Patriarchs at war as Russian ‘cancels’ Alexandrian from prayers

The Patriarchate of Alexandria has become the latest to recognise Ukraine’s new independent Orthodox church, prompting angry reactions from Russian leaders who bitterly opposed its establishment by the Ecumenical Patriarchate a year ago.

In a brief statement during a Cairo service, Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All-Africa said the recognition had been conferred after “many prayers and consultations” among his senior clergy. Meanwhile, in a second message to his bishops, published by Greece’s Orthodox Romfea news agency, Theodore confirmed the move, adding that it had followed “mature reflection” and many personal talks, and been taken out of “concern for peace and the Orthodox churches’ unity and wellbeing”.
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Posted: Nov. 11, 2019 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=10688
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Moscow Patriarchate, Ukraine, Ukrainian Orthodox Transmis : 11 nov. 2019 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=10688
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Moscow Patriarchate, Ukraine, Ukrainian Orthodox

Are we on the brink of a new ecumenical spring?

It is not uncommon to read optimistic appraisals of how the cause of Christian unity is progressing. There are in fact undeniable signs of continuing progress in relations between the divided churches as set out, for example, in the study document From Conflict to Communion, describing the substantial advance of relations between Catholics and Lutherans in fifty years of dialogue.

But not all is plain sailing. To the careful observer there are also signs of frustration and even retrenchment. To not a few, the traditional ways of doing ecumenism seem no longer capable of meeting new challenges coming from developments both within the Catholic Church and within the other Churches, our ecumenical partners.
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Posted: Jan. 24, 2019 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=10491
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Brian Farrell, Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity Transmis : 24 janv. 2019 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=10491
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Brian Farrell, Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity

New Vatican magazine criticises Church for ‘ignoring role of women’

The magazine, which launched today, started as a monthly section in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

The Church has ignored the female contribution to Catholic culture in recent years, according to an editorial in a new women’s magazine published by the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper.

Lucetta Scaraffia, the co-ordinator of Women-Church-World, the new monthly magazine published by L’Osservatore Romano, said that a “hidden revolution” had taken place during the last century with women making an increasingly important contribution to the intellectual life of Catholicism.

But this, she explained, had been “almost ignored” by the Church even though it had intensified in the years following the Second Vatican Council when more and more women started to study theology.
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Posted: May 3, 2016 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=9062
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Vatican Transmis : 3 mai 2016 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=9062
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Vatican

Francis blesses Vatican cricket team

Pope Francis has given his blessing to the Vatican’s international cricket team as it prepares to take on the Church of England. The side of Catholic priests are preparing for their first tour to England, which will include a match with the Church of England XI in Canterbury. Pope Francis, who is a supporter of Buenos Aires football side San Lorenzo, put on a cricket cap and signed a bat that the team will take with them during their tour of England, which begins on Friday. After the tour the bat will be auctioned in order to raise money for a joint Catholic and Anglican campaign against modern-day slavery and indentured labour, the Global Freedom Network, the Vatican said. The papal XI will play matches against chaplains of the British armed forces at Aldershot and the Royal Household Cricket Club at Windsor Castle, as well as two other games. Then in Canterbury on September 19 the team will take on the Anglican XI.
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Posted: Sept. 10, 2014 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=7778
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Anglican, Church of England, ecumenism, Pope Francis, Vatican Transmis : 10 sept. 2014 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=7778
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Anglican, Church of England, ecumenism, Pope Francis, Vatican

Long divisions that plague the Church

There are many reasons to be hopeful about the direction of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue but it is threatened by tensions emerging within the Orthodox Church. As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity gets under way today, a leading ecumenist gives his assessment.

In 1923, a schoolteacher priest of Lyons started devoting his spare time to helping the 10,000 refugees from Bolshevism camped and lodged around the city and its suburbs. It was his first encounter with a Christianity that was not Roman Catholic. Thus he learned the friendship of receiving as well as giving, finding great respect for the Orthodox clergy and people in their moment of destitution, as his heart opened to their faith and the beauty of their worship. He was astonished to find Catholics from the old Russian Empire who were not Latins, but Eastern Christians who maintained their unity with the Bishop of Rome with roots to before the Great Schism. Over the next decade, Paul Couturier became convinced of the need for Christian unity, and in 1935 he took hold of the Catholic Church Unity Octave, founded in 1908, and developed it into a “Universal Week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians in the charity and truth of Christ”. Inspired by the holiness of the Orthodox, beyond this world he imagined an “invisible monastery”, in which all could unite in prayer to God in Heaven, in the hope of seeing the same union realised in the Church here. He took for his motto the saying of Metropolitan Platon Gorodetsky of Kiev: “The walls of separation do not rise as far as Heaven.”
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Posted: Jan. 16, 2014 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=7184
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Bartholomew I, Catholic, ecumenism, Moscow Patriarchate, Orthodox Transmis : 16 janv. 2014 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=7184
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Bartholomew I, Catholic, ecumenism, Moscow Patriarchate, Orthodox

My brother Andrew: Relations between the Churches of East and West

Pope Francis’ reference to himself as the ‘Bishop of Rome’ was music to the ears of Orthodox leaders for whom the question of papal primacy has long been a problem for reunion. Their attendance at the new Pope’s inaugural Mass was a sign of their hopes for closer communion. A statement from the patriarchate explained Bartholomew’s decision to attend Pope Francis’ inauguration personally: the need for “a profoundly bold step … that could have lasting significance”. It is the first time the Bishop of Constantinople has attended the inauguration of the Bishop of Rome ever, let alone since the great schism of 1054. According to the patriarchate ­website: “after such a long division … authentic reunion will require courage, leadership and humility. Given Pope Francis’ well-­documented work for social justice and his insistence that globalisation is detrimental to the poor … the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic traditions have a renewed opportunity to work collectively on issues of mutual concern … But such work requires a first step and it would appear as though Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is willing to take such a step.” In one of those seemingly informal but resonant gestures that we are beginning to expect from Francis, the response was immediate and commensurate. The successor of Peter greeted the successor of the other Galilean fisherman as “my brother Andrew”.
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Posted: Mar. 30, 2013 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=3515
Categories: Opinion, Tablet • In this article: Bartholomew I, Christian unity, dialogue, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, ecumenism, Orthodox, patriarch Transmis : 30 mars 2013 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=3515
Catégorie : Opinion, Tablet • Dans cet article : Bartholomew I, Christian unity, dialogue, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, ecumenism, Orthodox, patriarch

Full unity is the ultimate aim of ecumenism, says Longley

The Archbishop of Birmingham has said he understands those frustrated with ecumenical dialogue but stressed the long term aim is “full visible unity”. Archbishop Bernard Longley was speaking to The Tablet days before members of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) gathered for their latest round of meetings in Hong Kong, which was due to start on Friday.
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Posted: May 3, 2012 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=2167
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Catholic, dialogue, ecumenism Transmis : 3 mai 2012 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=2167
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Catholic, dialogue, ecumenism

Lutheran leader defends the Pope

by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, The Tablet Lutheran Bishop Johannes Friedrich has said that the Pope’s visit to the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt on his visit to Germany last year “cannot be rated highly enough”. The former Bishop of Bavaria was writing in the German Protestant monthly Chrismon about the papal visit to Germany’s Protestant heartland last
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Posted: Jan. 28, 2012 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6744
Categories: Tablet • In this article: 2017, Benedict XVI, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformation, Walter Kasper Transmis : 28 janv. 2012 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6744
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : 2017, Benedict XVI, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformation, Walter Kasper

Pope ‘rehabilitated Luther’ during visit to eastern Germany

Jonathan Luxmoore and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, The Tablet The head of the German Church’s Ecumenical Commission has said that he believes the Pope “rehabilitated” the reformer, Martin Luther, during his visit to the country last month, write Jonathan Luxmoore and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. Speaking on 23 September to the council of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, in
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Posted: Oct. 8, 2011 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6746
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Benedict XVI, Catholic, ecumenism, Lutheran, Martin Luther Transmis : 8 oct. 2011 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6746
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Benedict XVI, Catholic, ecumenism, Lutheran, Martin Luther

Benedict’s balancing act

Pope Benedict XVI’s third visit to Germany last week was billed as the 84-year-old pontiff’s latest effort to help convince people in highly secularised Europe that their society would be better and more human if God were at its centre. He won high praise for a deeply philosophical paper given to the Bundestag in Berlin on the foundations for a free state of law (see page 10). In that address, he said it was “urgent” to start a “public debate” on the necessity of retrieving the natural law tradition in developing legislation. As with his speech at Westminster Hall a year ago, the Pope was hailed for reaching across the political and religious divide of Germany’s parliament and its intellectual class.
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Posted: Oct. 1, 2011 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6742
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Benedict XVI, Society of St. Pius X Transmis : 1 oct. 2011 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6742
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Benedict XVI, Society of St. Pius X

Benedict XVI meets Lutheran leaders at the Augustinerkloster, Erfurt

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting you here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt. As we have just heard, this is where Luther studied theology. This is where he was ordained a priest. Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine. And on this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that. What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey. “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle. For Luther theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.
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Posted: Sept. 23, 2011 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6717
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Benedict XVI, Catholic, ecumenism, Lutheran, Martin Luther Transmis : 23 sept. 2011 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6717
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Benedict XVI, Catholic, ecumenism, Lutheran, Martin Luther

Koch says joint ‘admission of guilt’ for Reformation needed

The joint commemoration of the Reformation by Catholics and Lutherans could begin with an admission of guilt by both sides, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, said in an interview last week. The Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation are planning a joint declaration on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. “Without joint recollection, joint purification and without an admission of guilt on both sides, an honest commemoration will not be possible,” Cardinal Koch told the Austrian Catholic Press Agency.
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Posted: Sept. 3, 2011 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6737
Categories: Tablet • In this article: 2017, Catholic, Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, ecumenism, Kurt Koch, Lutheran World Federation, Reformation Transmis : 3 sept. 2011 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6737
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : 2017, Catholic, Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, ecumenism, Kurt Koch, Lutheran World Federation, Reformation

Pope demands more emphasis on ecumenism in German visit

by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt for The Tablet Pope Benedict XVI has intervened personally to demand more time for ecumenical talks with the Protestant Churches when he visits Germany in September. In a highly unusual move he has written directly to the leader of the Protestant Churches, Chairman Nikolaus Schneider, expressing dissatisfaction with the brevity of the
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Posted: Mar. 26, 2011 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6740
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Benedict XVI, Catholic, ecumenism, Lutheran Transmis : 26 mars 2011 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6740
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Benedict XVI, Catholic, ecumenism, Lutheran

Benedict’s address at Lambeth Palace

You have spoken, Your Grace, of the historic meeting that took place, almost thirty years ago, between two of our predecessors – Pope John Paul the Second and Archbishop Robert Runcie – in Canterbury Cathedral. There, in the very place where Saint Thomas of Canterbury bore witness to Christ by the shedding of his blood, they prayed together for the gift of unity among the followers of Christ. We continue today to pray for that gift, knowing that the unity Christ willed for his disciples will only come about in answer to prayer, through the action of the Holy Spirit, who ceaselessly renews the Church and guides her into the fullness of truth.
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Posted: Sept. 17, 2010 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6726
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Anglican, Benedict XVI, Catholic, Church of England, Rowan Williams Transmis : 17 sept. 2010 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6726
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Anglican, Benedict XVI, Catholic, Church of England, Rowan Williams

Vatican attacks Quebec’s compulsory Religious Education course

The head of the Vatican’s education office has described the religious education curriculum introduced by the government of Quebec as bordering on “anti-Catholic”.

Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, the Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, stepped into the row over religious education, which has divided the Canadian province, when he criticised the Ethics and Religious Culture programme. It was implemented last September and has replaced all other RE curricula in the province’s state schools and Protestant and Catholic schools.

Eighty-two per cent of Quebec’s 7.5 million population are at least nominally Catholic, and boycotts of the course are occurring throughout the province. Cardinal Grocholewski said: “Talking in the same way about all religions is almost like an anti-Catholic education, because this creates a certain relativism.” He said this approach could ultimately be anti-religious, since young people are left with the impression that each faith is a fictional narrative. Speaking to the Zenit news agency in Rome, he also said that teaching all religions equally “violates the right of parents to educate their own children according to their own religion”.

Some Quebec schools have suspended pupils who take part in the boycotts. Loyola High School, a private Jesuit school in Montreal, is suing the province after its request that it be exempted from teaching the programme because it was “contrary to its faith mission” was denied.

• Read the complete news article in The Tablet, February 28, 2009
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Posted: Feb. 27, 2009 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=559
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Catholic Transmis : 27 févr. 2009 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=559
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Catholic

Benedict’s high risk strategy

It came during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s announcement of the Second Vatican Council – news that Pope Benedict had decreed that the “Lefebvrists”, the four bishops excommunicated for disobedience and who have never fully accepted the Council, could return to the Church.

The Pope instructed the Congregation for Bishops to “remit” the excommunications of four leaders of the schismatic Society of St Pius X (SSPX) otherwise known as Lefebvrists. The four men — Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso del Gallareta — incurred automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication in June 1988 when they were illicitly ordained bishops by renegade Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (d. 1991), who founded the SSPX in 1970 and the Seminary of Ecône in south-west Switzerland.
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Posted: Jan. 31, 2009 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6574
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Society of St. Pius X Transmis : 31 janv. 2009 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6574
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Society of St. Pius X

Catholics and Muslims find common ground in Rome

Catholics and Muslims find common ground in Rome

[The Tablet] The first meeting of the Catholic-Muslim Forum of scholars and religious leaders has ended in a joint declaration saying religious minorities have a right to “practise their faith in private and public” and to have their own houses of worship.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, ranked this as the most important of the 15 points agreed with delegates from the Common Word project, a dialogue initiative launched last year by 138 Islamic leaders from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Western countries. The declaration also called for respect for personal “choices in matters of conscience and religion,” which could apply to the thorny question of conversion from Islam, which the delegates discussed briefly but did not seek consensus on.

• See the complete article from The Tablet, November 15, 2008 at www.thetablet.co.uk/article/12282
• See the Final Declaration of the Catholic-Muslim Forum at ecumenism.net/archive/news/2008_11.htm#000787
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Posted: Nov. 15, 2008 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=521
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Catholic, Islam Transmis : 15 nov. 2008 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=521
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Catholic, Islam

Two faiths, one challenge

[The Tablet] The symbolism of next week’s inaugural meeting of the Catholic-Muslim Forum at the Vatican is likely to be as important as what is actually said. The public perception of religion is that it leads to trouble, especially between one religious or ethnic group and another. Indeed, in Iraq and Pakistan, Christians have had reason to fear for their lives from extremist Muslims who are, it must be stressed, acting in defiance of the teachings of their own faith. In Western Europe many Muslims have experienced discrimination and prejudice, and occasionally violence, not so much from anti-Islamic ideology as from sheer bigotry and racism. Yet in the Vatican next week leaders of the two faiths will stand side by side in mutual respect. One of them will be Pope Benedict XVI.

• The complete editorial published in The Tablet, November 1, 2008, is available online.
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Posted: Nov. 1, 2008 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=516
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Islam Transmis : 1 nov. 2008 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=516
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Islam

Christian-Jewish relations ‘difficult’

Christian-Jewish relations ‘difficult’

[The Tablet • Christa Pongratz-Lippitt] Cardinal Walter Kasper this week admitted that Christian-Jewish relations were going through a difficult period following the publication of the revised Good Friday Prayer for the Tridentine Rite, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. Cardinal Kasper, president of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, was speaking in an interview with the Ulm-based daily Südwest-Presse on the eve of the Katholikentag in Osnabrück. Several prominent German Jews will not be attending that event on account of the prayer.

Admitting the current tensions in Catholic-Jewish relations in Germany, Cardinal Kasper said: “Germany is, of course, particularly sensitive for historical reasons. This is a difficult period but I think we will be able to get back to the level of dialogue we have had up to now – at least that is what we would like to achieve.”

Asked why a German Pope “of all people” had been so “insensitive to German history” Cardinal Kasper said Pope Benedict “wanted to do something positive. He wanted to improve a prayer that the Jews found offensive and he succeeded. But that did not go quite as far as people wanted or expected. The Pope showed his good will as his unplanned visit to a synagogue in the US shows. This was seen as something most positive in America. In Germany things are different but we are doing all we can to overcome the difficulties.”

Asked why Pope Paul VI’s Good Friday Prayer for the Jews had not been adopted for the Tridentine Mass, Cardinal Kasper replied, “The present Pope wanted the language of the old prayer kept while improving the contents. He did not want to introduce a new liturgical form into the old, extraordinary form.”
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Posted: May 24, 2008 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=462
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Judaism Transmis : 24 mai 2008 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=462
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Judaism

No common language yet

A hundred years on from the establishing of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, how much further forward are we? And what exactly are we praying for during this week of prayer? On the whole, it’s become a fixture for most “mainstream” denominations, a few days when the more enthusiastic or more biddable members of the congregation turn up to someone else’s church for a well-mannered but often rather lukewarm joint service or two, or perhaps for a talk by a prominent local leader.

The aspiration that we end up relating better with each other, or even that we end up more willing to engage in witness and work together is entirely worthy, and is probably widely fulfilled. But are we praying for anything more than this?

For some people, the answer is clearly “no”. To look beyond this fostering of local goodwill, they would say, is always in danger of slipping towards the yearning for some universal institution with clear central control – at worst, a Pullmanesque Magisterium, some people’s nightmare of Roman Catholicism.
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Posted: Dec. 22, 2007 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=6686
Categories: Tablet • In this article: Archbishop of Canterbury, Christian unity, Rowan Williams, WPCU Transmis : 22 déc. 2007 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=6686
Catégorie : Tablet • Dans cet article : Archbishop of Canterbury, Christian unity, Rowan Williams, WPCU