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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RICHMOND, Va. (ELCA) — “We all want to share communion, but maybe not with the church across town,” said Bishop Philip R. Cousin, First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, told the 33rd annual National Workshop on Christian Unity here May 6-9. He used the theme, “Listen! I Stand at the Door and
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The 5.2 million members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are gearing up to make some major decisions in 1997 about how they will relate to another 67.3 million Christians in the United States. The ELCA Church Council, meeting here April 12-15, studied proposals regarding closer relations with the Roman Catholic Church, Episcopal Church and three Reformed churches — Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reformed Church in America and United Church of Christ.
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by James Solheim, director of news and information for the Episcopal Church. DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (ELCA) — As the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America move toward a historic decision in 1997 on full communion, they invited ecumenical partners to discuss the implications for all churches seeking unity. The Concordat of Agreement
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US nun calls for ‘responsible dissent’ on Vatican doctrine New York (ENI). A leading Roman Catholic nun and theologian in the United States has called for “responsible dissent” to the Vatican statement that Pope John Paul II’s teaching against the ordination of women is infallible. [ENI-96-0070, 476 words] Bahrain’s Christians urged to pray for end
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Turkey’s biggest church faces critical shortage of clergy Istanbul (ENI). Turkey’s biggest Christian church Orthodox Church, is facing a critical shortage of clergy. The church’s membership in Turkey is 82,000, 60,000 of them in Istanbul. However, the Istanbul diocese has only 28 priests, 10 of them aged over 60, for its 38 churches. Over the
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The challenge of mixed marriage in American life—and how the communities are responding to its problems andpossibilities both for the couples and for the raising of children—was the major topic of discussion at the semi-annual meeting of the U.S. Catholic-Jewish Consultation Committee. With the mixed marriage rate rising to around 50 percent in the Jewish
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from the Western Report 8, no.17 (1993): 44. Not since the Eastern and Western churches went their separate ways in 1054, with bitter reciprocal excommunications all around, has there been quite so much talk and hope for eventual reunification of the Christian world as there is today. “Ecumenism” has been a focus of much talk
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by Nick Lees, Edmonton Journal There was one sour note this week in Edmonton when 110 delegates met at the 7th National Institute on Ecumenism. “By and large, our Evangelical/Fundamentalist brothers and sisters remain very aloof from the ecumenical movement,” said Roman Catholic Bernard De Margerie, director of the Saskatoon Centre for Ecumenism. “In fact,
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Western Report 8.2 (Feb 8, 1993): 41. The shattering of Christendom into contending denominations in the 16th century ranks as one of the critical moments of world history, second perhaps only to the original conversion of the Roman Empire 13 centuries earlier. Historical explanations of these divisions abound. Yet the fact remains: Christendom was just
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by Bob Gilmour, Edmonton Journal A quiet, dedicated Edmonton woman who works behind the scenes to unify Edmonton churches has won Canada’s 1992 national ecumenical leadership award. Rosaleen Zdunich, ecumenical officer for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Edmonton, won the ninth annual national award from the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism. Rev. Thomas Ryan, director of
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by Paul de Groot, Edmonton Journal [SASKATOON] Bishops of the Anglican and Lutheran churches embraced here Friday, symbolizing a new, closer relationship between their churches. “This is a thrilling and a tremendous time,” said Anglican bishop Walter Jones of Winnipeg, moments after the biennial convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada approved a new
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[Los Angeles Times] Pope John Paul II reiterated this week that the ordination of women in the Anglican Church poses “serious obstacles” to relations with the Roman Catholic Church. In a year-end address to cardinals, the Pope, speaking with “sincere pain,” deplored a resolution adopted by the world’s Anglican bishops in August. The Anglican bishops
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from the Windsor Star [SASKATOON] At least 30,000 members of the United Church of Canada have signed a declaration of dissent against a statement by the church’s general council dealing with sexuality, says a United Church minister in Saskatchewan. “I’m upset,” said Rev. Don Lamont of Eston. “Some people have already left my church over
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from the Windsor Star [VICTORIA, BC] In a strongly worded farewell speech, the head of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination decried its divisiveness and warned of the danger of excluding believers. Anne Squire, the 67-year-old Amherstburg-born moderator, said what is at stake is whether the United Church wants to be “an inclusive or exclusive body.” And
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Rev. Thomas Ryan, director of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism in Montreal, has been appointed a Roman Catholic staff representative to a world meeting of Anglican bishops that begins today.

Two Vatican agencies have named the U.S.-born Paulist priest as a representative to the communications team of the Lambeth Conference. The conference is a gathering of the bishops of the 450 dioceses in Anglican churches around the world, including Bishop Reginald Hollis of Montreal.

Representatives have also been appointed by the world Lutheran church and by the World Council of Churches, a grouping mainly of Protestant and Orthodox Churches.

Ryan said in a conversation that it is the first time such staff representatives from other churches have been invited to help out at the Lambeth Conference, which meets every 10 years.

“It is an impressive initiative.”
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LONDON (AP-Reuter) – Lord Ramsey, who as archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974 left his mark as a champion of Christian unity and liberal causes, died yesterday at the age of 83. He had been ill with bronchial pneumonia for several weeks and died at St. John’s Home in Oxford, the Church of England
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by Patrick O’Driscoll, USA Today Young revelers rock the ballroom in a New Year’s Eve countdown. At midnight Thursday, the cheer goes up: “Happy New CHURCH!” How’s that again? While millions of us sing choruses of Auld Lang Syne to welcome 1988, some 1,600 Lutheran teens in Anaheim, Calif., will hum a hymn – on
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by Harvey Shepherd, The [Montreal] Gazette Sister Katherine MacDonald has been involved with interfaith relations throughout her religious life but brought a new sense of urgency when she arrived in Montreal to take up a new job this fall. “In our world today, if we who believe that God exists cannot relate to each other
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