After the Vatican’s recent repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, I spent two hours speaking with three Indigenous people about the 500-year-old church doctrine that is as much the bedrock of Canada as the Canadian Shield.

I asked about its relevance, the potential of its undoing, and a question I had never asked before. Those discussions left me feeling both low-level dread and an almost irresistible sense of the possibility of grace. First, what is the Doctrine of Discovery?

“The story of the Doctrine is the story of how you can obtain other people’s land by magic,” retired judge Harry LaForme told the Globe and Mail in 2022. “You just sprinkle these papal bulls and you get it.”
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I’m nervous about presenting non-orthodox views about COVID. Some of my mandate-abiding friends will look askance.

“Yes, but … ,” they will say, then demarcate limits of tolerance.

Rigidity was a spiritual variant of COVID. Questions became unwelcome. A singularity of narrative prevailed, spawning a minority reaction.

Friendships withered. Families ruptured. Churches bled members.

The pandemic changed the complexion of society. At this point, can we talk constructively across the lingering divide? Can we find middle ground? Do we even want to? And what of the humble Beatitudes?
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Caleb Brown was a lead organizer of the Freedom Convoy protest outside the Manitoba legislative building last winter. I asked how he responds to people who dismiss all protesters as white nationalists. I asked how he felt about people who drove by and gave him the finger, as one of my friends did.
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I knew I would eventually have to interview my neighbours who staunchly resisted COVID-19 mandates and proudly supported the Ottawa trucker convoy. Actually I have many such neighbours. But it took a year of working through my pandemic enmity until I was ready to listen to them.
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An area of disputed land in Saskatchewan has become a seedbed of reconciliation with the launch of an interpretive path to make the story of that journey come alive for visitors.

An official opening ceremony for the Stoney Knoll Interpretive Site, located between Waldheim and Rosthern roughly 45 minutes north of Saskatoon, was held on June 22. More than 150 adult guests, plus several classes of students from area schools, attended the event that was put on by the Stoney Knoll Historical Committee, a group of Mennonite, Lutheran and Indigenous representatives who are dedicated to sharing this reconciliation story.

In 1876, Stoney Knoll was part of an area of land that was given to the Young Chippewayan Cree band as part of the Treaty Six agreement. In 1897, the land was illegally reappropriated and sold to Mennonite and Lutheran settlers. The sale was a violation of the treaty and rendered the Young Chippewayan Cree landless.
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In Ukraine, a former Mennonite church building is being restored and transformed – with the help of Canadian Mennonites – into a Greek Catholic church. This development, according to observers, is an example of Mennonite-Catholic collaboration in the spirit of other exchanges over the past decade or so. The Mennonite church in the former village of Schoensee (now Snegurovka) was originally built in 1909. During the post-October 1917 revolution Soviet era, when Mennonites were forced to leave, the church building was used for storage and then fell into disrepair. Recently the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine secured ownership of the building and a retired Catholic priest from the Czech Republic, Father Peter Trenzky, is giving leadership to the restoration as well as to the congregation, which has started to worship in the building. In learning about the restoration project, individuals associated with the Mennonite Centre in nearby Molochansk (formerly Halbstad) offered to help. The Centre was established in 2001 in the former Mennonite Girls’ School (Maedchenschule) to provide a range of community services.
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An international trilateral dialogue between Mennonites, Catholics and Lutherans began in Rome, 9-13 December 2012.

According to a joint release issued after the Rome meeting, the overall theme of the five-year process is “Baptism and Incorporation into the Body of Christ, the Church.” The release further stated: “This innovative trilateral forum will allow the dialogue to take up questions surrounding the theology and practice of baptism in the respective communions.”

The three international communions came to the inaugural meeting with a history of bilateral dialogues with each other. They mutually agreed to hold three-way talks on baptism, a topic that had surfaced in earlier exchanges.
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At its meeting in Geneva, 9-14 June, The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Council approved plans for a three-way talks that will include Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Mennonites.
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A recent meeting of the executive committee of the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 28 to August 4, 2010. Among other topics on the agenda for the meeting were proposals for two ecumenical dialogues, one with Seventh Day Adventists, and the other with Lutherans and Catholics.
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by Byron Rempel-Burkholder, Mennonite World Conference news service [Strasbourg, France • MWC] When Lutherans from around the world gather in July, they will seek a historic reconciliation with Mennonites and other Christians of the Anabaptist tradition. On July 22, the third day of the eleventh assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to be held
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WCC dialogue questions relevant for Mennonites says Neufeld

How and where does the global church discuss issues such as the nature and mission of the church, sources of authority and moral discernment in the churches? One long-standing forum for important discussions such as these is the Faith and Order Plenary Commission of the World Council of Churches. This body, while not officially decision-making, gathered in Kolympari, Crete, 7-13 October 2009.

… continued
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Symposium on War and Peace: Mennonites and Christian Reformed Churches discuss and discern

On Oct. 17, Bruce Adema, Director of Canadian Ministries for the bi-national Christian Reformed Church and current president of the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC), and Robert J. Suderman, General Secretary of Mennonite Church Canada hosted a Symposium on War and Peace together with the Christian Reformed Church of Canada at Bethel Mennonite Church in Winnipeg.
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Lutherans adopt atatement asking forgiveness from Mennonites

LWF Council Unanimously Adopts Statement Asking Forgiveness from Mennonites
Mennonites Welcome Move Toward Reconciliation, says MWC General Secretary Miller

The Council of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has approved a statement that prepares for a significant action of reconciliation with churches of the Anabaptist family.

With this endorsement, the statement “Action on the Legacy of Lutheran Persecution of ‘Anabaptists'” is recommended for adoption at the July 2010 LWF Eleventh Assembly in Stuttgart, Germany. The statement expresses “deep regret and sorrow” for the legacy of violent persecution of Anabaptists, and especially for the ways in which Lutheran reformers supported this persecution with theological arguments. It asks forgiveness, “from God and from our Mennonite sisters and brothers,” for these past wrongs and also for the ways in which later Lutherans have forgotten or ignored this persecution and have continued to describe Anabaptists in misleading and damaging ways.

The statement then makes commitments with respect to how the violent history of persecution by Lutherans will be remembered, and how the Lutheran confessional legacy will be interpreted from now on in light of this action.

… continued
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Peace and Justice? Mennonite and Shiite perspectives in dialogue

Seventeen Mennonite-Christian and Shiite-Muslim scholars of religion met together for four days in Qom, Iran, to discuss the theme of peace and justice. The dialogue conference was planned and hosted May 24-27, 2009 by the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute (IKERI), under the direction of its president, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) organized and sponsored the conference from the Mennonite side. The dialogue was the fourth in a series begun in 2002.

— read the complete story on our website
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Margaret Pfeil wants peace. She wants it so much that three and a half years ago she moved into St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community, a house of hospitality in South Bend, Ind. She believes in radical political participation, so she doesn’t vote except in local elections. Once her student loans are paid off, she hopes to practice tax resistance by living below the poverty line. Pfeil, an assistant professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, wants peace but sometimes she finds she needs to look outside the Catholic church to find the resources and support to help her live her faith.
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This Report could be a wonderfully helpful instrument for Mennonites and Roman Catholics on the local level. If, with proper guidance, small groups dare to tackle the Report, they will find it a treasury of new understanding and wisdom that will help them “grow together” as sisters and brothers in Christ.
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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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