and costly to a parish. “We live in a high stress culture
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (ELCA) — “Grand Forks is inundated, and the one thing they can’t get is water,” the Rev. H. George Anderson told the National Workshop for Christian Unity here. “Conflicts seem to flood our church. We are awash in raw sewage and debris, amid dangerous currents, and we need the pure water of Baptism.”
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WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. (ELCA) — Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting here March 6-11, talked about response in ELCA synods to ecumenical proposals to be considered at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in August. The church is scheduled to vote on entering into “full communion” with the Episcopal Church and with three churches
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Have any Catholic bishops in Ireland undergone equal-opportunities training? It is a serious question that I have asked before with a depressingly predictable answer. I could have asked the same question about the Pope and the entire Curia and been tolerably sure of the answer.

The fact that the answer is a resounding no is problematic today in a way that it was not even four or five years ago. The Western secular world has felt the impact of decades of serious equal opportunities debate, critique, research and legislation. Its momentum has gathered in Ireland as in many other countries, bringing all of us up a steep learning curve which has changed the face of education, employment, social policy, politics, human relationships and cultural perspectives. Some bastions of conservatism remain slumped at the bottom of the curve. Others climbed it reluctantly, some were pushed and yet others jumped it.
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In the furore surrounding the ex-communication of Fr Tissa Balasuriya, very little has been said about the overall project of his book, Mary and Human Liberation. Beyond specific theological questions, Fr Balasuriya’s treatment of Mary touches on issues which go to the heart of the conflict between traditionalists and reformists which is dividing the Catholic Church today.

As in so many of Christianity’s decisive theological moments, the role of Mary is pivotal. The saying, “As Mary goes, so goes the Church,” is as true today as it was of the fifth century when the Council of Ephesus affirmed Christ’s divinity by declaring Mary Theotokos, or Godbearer.
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by Rev. Edgar R. Trexler, editor of The Lutheran (the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) GENEVA (ELCA) — The Rev. Eugene L. Brand leaned back in his chair and reflected on recent ecumenical breakthroughs in Europe. Agreements between Lutherans and Anglicans and between Lutherans and the Reformed have “re-drawn the Christian map,”
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Thirty years ago, my father, Charles Davis, then a secular priest and considered by many the leading Catholic theologian in Britain, publicly denounced the Roman Catholic Church as corrupt, and left. It was a move which sent shock waves around the Catholic world. At the same time he married my mother, then Florence Henderson, a long-standing member of the international Catholic lay women’s organisation, the Grail. They had become friends through their joint work in the ecumenical movement in Britain. She followed him in his decision to leave the Church and together they went into a form of exile, which my father, in different contexts, has often referred to as the desert. It was in the desert that my brother and I were born and raised.
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On 2 January, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a Notification, signed by the prefect, Cardinal Ratzinger, and by the secretary, Archbishop Bertone, and approved by Pope John Paul II, which declared that Fr Tissa Balasuriya OMI of Sri Lanka “has deviated from the integrity of the truth of the Catholic faith and, therefore, cannot be considered a Catholic theologian; moreover, he has incurred excommunication latae sententiae (can. 1364, par. 1)”. This canon states that an apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs an • automatic excommunication. The charge of “deviation from the truth of the faith” indicates that it is for heresy, rather than for apostasy or schism, that Fr Balasuriya has been excommunicated.
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