Pope issues call for Christian unity

Pope John Paul II, in issuing a fresh initiative to promote Christian unity, has provided Protestants and Catholics a rare opportunity to work through long-standing theological differences in a modern context.

In North America, evangelicals and Catholic leaders say the pope’s invitation to examine together the role of the papal office is historic and significant. But there is disagreement on whether meaningful unity is achievable, even with the pope’s endorsement in the May 30 encyclical on Christian unity, Ut Unum Sint (“That They May Be One”). A common concern that Orthodox and Protestant believers share is opposition to the pope’s claim to a unique role in Christendom.

“The Catholic Church’s conviction that in the ministry of the Bishop of Rome she has preserved … the visible sign and guarantor of unity constitutes a difficulty for most other Christians, whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections,” the pope acknowledges. “To the extent that we are responsible for these, I join my predecessor Paul VI in asking forgiveness.”

Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and former Lutheran, now with the New York-based organization Religion and Public Life, says the statement is “historic” and “unprecedented.”

Neuhaus has formed an important link to the evangelical movement through working with Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colson. From this coalition emerged the controversial “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (CT, March 6, 1995, p. 52).
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Posted: July 17, 1995 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6349
Categories: Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue, Opinion • In this article: Christian unity, Evangelicals, papacy, Ut Unum Sint Transmis : 17 juillet 1995 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6349
Catégorie : Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue, Opinion • Dans cet article : Christian unity, Evangelicals, papacy, Ut Unum Sint

The new Catechism and Christian unity

by Richard John Neuhaus, Theology Today 53.2 (Jul 1996): 171. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative reference or baseline for understanding Catholic faith, sacramental practice, moral doctrine, and prayer. As the title suggests, the chief purpose is catechetical, to provide a doctrinal framework from which the Church in various parts of the
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Posted: July 1, 1996 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6340
Categories: Opinion • In this article: catechism, Catholic, Christian unity, ecumenism Transmis : 1 juillet 1996 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6340
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : catechism, Catholic, Christian unity, ecumenism

Christian unity demands sacrifice of old ways

by John R. Quinn for the National Catholic Reporter 32.34 (Jul 12, 1996): 13. Following are excerpts from Archbishop John R Quinn’s lecture on June 29, 1996, at Campion Hall, Oxford. Quinn is a visiting fellow at Campion Hall. I. The challenge of John Paul II … The pope himself, in apostolic discernment, sees that
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Posted: July 12, 1996 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6345
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Christian unity, church reform, collegiality, papacy, subsidiarity Transmis : 12 juillet 1996 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6345
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Christian unity, church reform, collegiality, papacy, subsidiarity

What is truth?

by Paul Hanley, for “Urban Banter” in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix What is truth? The question has been around for a long time, but finding an answer isn’t getting any easier. The question, which was put to several speakers at an interfaith symposium at the University last Saturday, becomes more difficult to answer as society
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Posted: October 10, 1996 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6193
Categories: Opinion • In this article: dialogue, interfaith, truth Transmis : 10 octobre 1996 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6193
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : dialogue, interfaith, truth

Journey across the desert

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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Posted: January 25, 1997 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6547
Categories: Opinion, The Tablet • In this article: Christian, Christianity, church, church reform, theology Transmis : 25 janvier 1997 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6547
Catégorie : Opinion, The Tablet • Dans cet article : Christian, Christianity, church, church reform, theology

Liberating Mary

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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Posted: March 8, 1997 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6554
Categories: Opinion, The Tablet • In this article: Catholic, feminist, liberation, Mary, theology Transmis : 8 mars 1997 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6554
Catégorie : Opinion, The Tablet • Dans cet article : Catholic, feminist, liberation, Mary, theology

Take Another Look … at Christian Unity

Ecumenism is not an appendix to the Church’s mission. Rather the search for Christian unity touches the very heart of what it means to be a disciple in the modern world. As Christian people, and as a Church, our ecumenical vocation calls us to examine our relationships with all who bear the name of Christ. In humility, and with integrity, we must be prepared to confess our failures and our sins of disunity, and forgive those of our Christian brothers and sisters where they have sinned against us.

These principles described above are the insight and commitment of the Catholic Church expressed at the Second Vatican Council and repeated in a number of other forums since. Our formal commitment and collected energies as a Church have strongly influenced the ecumenical agenda, and given a needed boost to the search for Christian unity in our day.
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Posted: April 30, 1997 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6336
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Christian unity, ecumenism Transmis : 30 avril 1997 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6336
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Christian unity, ecumenism

Will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Continue in COCU?

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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Posted: June 19, 1997 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=4915
Categories: News, Opinion • In this article: Christian unity, church union, Consultation on Church Union, ecumenism, Presbyterian Church USA Transmis : 19 juin 1997 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=4915
Catégorie : News, Opinion • Dans cet article : Christian unity, church union, Consultation on Church Union, ecumenism, Presbyterian Church USA

Congregational Ecumenism on the Prairies

By Nicholas Jesson Growing up in Winnipeg, I had a stereotypical image of Saskatchewan and Alberta.  Albertans were cowboys and oilmen while people from Saskatchewan and rural Manitoba were all grain farmers.  Saskatchewan was flat, dull, and almost barren.  We used to joke, half seriously, that when driving west from Winnipeg one should leave in
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Posted: March 15, 1998 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6266
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Canada, ecumenism, Saskatchewan Transmis : 15 mars 1998 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6266
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Canada, ecumenism, Saskatchewan

To dialogue, or not?

Cooperation between the churches of Canada is at a significant level. We share our problems, we share our plans, we even share our resources. But what of dialogue? Are we talking about our theological perspectives as we cooperate? Or, has dialogue fallen into a secondary or tertiary importance?
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Posted: June 1, 1998 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=2231
Categories: Opinion Transmis : 1 juin 1998 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=2231
Catégorie : Opinion

Book Review: Margaret O’Gara, The Ecumenical Gift Exchange

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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Posted: November 15, 1998 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6328
Categories: Catholic Register, Opinion • In this article: books, Christian unity, dialogue, ecumenism, exchange of gifts Transmis : 15 novembre 1998 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6328
Catégorie : Catholic Register, Opinion • Dans cet article : books, Christian unity, dialogue, ecumenism, exchange of gifts

History in our own time: The Joint Declaration on Justification

By Nicholas Jesson This homily was presented on Sunday, October 31, 1999 during Mass at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. “How are we saved?” This was the central question of the Protestant Reformation. Or, as Martin Luther phrased it: “How are we, as sinners, found righteous in the sight of a just God?” This
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Posted: October 31, 1999 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6258
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Catholic, Christian unity, dialogue, ecumenism, Justification by Faith, Lutheran World Federation, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Transmis : 31 octobre 1999 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6258
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Catholic, Christian unity, dialogue, ecumenism, Justification by Faith, Lutheran World Federation, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

Cardinal Ratzinger answers objections to Dominus Iesus

During the summer of 2000, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a declaration entitled “Dominus Iesus: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church”. In an interview published on 22 September 2000, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung invited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to respond to the principal objections raised against the Declaration Dominus Iesus. The daily edition of L’Osservatore Romano subsequently published an Italian translation of the interview, omitting the parts that only concern the German situation. Here is a translation from the Italian version of the interview.
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Posted: September 22, 2000 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6607
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, ecumenism, interfaith, Joseph Ratzinger, salvation, Vatican Transmis : 22 septembre 2000 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6607
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, ecumenism, interfaith, Joseph Ratzinger, salvation, Vatican

Steps toward unity of great historical significance

In the movement for Christian unity, does dialogue just lead to more dialogue, or at some point does concrete action toward unity actually come from it? You be the judge.
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Posted: December 13, 2000 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=20
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Christian unity, ecumenism, full communion Transmis : 13 décembre 2000 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=20
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Christian unity, ecumenism, full communion

An ecumenist gives thanks

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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Posted: January 13, 2001 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6545
Categories: Opinion, The Tablet • In this article: exchange of gifts, spiritual ecumenism, WPCU Transmis : 13 janvier 2001 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6545
Catégorie : Opinion, The Tablet • Dans cet article : exchange of gifts, spiritual ecumenism, WPCU

Ice curtain in the East

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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Posted: January 27, 2001 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6557
Categories: Opinion, The Tablet • In this article: Catholic, Orthodox, Russian, Ukraine Transmis : 27 janvier 2001 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6557
Catégorie : Opinion, The Tablet • Dans cet article : Catholic, Orthodox, Russian, Ukraine

It’s time we listened

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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Posted: March 31, 2001 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6537
Categories: Opinion, The Tablet • In this article: Christian unity, ecumenism Transmis : 31 mars 2001 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6537
Catégorie : Opinion, The Tablet • Dans cet article : Christian unity, ecumenism

May They All Be One? But how?

I. When Jesus uttered the words ‘may they all be one’, they by no means represented a vision or a dream. Jesus said these words on the eve of his death. This was not the time for triumphal utopias. The Galilean spring, when the enthusiastic crowds overwhelmed him, was over. They no longer cried ‘Hosanna!’ but ‘Crucify him!’. Jesus was well aware of this, and predicted also that his disciples would not be one, and that they would be dispersed. What else could he do in this situation than to leave the future of his work in the hands of his Father? Thus, the words ‘may they all be one’ are a prayer, a prayer in a humanly perceived hopeless situation.
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Posted: May 17, 2003 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=6663
Categories: Opinion, The Tablet • In this article: Catholic, Christian unity, ecumenism, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Walter Kasper Transmis : 17 mai 2003 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=6663
Catégorie : Opinion, The Tablet • Dans cet article : Catholic, Christian unity, ecumenism, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Walter Kasper

What happened at the Primates Meeting? A guide for our ecumenical partners

As you will know, the Primates of the Anglican Communion met together at Lambeth Palace on 15 and 16 October in response to recent developments within the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. These developments included the election of a priest in a committed same sex relationship as a bishop, and the authorisation by one diocese in Canada of a public Rite of Blessing for Same Sex Unions. In their Statement at the end of the meeting, the Primates said four main things – (a) they committed themselves to working together in the Communion as far as possible, (b) they reaffirmed the teaching of the Anglican Communion on sexual ethics, (c) they acknowledged that recent developments will damage the Communion, and (d) they established a commission to take matters further.
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Posted: October 17, 2003 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=9284
Categories: Opinion • In this article: Anglican Communion, Gregory Cameron, human sexuality, Primates Meeting Transmis : 17 octobre 2003 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=9284
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : Anglican Communion, Gregory Cameron, human sexuality, Primates Meeting

The holiness of the Church on earth

By Nicholas Jesson In today’s Vatican Information Service (VIS), a report of the ad limina visit of some U.S. bishops to Rome can be found. The pope will be speaking to each group of U.S. bishops as they visit over the coming months, and it has been announced that he will be speaking to them
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Posted: April 29, 2004 • Permanent link: ecu.net/?p=105
Categories: Opinion • In this article: church, holiness, John Paul II, pope Transmis : 29 avril 2004 • Lien permanente : ecu.net/?p=105
Catégorie : Opinion • Dans cet article : church, holiness, John Paul II, pope